Taylor Swift is making sure her Swifties are prepared for The Tortured Poets Department!
On Friday, the pop star released five new playlists on Apple Music, each themed around on of the stages of grief — or in the 34-year-old’s case, heartbreak. The themes include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The playlists have meaningful titles referring to her upcoming album and are giving fans a little taste of what’s to come.
Related: What Travis Kelce Told Taylor That ‘Changed Everything’
Of course, we’ve heard this release is going to be one hell of an album delving into her 6-year relationship with Joe Alwyn that came to a screeching end in 2023.
And with these new playlists, we’re getting an eye into what exactly to expect with her upcoming story…
Denial
The first playlist is called I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life, and is named after one of her soon-to-be-released songs. It features songs she feels are centered around “denial” such as:
- Lavender Haze
- Style (Taylor’s Version)
- Cruel Summer
- Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version).
In an attached voice note, she explains:
“This is a list of songs about getting so caught up in the idea of something that you have a hard time seeing the red flags, possibly resulting in moments of denial and maybe a little bit of delusion. Results may vary.”
Anger
Up next is You Don’t Get to Tell Me About Sad Songs, which is the “anger” portion. It features bangers like:
- Dear John (Taylor’s Version)
- Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)
- I Knew You Were Trouble
- Mad Woman
- Vigilante S**t
Taylor says of this playlist:
“These songs all have one thing in common, I wrote them while feeling anger. Over the years, I’ve learned that anger can manifest itself in a lot of different ways, but the healthiest way that it manifests itself in my life is when I can write a song about it, and then oftentimes, that helps me get past it.”
Bargaining
Then, we move on to Am I Allowed to Cry? AKA “bargaining”. This playlist has heartbreaking cuts like Soon You’ll Get Better and This Is Me Trying. The 34-year-old explains:
“This playlist takes you through the songs that I’ve written when I was in the bargaining stage, times when you’re trying to make deals with yourself or someone that you care about, you’re trying to make things better, you’re oftentimes feeling really desperate, because oftentimes we have a gut intuition that tells us things are not going to go the way that we hope, which makes us more desperate, which makes us bargain more.”
Depression
“Depression” comes to us in the form of a playlist she calls Old Habits Die Screaming Songs, and as you can imagine it’s got some tear-jerkers:
- My Tears Ricochet
- Champagne Problems
- Dear Reader.
These are songs she wrote when she was at her lowest, the singer expresses in the voice note:
“We’re going to be exploring the feelings of depression that often lace their way through my songs. In times like these, I’ll write a song because I feel lonely or hopeless. And writing a song feels like the only way to process that intensity of an emotion. And while these things are really, really hard to go through, I often feel like when I’m either listening to songs or writing songs that deal with this intensity of loss and hopelessness, usually that’s in the phase where I’m close to getting past that feeling.”
Acceptance
Finally, in “acceptance”, Tay Tay says she’s put songs where she’s officially let go of her troubles after fighting with them for so long. I Can Do It With a Broken Heart is more hopeful yet somber, with tracks like:
- I Forgot That You Existed
- The 1
- You’re On Your Own Kid.
The singer states:
“Here we finally find acceptance and can start moving forward from loss or heartbreak. These songs represent making room for more good in your life, making that choice because a lot of time when we lose things, we gain things too.”
Emotions on high, no doubt!
Are U ready for The Tortured Poets Department, Perezcious readers? Let us know (below).
[Image via The Tonight Show/YouTube]