Taylor Swift’s 5 Stages Of Heartbreak Playlists: Our Analysis & Additions!

There’s no season like Taylor Swift album season, and luckily, we’re just a few weeks away from getting to hear THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT! It’s starting to feel so real and we’re beyond excited, honeybees. As if we weren’t absolutely buzzing already, Taylor’s teasing some of the album’s main themes with a series of playlists she made for Apple Music! We always love learning more about how she interprets her work.

Each playlist curates a mix of songs from Taylor’s past studio albums and rerecordings, focusing on one of the five stages of heartbreak. Yup, those fan theories were correct! To celebrate the new playlists and Taylor’s past eras before we hear THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, we’ll be taking a closer look at each playlist and seeing which songs we’d add from the two remaining stolen albums. But, of course, if you recreate these playlists on your own, add your local files or wait until we get the Taylor’s Version. We still need to support our girl!

Stage 1: Denial (I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life Songs)

Taylor’s Description: “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.” 

Taylor’s Song Choices: 

• ‘Lavender Haze’
• ‘Snow On The Beach’
• ‘Sweet Nothing’
• ‘Glitch’
• ‘betty’
• ‘willow’
• ‘Cruel Summer’
• ‘Lover’
• ‘Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince’
• ‘False God’
• ‘Style (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Treacherous (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Untouchable (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘That’s When (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Ours (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Superman (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Bejeweled’
  

Our Thoughts: First off, seeing ‘Lover’ here?! Our hearts are broken, but at least we have these playlists to process that pain. A lot of these songs talk about that delightful haze in a beginning of a relationship where you decide any lows are worth it to have the amazing highs along with them. But if those lows keep popping up and causing issues (see ‘False God,’ which is set further along in a relationship), then it might be worth it to step back and evaluate whether things are going as well as you thought. 

‘Bejeweled’ being last is really interesting to us – since the playlist is mostly in reverse album order, it would’ve been slotted with the other Midnights songs at the beginning. We think Taylor made it the last song to represent stepping out of the haze and starting to see a situation for what it is. “Didn’t notice you walking all over my peace of mind,” she expresses, learning to take back her peace of mind and agency even if it costs her the relationship. 

Songs We’d Add: ‘Tim McGraw,’ ‘…Ready For It?,’ ‘End Game,’ ‘Don’t Blame Me,’ ‘So It Goes…,’ ‘Gorgeous,’ and ‘King Of My Heart!’

Stage 2: Anger (You Don’t Get To Tell Me About Sad Songs)

Taylor’s Description: “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.” 

Taylor’s Song Choices: 

• ‘Vigilante Sh*t’
• ‘High Infidelity’
• ‘Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve’
• ‘exile’
• ‘illicit affairs’
• ‘mad woman’
• ‘tolerate it’
• ‘Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘I Knew You Were Trouble (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘The Last Time (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘The Moment I Knew (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Babe (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Dear John (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Tell Me Why (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘You’re Not Sorry (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Forever & Always (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Mr. Perfectly Fine (Taylor’s Version)’
  

Our Thoughts: We’ve actually associated a lot of these songs with sadness as we’ve listened to them, so it’s interesting to see that Taylor sees them as anger! But maybe that’s exactly the point, namely with songs like ‘The Moment I Knew’ and ‘tolerate it,’ which progress to an angrier energy as they go on. It mirrors how sadness can eventually turn to frustration, whether the anger pops up the more you think about it or it was always there, just lurking behind the sadness before you were ready to acknowledge it.

Songs We’d Add: ‘Picture To Burn,’ ‘Cold As You,’ ‘Should’ve Said No,’ ‘I Did Something Bad,’ and ‘Look What You Made Me Do!’

Stage 3: Bargaining (Am I Allowed To Cry? Songs)

Taylor’s Description: “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.” 

Taylor’s Song Choices: 

• ‘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 (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Say Don’t Go (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Come Back…Be Here (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Better Man (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘The Story Of Us (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Haunted (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Come In With The Rain (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘The Other Side Of The Door (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘If This Was A Movie (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Renegade’ (Big Red Machine feat. Taylor Swift)

Our Thoughts: One of the biggest things that jumped out to us about this playlist is how there’s an undercurrent of simply wanting someone to stay, and putting in every effort you can think of to convince them to do so even if it means abandoning parts of yourself or holding yourself back from a potentially better future. For example, on ‘Come In With The Rain,’ Taylor leaves her window open on a rainy night hoping her ex will find a way back to her – she’s letting in the rain, or the sad parts and effects of a relationship, in to have the slightest possibility of a proper reconciliation between them.

And on ‘Say Don’t Go,’ Taylor questions, “Why’d you have to lead me on, why’d you have to twist the knife?” Still, she’s willing to forgive this person in some way for the chance to try again, even if these memories still hang around in the back of her mind.

Songs We’d Add: ‘The Outside,’ ‘Invisible,’ ‘A Perfectly Good Heart,’ ‘Delicate,’ ‘Dancing With Our Hands Tied,’ and ‘New Year’s Day!’

Stage 4: Depression (Old Habits Die Screaming Songs)

Taylor’s Description: “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.” 

Taylor’s Song Choices: 

• ‘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 (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Forever Winter (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘We Were Happy (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Last Kiss (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Castles Crumbling (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Carolina’
• ‘White Horse (Taylor’s Version)’

Our Thoughts: Depression working the graveyard shift indeed, because this playlist is gonna keep us up at night! Like we noted with ‘Bejeweled’ at the end of Denial earlier, this playlist is a little mixed up order-wise. First, ‘We Were Happy’ comes before any Speak Now song, which we think represents looking back at the good times and processing the fact that they’re gone before you sink into the sadder side of a breakup. Meanwhile, ‘White Horse’ being last sets the scene for a more hopeful future, like ‘Bejeweled’ did! After going through this deep sadness, she insists, “I’m gonna find someone someday who might actually treat me well.” Which leads us to the final stage…

Songs We’d Add: ‘Teardrops On My Guitar’ and ‘Tied Together With A Smile!’

Stage 5: Acceptance (I Can Do It With A Broken Heart Songs)

Taylor’s Description: “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.” 

Taylor’s Song Choices: 

• ‘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 (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Clean (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Now That We Don’t Talk (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Begin Again (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Innocent (Taylor’s Version)’
• ‘Breathe (Taylor’s Version)’

Our Thoughts: This just makes us even more excited to hear ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’ when we get THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT! Out of each of the playlists Taylor made, we think this one has the most fluctuating emotions, which represents how healing from something is rarely a one-way street. There are going to be moments where you look back and wonder what could have been, or get a little sad or frustrated, and that’s completely normal. You can recognize that ‘it’s time to go’ while also wishing things were different!

We also think ‘This Love’ was a fascinating choice here, because it almost recontextualizes what she’s talking about in the song. The song itself seems to be about one specific person or relationship that keeps coming back, but here, it’s like the love Taylor has put out into the world or given to the wrong people has come back to her, even if it’s not from the person or situation she expected.

Songs We’d Add: ‘A Place In This World,’ ‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,’ and ‘Call It What You Want!’

Which of Taylor’s Apple Music playlists is your favorite? Do you have any songs you’d add? Let us know in the comments below or hit us up on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!

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