Blank Space is the song where Taylor Swift decided to win by becoming the villain they had accused her of being. Released in 2014 as the second single from 1989, it is a pop masterpiece: Swift playing the character the tabloid press had invented for her and making it so exuberant and catchy that the joke redounds entirely on those who started it. The song knocked Shake It Off off No.1, making Swift the first woman to replace herself at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Three Grammy nominations followed. The line "I got a blank space, baby, and I'll write your name" is one of the great pop hooks of the 2010s — simultaneously a love declaration and a threat.

The 98types Blank Space lyric print captures the song's signature verse with the directness and confidence the lyric itself demands. Zara has had it on her studio wall since last autumn and describes it as "the print that most accurately reflects my personality on difficult deadlines." We didn't ask what she meant by that. We could infer it from the song.

Cruel Summer is one of the most extraordinary chart stories in pop history. Released as a deep cut on Lover in 2019 — not even a proper single initially — it spent four years building quietly before the Eras Tour made it the opening song of every show. That decision, combined with sustained streaming, pushed it to No.1 on the Hot 100 in October 2023 — more than four years after its original release. Only Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You has pulled off a comparable delayed ascent. The production, co-written with Max Martin and St. Vincent, has a crystalline perfection: the synth run, the rising chorus, the very specific anxiety of "I had a dream that you're with me in this crowd." Technically and emotionally, it is one of the finest pop productions of the 2010s.

The 98types Cruel Summer lyric print has been one of the most requested Taylor Swift prints since the Eras Tour. Nadia ordered one after seeing the show and says: "Something about October and the word cruel together. It makes total sense when the leaves start turning." The print captures the chorus with the urgency that made it a live event rather than just a song.

Anti-Hero is the song where Taylor Swift explicitly admitted to being difficult — and made it into the most commercially successful pop song of 2022. Released as the lead single from Midnights in October 2022, it debuted at No.1 with nine other Midnights songs beneath it, making Swift the first artist in history to simultaneously occupy the entire top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. The song won the Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance. "It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me" became the defining cultural text of late 2022 — and remains a lyric that makes people laugh and then immediately look slightly uncomfortable, because of how recognisable it is.

The 98types Anti-Hero lyric print is both funny and genuinely moving — because the reason the central line resonates so completely is that almost everyone recognises themselves in it at some point. Sam has it positioned so that it's the first thing visitors to his flat read. "It works as a confession and a warning simultaneously," he says. We cannot improve on that description.

Cardigan is the song that changed how critics and even long-time sceptics thought about Taylor Swift as a writer. Released on 24 July 2020 as the lead single from Folklore — the surprise lockdown album made with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff — it debuted at No.1, making Swift the first artist to simultaneously debut an album and its lead single at No.1 in the same week. The song uses the specific sensory detail of a worn cardigan to hold the emotional weight of a relationship remembered from a distance. There is something in the line "You drew stars around my scars" that functions as both an image and a diagnosis of what certain relationships do to you. It is the Folklore song that comes up most often when critics list examples of Swift's literary quality as a lyricist.

The 98types Cardigan lyric print is the October studio pick — no single person claims it, it belongs collectively to everyone who works here. It's been up in the Camden studio since October 2024 and will be up again this month. It is a perfect autumn print: the melancholy is warm rather than cold, the imagery domestic, the feeling one of gentle irresistibility. The song makes more sense in a cardigan than in sunlight, and the print does too.

Summertime Sadness is one of the most atmospherically perfect pop songs ever recorded. Released as part of Born to Die: The Paradise Edition in 2012, it is a song about grief filtered through California heat and Old Hollywood aesthetic. The original album version is a mid-tempo, string-and-piano production with Elizabeth Grant's contralto voice at the centre. Cedric Gervais's 2013 remix added an electronic pulse that drove it to No.1 in the UK and across Europe, making it Lana Del Rey's biggest commercial single. But the original is the one that lingers. The image of wearing a dead friend's coat at a window — specific, domestic, unbearable — is the kind of detail that great pop songs use to make the universal feel personal.

The 98types Summertime Sadness lyric print is one of the most requested prints in the Lana Del Rey collection. Cleo discovered it in September and says: "It is a song about summer that only makes complete sense in autumn. That timing gap — the season when you finally process what the previous season meant — is exactly what the lyrics do emotionally." The print has been on the Camden studio wall since the last warm days of September and will stay there until spring. It earns its place every single day of October.

