Taylor Swift has released a handful of new playlists on Apple Music which tackle denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
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The pop star is due to release her 11th studio record, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, next Friday (April 19), following on from 2022’s Grammy-winning ‘Midnights’. Upon Swift’s announcement about her album, fans landed on the theory that ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ will explore the five stages of heartbreak.
To celebrate the upcoming release, the ‘All Too Well’ singer has created a series of five exclusive playlists on Apple Music, choosing songs of her own catalog that fit each stage – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
The first playlist, titled ‘I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life Songs’, explores denial. According to the singer, this playlist 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.”
‘You Don’t Get to Tell Me About Sad Songs’, is the second playlist and deals with the anger within heartbreak. Speaking about this selection of tracks, Swift said: “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.”
The third playlist deals with bargaining, the act in which we often negotiate—asking questions of the universe and ourselves in an attempt to feel better. Titled ‘Am I Allowed to Cry? Songs’, Swift 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.”
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Titled ‘Old Habits Die Screaming Songs’, the second to last playlist sees the singer open up about depression. The ‘Champagne Problems’ singer reveals that in this playlist “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.”
Finally, the fifth playlist – ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart Songs’ sees Swift explore acceptance, fully coming to terms with heartbreak and maybe even finding peace.”Here we finally find acceptance and can start moving forward from loss or heartbreak,” she explained. “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.”
‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is set for release on April 19 and is available for pre-order here. The LP will feature 17 songs, including bonus track ‘The Manuscript’. There’ll also be collaborations with Florence + The Machine (on ‘Florida!!!’) and Post Malone (on ‘Fortnight’). See the full tracklist here.
Recently, the singer teased some lyrics from the new album to coincide with the total solar eclipse in North America which occurred yesterday (April 8).
Swift previously said that making the new record “was really a lifeline for [her]”, adding: “Just the things I was going through and the things I was writing about.”
Following the album’s release, the singer will resume her career-spanning ‘Eras Tour’ in Europe next month before heading to the UK and Ireland in June. Swift is due to play eight shows at Wembley Stadium in London this summer as part of the run, with support coming from Paramore.
Last month saw Swift’s new concert film The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version) arrive on Disney+ – check out the full setlist for the movie here.