Welcome to Swiftogeddon... - Financial Unions

Superstar DJ Anna Jacob introduces you to the Swiftogeddon - and she's put the ultimate 100-song playlist together to get Tay Tay fans in the mood for this week's generation-defining Dublin shows...

Since 2022 I've had the great honour of being a resident DJ for Swiftogeddon - The Taylor Swift Club Night. I’ve played to sold-out venues all over the country, to thousands of Taylor fans delighted to be in a room together, singing, hugging, crying and forging new friendships over their love of our lord and saviour Ms Taylor Alison Swift.

Honestly, for a Taylor fan like myself (I hesitate to call myself a Swiftie as I’m very bad at remembering which break-up song is about which ex-boyfriend), it might be the most fun job in the world.

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I get all the glory of prancing about on stage in packed venues screaming Taylor’s biggest anthems, without any of the pressures of celebrity. I can have a crowd screaming their love for me, bestowing on me homemade friendship bracelets that read ‘DJ Anna’, ‘We ♥ Swiftogeddon’ or ‘The Tortured DJs Dept’, giving me sweaty, teary hugs when I’ve played the song that means the most to them - and then I wipe off my red lipstick, slip out the back of the venue anonymously and get the night bus home. I’m saving an absolute fortune on security guards and private jets.

Like all great honours, this role comes with great responsibility. I was up at 5am for the midnight (in New York, EST) release of Taylor’s recent album The Tortured Poets Department, and on top of listening eagerly to each song, I was making frantic notes for the gig I had that very same night: Fortnight is clearly a banger, but is it a 1am, peak-set banger? So Long, London is fast paced but super sad… Maybe a good one to play right after All Too Well (10-minute version), to gently get the energy back-up after everyone has collectively cry-sang their hearts out?

I’m forever trying to craft the perfect Swiftogeddon DJ set - enough fan faves, deep cuts and curveballs to keep things interesting and appease the most serious Swifties, but with enough household hits to keep the hen parties happy. Enough space for a few requests (there’s always someone who will simply DIE if I don’t play The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived or Timeless) but enough time to get some actual satisfaction as a DJ, to flex my favourite transitions - You’re On Your Own Kid blends beautifully into Love Story, Bad Blood into Should’ve Said No. Thematically I love to play August and Cruel Summer back to back, or Red followed by Maroon.

I’ve made an Ultimate Taylor Swift Playlist, to get everyone hyped up for Taylor’s arrival in Dublin this weekend for her three sell-out shows at the Aviva Stadium. I was ruthless. The playlist I have of Every Single Song Taylor Has Ever Recorded is approaching 20 hours long. Our girl is nothing if not prolific.

I’ve painstakingly whittled this down to just 6 hours, or 100 of Taylor’s very finest tracks - in my humble opinion.

LISTEN TO THE ULTIMATE 100-SONG TAYLOR SWIFT PLAYLIST BELOW:

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Below, I’ve picked 11 of those songs - one from each era - to tell you a little more about why I think they’re the greatest.

1. Our Song, from Taylor Swift (2006)

From the first fiddle riff, there are screams of delight as everyone on the dancefloor recognises this absolute gem of a single from Taylor’s debut album. Incredible to think she was approximately 15 when she wrote this timeless country classic.

2. Fearless, from Fearless (2008)

Something I miss from Taylor’s early albums is the odd rockin’ electric guitar solo. The Red guitar solo also gets an honourable mention here, but the solo after the second chorus of Fearless is flawless. I have a small obsession with Paul Sidoti, the lead guitarist from Taylor’s live band. Touchingly, several members of Taylor’s band and entourage have toured with her since she was a teenager. Swift and Sidoti have been on the road together since 2007 and have a heartwarming chemistry onstage.

3. Enchanted, from Speak Now (2010)

Taylor’s third album has not a single co-writing credit. 19 year old Taylor was fed up of critics claiming she didn’t write her own material so she decided to write the album entirely alone (though there are many other hits from her early albums on which she’s the only credited writer, including Love Story, Our Song and Red). Enchanted is my favourite song from Speak Now. The arrangements are dreamy and the build to the choruses is just epic. The lyrics are so sweet and hopeful. I normally play it towards the end of the set and it has never failed to enchant the whole room.

