About a month out from Taylor Swift's 10th album The Tortured Poets Department, Swift has given her us her first real piece of album promotion since the Grammys announcement: a set of curated Apple Music playlists labeled with TTPD songs and related phrases that reflect the five stages of grief.
Over the past months, Swift has released album variants for TTPD in different sepia-toned colors with unique bonus tracks. Fans assembled them together and found a “Five Stages of Grief” chart that mirrors the colors, thus the theory was born that the album would be a literal interpretation of her breakup with Joe Alwyn and the ensuing grief she experienced.
The Apple Music intro implies, however, that the fan theory was what actually informed Swift's decision to compile and release these five playlists, not the other way around. “And when Swifties agree upon a theory, Taylor takes an interest—so naturally, she's responded by crafting a series of exclusive playlists, choosing songs of her own that fit each stage," the intro reads.
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Below, dive into each playlist and its tracklist before The Tortured Poets Department comes out April 19.
Denial: I Love You, It's Ruining My Life Songs
Taylor Swift's message: “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.”
- Lavender Haze
- Snow On The Beach
- Sweet Nothing
- Glitch
- betty
- willow
- Cruel Summer
- Lover
- Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince
- False God
- Style
- Wildest Dreams
- Treacherous
- Untouchable
- That’s When
- Ours
- Superman
- Bejeweled
Anger: You Don't Get to Tell Me About Sad Songs
Taylor Swift's message: “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.”
- 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 & Always
- Mr. Perfectly Fine
Bargaining: Am I Allowed to Cry? Songs
Taylor Swift's message: “This playlist takes you through songs I've written when I was in the bargaining stage, times when you're trying to make deals with yourself or someone you care about, you're trying to make things better. You're often times feeling really desperate because oftentimes we have a gut intuition that tells us things are not going the way that we hope. Which makes us more desperate. Which makes us bargain more!"
- 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
- Renegade
Depression: Old Habits Die Screaming Songs
Taylor Swift's message: “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 passed that feeling.”
- 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
- e Were Happy
- Last Kiss
- Castles Crumbling
- Carolina
- White Horse
Acceptance: I Can Do It With a Broken Heart Songs
Taylor Swift's message: “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 the time when we lose things, we gain things too.”
- 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
- Breathe
