This is the very first page

Welcome to Swift Decisions!  We’re glad that you have come, to share your lives with us…

..sorry about that.  I didn’t expect to burst into song out of nowhere at that point.  Anyway, hello, I’m Richard, and it’s good to meet you.  The first thing everyone always discovers about me these days is invariably one of four things – (1) I’ve competed in that terrifying TV quiz with a reputation for impossibly hard questions; (2) I rarely watch TV dramas, unless it’s Doctor Who, in which case I relish every second of it; (3) I represent my university at the fantastic, quirky, humanitarian sport called lifesaving; (4) whenever I slip the word “swift” or its variations into conversation, it’s always a reference to a certain singer-songwriter from Pennsylvania, and very rarely anything to do with being fast.

That’s where the “Swift” comes from in the name of these blogs.  It’s five years ago this week that I first watched Taylor Swift singing, and in the five years since, she and her music have taken me to many wonderful places I’d never been before.  These blogs are my way of saying a huge thank you at this great milestone.  As for the word “Decisions”?  Well, the musical world experienced a game-changing earthquake three weeks ago when Taylor’s fifth studio album, 1989, hit the shelves and iTunes stores worldwide – and we’d all known it was coming since August 18.  That was the foreshock.  I abruptly decided to create a foreshock of my own by trying to answer the age-old question that “Swifties” worldwide have been trying to answer for years…

..and that’s where the word “Decisions” comes into it.  I asked the fandom to rate each of Taylor’s album tracks and official singles from 2006-2013 out of 13 (with 13 being ubiquitous in the fandom as her lucky number, I couldn’t resist making it a “perfect score” in this poll), and billed this as a celebration of her first four musical eras, not to mention a countdown to the start of the fifth.

Here’s where I present the aftershocks – the results of everyone’s submissions.  Which song is her greatest to date?  How does your personal favourite stack up against every other song on the list?  Join me in the pages ahead, as I show you statistics, rambling critiques, and generally incredible things.