4. All Too Well, (10-min version from Red (Taylors Version)) (2012/2021)

How could I not mention this song? Impossible to believe we the fans were ever satisfied with only 5 minutes and 30 seconds of Taylor’s magnum opus. Screaming every bitter line with hundreds of Swifties in a nightclub every weekend will never get old. It’s the cheapest and best therapy.

Special mention from the Red era also goes to Treacherous, one of my personal faves and an underrated classic.

5. Out Of The Woods, from 1989 (2014)

The melody for this chorus bounces insistently on a single note. It’s pop genius, and a fine example of Taylor’s knack for writing a definitive pop song about a nebulous, hard to explain aspect of romance. Your relationship had ups and downs, but are they behind you or set to return? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we in the clear yet? GOOD!

6. Delicate, from Reputation (2017)

The best song on Reputation? Maybe! ‘My reputation’s never been worse so, you must like me for me’ - Taylor finds love at her lowest ebb and it results in an absolute banger that still manages to have all the fragility and vulnerability the title suggests.

7. I Think He Knows, from Lover (2019)

Another underrated album track, this song just has the most infectiously joyful groove. No matter how I’m feeling it’ll have me on my feet bopping about and snapping my fingers within the first two bars.

8. the last great american dynasty, from folklore (2020)

This is my all-time favourite Taylor Swift song to date. I’d like it played at my funeral, please. In the documentary/concert film folklore: the long pond studio sessions, Swift’s long-time co-writer and producer Jack Antonoff says to Taylor of this song: ‘it’s not about you… but it is ALL about you’.

The folkmore (folklore/evermore) period saw Taylor experiment with a new kind of storytelling in her songs, and this song, written about Rebekah Harkness, the former owner of Taylor’s Rhode Island home ‘Holiday House’, is just narrative and musical perfection. The picture she paints of Rebekah is so colourful, so tender, such an insightful comparison to Taylor’s own life as ‘the maddest woman this town has ever seen’. I’ve loved Taylor’s music for a long time but it was this song that made me go ‘Oh sh*t, she is actually a genius’. (I love playing this one back to back with Cornelia Street, as two esoteric songs loosely relating to Taylor’s property empire.)

9. marjorie, from evermore (2020)

marjorie is a song written for Taylor’s late maternal grandmother, opera singer Marjorie Finlay. It samples a recording of Marjorie's ethereal soprano and Taylor sings words of wisdom imparted by her granny ‘Never be so kind, you forget to be clever. Never be so clever, you forget to be kind’. Can’t argue with that, now.

It’s Taylor’s anthem for those of us who have lost someone we loved, and it’s perfectly sincere and melodically bewitching. I’ve never played it without someone telling me afterwards that it's the song that got them through the loss of a loved one.

10. Would’ve Should’ve Could’ve, from Midnights (2022)

Lyrically this song is a re-examination of Taylor’s former relationship with John Mayer (she was 19 at the time, he was 32) the same subject of the equally powerful Dear John from Speak Now. It’s an odd song, structurally and musically. It’s not very pop. But after its release I started to get requests for it A LOT and not in a casual way, but in a pleading ‘PLAY THIS SONG OR I WILL DIE’ kinda way.

The song has blanket appreciation from the fandom now it’s existed for a couple of years, but in the first few months of Midnights’ release it would split the crowd - half the room would be nonplussed and the other half would be clutching one another, tears streaming down their faces. The lyric ‘give me back my girlhood, it was mine fist’ is a particular highlight. (My personal favourite song on Midnights is You’re On Your Own Kid though, just for the record.)

11. Clara Bow, from The Tortured Poets Department (2024)

In Clara Bow, Taylor makes the absolute baller move of both name-checking herself in her own song, and drawing parallels between herself, silent film star Clara Bow and 70s icon Stevie Nicks. A baller move that only Taylor Swift could get away with, and an effective way to make the sobering point that since the 1920s some things have really not changed for female artists. Society still loves to chew a woman up and spit her back out, always wanting to be dazzled by a newer, younger, shiner star. File it away with Swift’s other subtle and not-so subtle feminist anthems, including mad woman, Nothing New and The Man.

Swiftogeddon returns to Dolans in Limerick and The Empire Musical Hall in Belfast in July, with dates in other Irish and UK cities throughout the rest of the year. Join the mailing list here or follow @swiftogeddon and/or @annadjetc

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Welcome to Swiftogeddon! Your ultimate Taylor Swift playlist