Young and Beautiful was written for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (2013) and became the film's emotional centrepiece — a song that asks Daisy's question to Gatsby in a way the film's dialogue never quite manages. The orchestral arrangement is one of the most carefully constructed soundscapes in Lana Del Rey's catalogue. The song was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Original Song and has accumulated over 1.2 billion Spotify streams — extraordinary for a film soundtrack piece that was never a conventional single. The central question of the song — "Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?" — is the most efficiently devastating line in Lana Del Rey's catalogue, which is saying something given the competition.

The 98types Young and Beautiful lyric print captures this central question with a simplicity that amplifies its power. You do not need to know the film to understand what is being asked. Tamar has it in her framing workshop: "Every time I look up at it I feel something before I can stop myself. It is the print equivalent of the key change in that song." She is completely correct. It is the October pick for everyone on the studio team who prefers their sadness orchestral and inevitable.

bad guy is the pop song that made Gen Z feel seen in a way commercial pop had not previously managed. Released in March 2019 as the fifth single from When We All Fall Asleep, it spent 46 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaked at No.1, and earned Billie Eilish a Grammy for Record of the Year at 18 years old — the youngest recipient of that award in history. The production, made by Finneas O'Connell in their childhood bedroom, uses bass that operates physically in your chest, a near-whispered vocal, and a final chorus that pulls the rug of the song's premise out from under you. The "duh" that ends the chorus is one of the greatest single syllables in pop history. It is simultaneously anti-pop and the most immediately catchy song of its year.

The 98types bad guy lyric print captures the opening verse's accumulation of contradictory self-description with the same deadpan confidence the song delivers it. Dani has had it on the studio wall since June. "It fits October because there is something autumnal about admitting you are a bad guy. The warmth of summer makes it harder to be honest. October makes it easier." We are going to think about that sentence for a while.

Texas Hold 'Em was released as a surprise during the Super Bowl in February 2024 and immediately became the first No.1 by a Black woman on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. The song is the centrepiece of COWBOY CARTER, Beyonce's country-adjacent album that won the Grammy for Album of the Year at the 2025 ceremony — making her the first Black woman to win that award with a country record. The song is an act of reclamation: it takes a genre that has historically marginalised Black artists and asserts Beyonce's right to occupy its sonic and commercial space completely. The banjo line, the chorus, the specific confidence of the vocal performance — it is a song that transforms every room it plays in.

The 98types Texas Hold 'Em lyric print captures the chorus with the swagger the song earns. Marcus has been requesting this print for months. "There is something about watching it hit No.1 on Country charts that made me understand what a pop song can actually do culturally," he says. The print is going above his workstation this October. It has been on the wall of the Camden studio since April and belongs there permanently.

Espresso is the song that made Sabrina Carpenter a global pop phenomenon rather than a critically appreciated cult artist. Released in April 2024 as the lead single from Short n' Sweet, it spent weeks at No.1 in multiple countries, became the song of summer 2024 by every available metric and introduced the phrase "that's that me espresso" into everyday vocabulary. The production — by Amy Allen and Julian Bunetta — is immaculate: a rhythmic, laconic groove under a vocal performance of devastating confidence. The humour of the lyric ("I can't relate to desperation") delivered with such complete certainty is what separates Carpenter from the pack of her contemporaries. She sounds like someone who has never been desperate and cannot imagine it, which is the most appealing quality a pop star can project.

The 98types Espresso lyric print has been one of the most ordered prints in the pop music collection since summer 2024. Priya ordered one in May and says she is still listening to it in October 2026, which places Espresso in rare company for a novelty-adjacent summer single. "The joke in the lyric never gets old," she explains. "It just changes what it means as time goes by." The print belongs on any wall that takes pop music seriously while not taking itself seriously.

drivers license is one of the most stunning debut singles in pop history. Released in January 2021, when Olivia Rodrigo was 17, it broke the record for the most single-day Spotify streams for a non-holiday song, spent eight weeks at No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and won the Grammy for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance — making Rodrigo the first woman to win all three in the same year since Billie Eilish in 2020. The song is about the specific misery of getting your driving licence and realising you have no one to drive to — the way a milestone you anticipated becomes unbearable when the person you wanted to share it with is gone. The bridge, where the vocal lifts and the specificity of the grievance becomes undeniable, is one of the great pop moments of the 2020s.

