The American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has written or co-written every song in her eleven-album discography, with the exception of several cover versions and guest features. She has also written standalone singles, songs for film soundtracks, and songs recorded by other artists.
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Swift signed a publishing contract with Sony/ATV Tree Music Publishing to become a professional songwriter in 2005. [1] She signed with Big Machine Records in 2005, and the label released her first six studio albums until the contract expired in 2018. [2] [3] Her early-career songwriting outputs featured collaborations with Liz Rose, who co-wrote with Swift for the albums Taylor Swift (2006), Fearless (2008), and Red (2012). [4] She was the sole writer of the majority of Fearless and Red, [5] [6] and she wrote her third studio album, Speak Now , solely herself. [7] Promoted to country radio, these four albums incorporate mainstream pop and rock elements, and some Red songs feature influences of electronic and hip-hop. [8] She recalibrated her artistry from country to pop with her fifth studio album, 1989 (2014), which includes writing collaborations with Jack Antonoff, Max Martin, and Shellback. [9] The three writers-producers worked with Swift again on her sixth studio album, Reputation (2017). [10]
Swift signed with Republic Records in 2018 [11] and has worked with Antonoff on every album she released thereafter. [12] Her first album under Republic, Lover (2019), is a pop album that features collaborations with Joel Little, Louis Bell, and Frank Dukes. [13] In 2020, Swift signed a new publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group [11] and released two albums, Folklore and Evermore , which both incorporate indie folk. [14] Folklore and Evermore contains collaborations with Aaron Dessner, who became a frequent collaborator with Swift in the subsequent albums, Midnights (2022) and The Tortured Poets Department (2024), [15] which both have a synth-pop sound. [16] Swift's former boyfriend, the actor Joe Alwyn, co-wrote several songs with her for Folklore, Evermore, and Midnights. [17]
Swift's departure from Big Machine resulted in a public dispute over the ownership of her first six albums in 2019, and she re-recorded them to claim ownership to their master recordings. [2] From 2021 to 2023, she released four re-recorded albums— Fearless (Taylor's Version) , Red (Taylor's Version) , Speak Now (Taylor's Version) , and 1989 (Taylor's Version) ; [2] each includes unreleased songs Swift had written but excluded from the original releases. [18]
