Five career-defining songs from Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift performs during her RED Tour in Shanghai, on May 30, 2014. -- PHOTO: AEG LIVE
Taylor Swift performs during her RED Tour in Shanghai, on May 30, 2014. -- PHOTO: AEG LIVE

Pop-country superstar Taylor Swift will perform two nights at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on June 9 and 12, wrapping up her hugely successful The Red world tour. We look at five of her most memorable songs.

1. Our Song

The third single from her 2006 self-titled debut, it was her first No. 1 song on Billboard's country charts and cemented her position as a country star.

Like the rest of the songs from the album written while she was still in high school, Our Song was penned for a freshman talent show and was inspired by a relationship that she was then in.

The album went to No. 1 on the American and Canadian country music charts and peaked at No. 5 on Billboard's mainstream charts. It earned her the American Music Awards' Favorite Country Female Artist win as well as a nomination for Best New Artist at the 2008 Grammys.

2. You Belong With Me

Nominated at the 2010 Grammys for Song Of The Year, it lost to Beyonce's Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It). Swift's catchy country pop ditty is best remembered for its accompanying music video in which she plays a geeky girl-next-door who has a crush on her football jock neighbour.

The video bagged Best Female Video at the MTV Awards in 2009, leading to rapper Kanye West's infamous onstage interruption of Swift's acceptance speech, insisting Beyonce should have won. West later apologised.

You Belong To Me was on Swift's sophomore 2008 album Fearless, which hit No. 1 on Billboard's main and country music charts, and made history as country music's most decorated album.

It won the Grammy for Album Of The Year, making Swift, at 20, the youngest artist to win the coveted award.

3. Dear John

Taken off her third release Speak Now (2010), the ballad is a thinly veiled jab at singer and serial lothario John Mayer, whom she dated briefly. In it, she sings "Dear John, I see it all, now it was wrong/Don't you think 19 is too young to be played by your dark twisted games, when I loved you so?" Mayer later told Rolling Stone that he felt "really humiliated" and that "it was a really lousy thing for her to do".

Speak Now also topped both Billboard's country and main music charts and won the Favorite Country Album award at the American Music Awards and Top Country Album at the Billboard Music Awards.

4. I Knew You Were Trouble

The third single from her fourth and latest release, Red (2012), this hook-filled pop song was said to be directed at Harry Styles from One Direction, with whom she had a brief relationship from the end of 2012 to the start of last year. When the song won Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards last year, Taylor went up on stage and thanked "the person who inspired this song, who knows exactly who he is, because now I got one of these". The camera cut to a stunned Styles in the audience.

The single, like the album it was on, was on No. 1 on Billboard for seven weeks, her longest-running No. 1.

5. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

Also taken from Red, the anthemic We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together showcased a newfound rock edge and was Swift's first single to go to No. 1 on Billboard's main chart.

Nominated for Record of the Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards, it lost out to Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know.

It won Top Country Song at the 2013 Billboard Music Awards. Rolling Stone named it the second best song of 2012, calling it a "perfect three-minute teen tantrum about country girls getting mad at high-strung indie boys".

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