Taylor Swift is giving rare insight to the emotions that have led to some of her most personal music.
Leading up to the release of the Tortured Poets Department, Swift has dropped five new playlists on Apple Music. Each playlist is hand-selected by Taylor, with songs that represent the five stages of grief.
Each titled after a new song off the upcoming record, the playlists begin with a voice message from Swift, providing insight to how she had processed emotions throughout the cycles of her past relationships, and how each led to a new song. The playlists notably feature "Lover," a song written about her relationship with Joe Alwyn, under the "denial" phase, during which she discusses feeling "delusion."
Across the five playlists, Swift uses each of her albums - excluding her debut album and Reputation - to narrate the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
I Love You, It's Ruining My Life Songs (Denial)
"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 but of delusion. Results may vary."
For the playlist, Swift has selected "Lavender Haze," "Snow on the Beach," "Sweet Nothing," "Glitch," "betty," "willow," "Cruel Summer," "Lover," "Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince," "False God," "Style," "Wildest Dreams," "Treacherous," "Untouchable," "That's When," "Ours," "Superman," and "Bejeweled."
You Don't Get to Tell Me About Sad Songs (Anger)
"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 it can manifest itself in my life is when I can write a song about it and then oftentimes that helps me get past it."
The songs Swift has selected for this playlist include "Vigilante Shit," "High Infidelity," "Would've, Could've, Should've," "exile," "illicit affairs," "mad woman," "tolerate it," "Bad Blood," "Is It Over Now?," "I Knew You Were Trouble," "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," "The Last Time," "The Moment I Knew," "Babe," "I Bet You Think About Me," "Dear John," "Better Than Revenge," "Tell Me Why," "You're Not Sorry," "Forever and Always," and "Mr. Perfectly Fine."
Am I Allowed to Cry? Songs (Bargaining)
"This playlist takes you through the songs I have written when I was in the bargaining stage. Times when, you know, you're trying to make deals with yourself or someone you care about. You're trying to make things better, you're oftentimes feeling really desperate because oftentimes we have a sort of gut intuition that tells us things are not gonna go the way that we hope. Which makes us more desperate, which makes us bargain more."
The songs included on the playlist include "The Great War," "this is me trying," "peace," "The Archer," "Cornelia Street," "Death By A Thousand Cuts," "Soon You'll Get Better," "Afterglow," "I Wish You Would," "Say Don't Go," "Come Back...Be Here," "Better Man," "The Story of Us," "Haunted," "Come In With the Rain," "The Other Side of the Door," "If This Was a Movie," and "Renegade."
Old Habits Die Screaming Songs (Depression)
"We're going to be exploring 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. 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."
The songs that Swift chose were "Bigger Than The Whole Sky," "Dear Reader," "Maroon," "You're Losing Me," "my tears ricochet," "epiphany," "hoax," "champagne problems," "coney island," "right where you left me," "Nothing New," "All Too Well," "Forever Winter," "We Were Happy," "Last Kiss," "Castles Crumbling," "Carolina," and "White Horse."
I Can Do It With a Broken Heart Songs (Acceptance)
"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. A lot of the times when we lose things, we gain things, too."
The songs featured on the "acceptance" phase playlist include "You're On Your Own, Kid," "Midnight Rain," "Labyrinth," "the 1," "august," "invisible string," "happiness," "long story short," "closure," "evermore," "it's time to go," "I Forgot That You Existed," "Daylight," "This Love," "Clean," "Now That We Don't Talk," "Begin Again," "Innocent," and "Breathe."
Swift's new studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, is set to drop on April 19.
