When Taylor Swift Announced her new album The Tortured Poets Department, Swifties immediately knew it was a breakup album. And then, when she started releasing the album variants, fans quickly pointed out that the colors of the variants aligned with the colors of the stages of grief theory.
Well, Taylor responded by creating a stages of grief playlist with a playlist falling under each category. And, everyone is shocked. For most Swifties, some of the most romantic songs they knew turned out to be part of one stage of grief or the other.
The most obvious one has been Lover being on the denial list. I almost got over that when I found that “Snow on the Beach” was also on the denial list.
What??? Is there a sweet, bubbly song that is actually meant to be romantic? Let’s explore the list of all the songs we didn’t expect on the playlist and the sad reasons why we think they made it to the list.
DENIAL PLAYLIST – I love you, It’s ruining my life.
According to Taylor, “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.”
- 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
We understand songs like Betty, Wildest Dreams, Treacherous, Miss Americana & The Heart Break Prince, Cruel Summer, and Bejeweled.
Initially, we didn’t understand Lover being on the list but, it’s obvious we have all been reading it wrong. The lyrics “can I go, where you go? Can we always be this close?”, are questions. She is probably questioning the future of the relationship while declaring her love.
I find “Snow on the Beach” to be one of her most romantic songs. But, the lyric, “fake it till you make till it’s true”, probably justifies why it is on this list.
ANGER PLAYLIST: You Don’t Get to Tell Me About Sad
According to Taylor Swift: “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.”
- Vigilante Shit
- 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) [From The Vault]
- I Knew You Were Trouble (Taylor’s Version)
- We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Taylor’s Version)
- The Last Time (Taylor’s Version) [ft. Gary Lightbody]
- The Moment I Knew (Taylor’s Version)
- Babe (Taylor’s Version) [From The Vault]
- I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor’s Version) [From The Vault]
- 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) [From The Vault]
We can understand songs like “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve”, “Bad Blood”, “Mad Woman”, “Is It Over Now”, “Dear John” and several other songs being on the stages of grief playlist. But, songs like “Tolerate It” and “The Moment I Knew” sounded more like pleas.
BARGAINING PLAYLIST: Am I Allowed to Cry?
According to Taylor Swift, 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.”
- The Great War
- This is Me Trying
- Peace
- The Archer
- Cornelia Street
- Death By A Thousand Cats
- Soon You’ll Get Better (feat. The Chicks)
- Afterglow
- I Wish You Would (Taylor’s Version)
- Say Don’t Go (Taylor’s Version) [From The Vault]
- Come Back… Be Here (Taylor’s Version)
- Better Man (Taylor’s Version) [From The Vault]
- 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 (feat. Taylor Swift)
All songs on this list, seem to fall in the right category. However, it makes us sad when we think about some of the songs. A song like “Peace” explores all the things she considers her baggage and how she thinks they may be too much for someone to handle. The fact that she describes it as bargaining is just sad.
DEPRESSION PLAYLIST: Old Habits Die Screaming Songs
Taylor Swift said this about this stages of grief 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 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
- We Were Happy
- Last Kiss
- Castles Crumbling
- Carolina
- White Horse
This playlist definitely has the biggest collection of Taylor’s soul-crushing songs. Songs like “Bigger Than the Whole Sky”, “You are Losing Me”, “My Tears Ricochet”, “Right Where You Left Me”, and “All Too Well” made us all feel lose and hopelessness in all its intensity. However, songs like “Champagne Problems” and “White Horse” left us surprised. We thought “Champagne Problems” was fictional.
ACCEPTANCE PLAYLIST: I Can Do It With a Broken Heart
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
Most of the songs on this list were expected. Songs like YOYOK, It’s Time to Go, I Forgot you Existed, Begin Again, Now That We Don’t Talk, It’s Time to Go, Happiness, The 1, August, Closure, and Midnight Rain, plainly talked about accepting the fact that a relationship didn’t work.
But Daylight on this list shook me. I mean, I thought it was a song about all the things Taylor thought meant love until she found out about all the things that, actually meant love. It is one of my go-to songs when I want to reminisce over a beautiful love story.
Now let’s talk about Labyrinth. What’s is it about “oh, oh, I am falling in love”, when it is actually about accepting a failed relationship? Then Invisible String, such a beautiful love story and then this?
There you have it. All the songs we didn’t think we will find on Taylor’s 5 stages of grief playlist. We are sure she is a mastermind and they all mean something which we will definitely uncover as time goes on. What song shocked you the most aside Lover? We would love to hear what you think of the playlist.
