Just as you’d expect from a musician who can surely boast one of the starriest speed-dials in the world, Taylor Swift likes nothing more than a good old sing-song with her industry pals, and has done since her early Nashville days, when she’d frequently joint forces with fellow country artists.
Since then, she’s recorded with everyone from Panic! at the Disco’s Brendon Urie, to Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar, and teamed up with her long-time friend Ed Sheeran for their fourth collaboration, The Joker and the Queen in 2022.
Her most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department, features collaborations with Post Malone and Florence and the Machine. But do they rank in this list of her best duets?
As the billionaire singer-songwriter continues her The Eras Tour in Europe, playing Edinburgh tonight and arriving in London on June 21, we pick our favourite of her collaborations.
Exile (Taylor Swift featuring Bon Iver, 2020)
From those opening piano chords, it’s immediately clear that Exile is something special. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Taylor sing alternate verses of this slow, heart-breaking track about a break up, before eventually singing the ending together. “I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending,” they both sing.
Everything Has Changed (Taylor Swift featuring Ed Sheeran, 2013)
What happens when two of the most wildly successful musicians of recent years, who also happen to be genuinely good pals, team up to write a song… on a trampoline? Answer: Everything Has Changed, a lovely guitar ballad that plays to both Taylor and Ed’s strengths, and builds in emotional heft as the track goes on. The sweet video features two mini-me child actors.
Breathe (Taylor Swift featuring Colbie Caillat, 2008)
This team-up with fellow Nashville artist Colbie Caillat is a classic early Taylor break-up ballad. Caillat’s understated backing vocals complement Taylor’s well, the lyrics have Taylor’s usual flashes of perception, and the “it’s 2am, feeling like I just lost a friend” bridge shifts things up a gear in dramatic fashion.
The Joker and the Queen (Ed Sheeran featuring Taylor Swift, 2022)
A de facto sequel to Everything Has Changed (they’ve recorded two other tracks in between, but they recruited the lookalikes from that first video, now in their late teens, to reprise their roles for this one), this is a simple track, decked out with some soaring strings, but both Taylor and Ed are on form; Taylor’s vocals are especially rich.
No Body, No Crime (Taylor Swift featuring Haim, 2020)
This country-inflected murder mystery ballad opens with the Haim sisters’ ominously repeating “he did it,” before Taylor spins the story of a woman whose husband kills her when she confronts him about his cheating; the narrator, her friend, then enacts her revenge. Make it into a mini-series!
Bad Blood (Taylor Swift featuring Kendrick Lamar, 2015)
It’s hard to watch the video for this (featuring the entire cast of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, plus Lena Dunham smoking a cigar) without triggering an unpleasant memory of summer ‘15, when hot takes about whether Taylor’s “squad” (argh) was feminist or not were rife. Still, Kendrick Lamar’s verses, and a few other judicious tweaks to the original album track, elevate this from a sing-sing taunt to an absolute anthem.
Safe & Sound (Taylor Swift featuring The Civil Wars, 2011)
Safe & Sound, a collaboration with country duo The Civil Wars, plays over the closing credits of the first Hunger Games film, but listening back, its stripped-back, folky sound and haunting vocals wouldn’t sound out of place on Folklore or Evermore.
I Don’t Wanna Live Forever (Zayn and Taylor Swift, 2016)
The real star of I Don’t Wanna Live Forever, taken from the soundtrack for Fifty Shades Darker, is Zayn Malik’s falsetto. Still, with production from Jack Antonoff, post-1989 Taylor’s vocals meld surprisingly well into this dark R&B soundscape – though her lyric “I’ve been looking sad in all the nicest places” proves she’s still the patron saint of sad girls.
Nothing New (Taylor Swift featuring Phoebe Bridgers, 2021)
Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers – it’s a pairing that makes perfect sense. Nothing New, one of the ‘vault’ tracks (session recordings that didn’t previously make it onto records) from the re-record of Red (2021), sees the pair in meditative mood, pondering the passage of time (“how can a person know everything at 18 and nothing at 22?”).
Soon You’ll Get Better (Taylor Swift featuring The Chicks, 2019)
This one is all the more devastating if you’ve followed Taylor from the start. In The Best Day, a track on her second album Fearless, teenage Taylor is “laughing on the car ride home” with her mum Andrea; in this collaboration with The Chicks, she is accompanying her to a doctor’s appointment as part of Andrea’s cancer treatment, “just pretend[ing] it isn’t real.”
Fortnight (Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone, 2024)
Fortnight, from Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poet’s Department, sees the singer team up with rapper and singer Post Malone. The lead single shot straight to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and sat there for two weeks, beating out the likes of Shaboozey, Sabrina Carpenter, and Hozier, (plus some of Swift’s other songs, including I Can Do it With a Broken Heart and Down Bad).
