The 2021 Song Taylor Swift Put Above The Rest Of Her Music: 'I Knew It Was My Favorite'

At the time of writing, pop sensation Taylor Swift has put out no fewer than 12 studio albums in the space of two decades. Add her various features and ancillary releases to the mix, and you have quite a lot of music on your hands — well over 200 songs in total. With that in mind, just about any hardcore Swiftie would probably be hard-pressed to name just one track by Miss Americana that stands above all others in their eyes. For Swift herself, though, the choice was apparently an easy one.

Swift is an artist who has been defined by her many distinct eras, each chock full of songs about her life. So, when she was asked to name some of her absolute favorites during an appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" in December 2025, she was understandably hesitant to give a definitive top five. Even so, Swift was quick to crown one recent release as the undisputed champion of her discography thus far. That song, of course, is the 10-minute version of "All Too Well" that serves as the closing track of "Red (Taylor's Version)," the 2021 re-recorded edition of her 2012 studio album "Red."

Notably, while it took years for the 10-minute cut of "All Too Well" to see the light of day, Swift has had a lot of time to reflect on the song's meaning since releasing the original five-and-a-half-minute version in the early 2010s. "I knew that when we put out the album ["Red"], it wouldn't be a single; it wouldn't be a video — but I knew it was my favorite one," Swift said of "All Too Well" when "Red (Taylor's Version)" dropped in 2021 (via ABC News).

As Taylor Swift remarked in her aforementioned 2021 comments about "All Too Well," the five-and-a-half-minute track didn't receive too much fanfare when it was originally released as part of her 2012 studio album "Red." Given that it wasn't considered to be single material, nor worthy of a music video, it lived in the shadow of other, more heavily-pushed tracks like "I Knew You Were Trouble" and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together." Granted, "All Too Well" did get some attention, peaking at number 80 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. 

Before long, however, Swift's fans came to appreciate the song in much the same way she did. "[W]hat was so crazy is that when it went out into the world, the fans just among themselves decided it was their favorite too. They just sort of ... claimed it as the most important song from 'Red,'" Swift said in 2021. With that in mind, when two versions of "All Too Well"  — a re-record of the five-minute version and the much-anticipated 10-minute cut — were featured on "Red (Taylor's Version)" that year, the song received a hero's welcome.

This time around, "All Too Well" topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart, unseating Don McLean's "American Pie" as the longest song to ever do so. Then, in October 2025, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone declared "All Too Well" to be the best Taylor Swift song ever in his definitive ranking of her catalog.