The 98types drivers license lyric print captures the verse that set up that devastating bridge — the suburban Saturday, the red lights, the old man's neighbourhood that probably still smells like you. Leila ordered it immediately when she joined the studio and says: "It is a song about being 17 in a way that only works completely if you experienced being 17. But the lyric print makes it work at any age because the emotion is so specific it becomes universal." The print is on her desk. It belongs there.

A Day in the Life is the greatest pop song ever recorded. Rolling Stone ranked it No.1 on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list in 2021. It closes Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band — consistently voted the greatest album in pop history — with an orchestral crescendo that took 90 musicians to record and has never sounded less than extraordinary in the 58 years since its release. The song is in three distinct sections: Lennon's melancholy morning newspaper reading; McCartney's rushed commute; and the final orchestral build from nothing to the most famous chord in pop history — an E major held for 40 seconds as all four pianos decay simultaneously. The BBC banned it. This probably helped.

The 98types A Day in the Life lyric print is the print that Dev has requested every single month when asked for his October pick, since 2019. "It is always this one. It will always be this one," he says. "Every other pop song I love exists in a hierarchy. A Day in the Life is at the top of the hierarchy. The hierarchy is irrelevant to it." We consider this settled. The print features the opening verse's newspaper reading — the finest opening to any pop song ever written — and belongs on any wall in any room in any century.

Flowers won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 2024 and spent ten weeks at No.1 in the UK — making it Miley Cyrus's biggest hit and one of the most commercially successful singles of the 2020s. Released on 13 January 2023 — the birthday of her ex-husband Liam Hemsworth — the song is a point-by-point response to his favourite song about her, reappropriating the sentiment of dependency into something entirely about independence and self-sufficiency. "I can love me better than you can" is the line that turns the whole song: a declaration rather than a complaint, an anthem for anyone who has ever realised they were better company for themselves than for the person they were with.

The 98types Flowers lyric print is the October pick for anyone who has spent a previous October feeling worse about themselves than they should have. Sasha says: "It is a print for the wall of the person you are becoming rather than the person you were. October is about that transition." The print goes above Sasha's monitor this month. It earns its place.

Someone You Loved is one of the most straightforwardly devastating pop ballads of the 2010s. Lewis Capaldi's debut single — released in 2018 when he was 21 — spent seven weeks at No.1 in the UK and won the Grammy for Song of the Year in 2020. The song is about the specific experience of the loss of a relationship's infrastructure: not just the person, but all the things you did together, the routines you built, the way you used to live. The piano and strings arrangement is quiet enough to feel intimate and large enough to feel like grief. Capaldi's voice is one of the great pop instruments of its generation — instinctively communicating sincerity without sentimentality.

The 98types Someone You Loved lyric print is James's October tradition. "Seven Octobers in a row," he says. "I take it down in spring and put it back up in October. It is the correct seasonal rhythm for this song." We recommend the same approach. The print captures the chorus's central admission — "I was running from myself" — with the plainness that makes the song so immediately relatable. There is no metaphor, no complication. Just the thing that is true, stated simply.

Abracadabra is the lead single from Lady Gaga's 2025 album Mayhem and represents a genuine return to the maximalist pop she pioneered in the 2010s. After a period of acclaimed but commercially modest albums (Joanne, Chromatica), Mayhem went straight back to the Bad Romance aesthetic — pulsing synths, propulsive bass, a vocal performance that makes other pop stars sound polite. The song topped charts in multiple countries and received multiple Grammy nominations. It is specifically and deliberately a callback to Gaga's early work: the genre-defining period when she was the most original pop star alive and made it look completely effortless.

The 98types Abracadabra lyric print is the newest addition to the studio walls — Eliza pinned it up in September and has already been asked about it by three separate visitors. "People see it and immediately know the song, even if they haven't heard it yet in 2025. That is what Gaga does. She sounds like herself and no one else, and the print captures that immediately." It is the October pick for anyone who missed the version of pop where everything was turned up to eleven.