Taylor Swift reveals 5 “stages of heartbreak” playlists ahead of new album release

Featuring tracks from across Swift’s discography, each playlist is dedicated to a different stage of grief.

Taylor Swift has curated five playlists, based on five stages of “heartbreak,” ahead of the upcoming release of her 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department” on April 19.

Released on Apple Music, four of the playlists are titled after the taglines of different versions of the upcoming album, while the fifth is named after one of the songs, “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart.”

The 14-time Grammy winner, known for leaving easter eggs for her fans, introduced each playlist with a personalized message.

1) “I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life”

Featuring hits like “Cruel Summer,” “Style,” and “Lavender Haze,” this playlist is based on the denial stage, about which Swift states,

“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.”

2) “You Don’t Get to Tell Me About Sad”

With some of Swift’s most harrowing tracks, including “Bad Blood,” “illicit affairs,” and “tolerate it,” this playlist represents the anger stage. Swift says,

“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.”

3) “Am I Allowed to Cry?”

For the bargaining stage, Swift curates songs like “this is me trying,” “Say Don’t Go,” and “The Archer,” revealing,

“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.”

4) “Old Habits Die Screaming”

About the depression stage, Swift says, “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.”

Songs on this playlist include “All Too Well,” “You’re Losing Me,” and “champagne problems.”

She continues, “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.”

5) “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart”

In her final playlist, inspired by the acceptance stage, Swift handpicks songs like “Midnight Rain,” “august,” and “invisible string,” explaining,

“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.”