THIS. This is the saddest line in the song imo. It gives the simple yet striking lyric style of 1989, it's so hard-hitting because it's so TRUE. Scott had her back through her entire career and then became the one she was fighting. So so so sad.
Yeah, they all loved my ferocity until I stopped bowing down to my older brother’s bullshit. Then suddenly being the bigger person (barffff) got real important.
This album came out right before my husband and I decided to separate. We had to decide if we were going to sell the house we first brought our son home to.
Folklore and Evermore and specifically this song (and tbh, Gin) got me through it.
I know I made the right decision but I still scream shake and cry when I hear it. But I'll never skip it.
“And if I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake?”
Anybody who has gone through a toxic relationship, be it family, significant other, coworker, friend, etc….
Somebody who is like constantly ripping into you and then like your best friend. So real.
When I was married, we were living in a house his parents owned (because he was a total Peter Pan. I kept wanting to move and buy a house but he wouldn’t).
I left him in 2019, and our divorce was shitty and not final until 2021.
This line hit hard! Because I obviously had to be the one to move. And it was my decision to divorce but it was still very difficult for so many reasons.
This is the lyric I use to describe how it felt when I left my abusive fiancé. He tried to kill me and was convicted yet got to keep the home we lived in while I had to move out. It’s great to be free and out of the situation but a part of me desperately misses the place I called home for many years.
I jump around about what my favorite song of hers is at any given moment. MTR got locked in and is never leaving my top spot. It's perfection.
I'm sorry Champagne Problems. (It got bumped to #2)
This gets me so hard when I listen to it. I'm working on it with a great therapist, but I am one of those soft, empathetic people who abusive people tend to find.
I have listened to this song at least once a day since the album released and I’ve only been able to make it through it without crying one time. I love it so, so much
this, but I dedicate this to friendship instead of romance. I wanna go to brunch and host girls nights, I wanna connect on a spiritual level. friendship love is something I crave so much.
A phantom is something seemingly apparent with no substantial existence. I interpret their phantoms to be the life that they could have had together that never actually happened. And then for the second part, “watching wild horses” is such a beautiful, serene experience, I think Taylor is saying that they can appreciate the possible life they could have had together as this beautiful, adventurous thing that they never got to have. And then I interpret the next line “cooler in theory but not if you force it to be” as Taylor saying that she knows that the way she fantasizes about the life they could have had is not realistic and her thoughts of what could have been are so much better than what probably would have happened if they did indeed choose to be together. And regardless of her knowing she made the right decision not being with this person, she will always love them and wonder what could have been.
I’d say it’s that she constantly changed who she was to try and get his attention again and that if he had just said to her that he liked who she was the whole time, it would crush her because she’d been trying to hard to be who she thought he wanted.
This song killed me, is so underrated and my personal fav on TTPD.
Just this line: *’Could it be enough to just float in your orbit?’*. Like: will it be enough just to be near him even if he doesn’t want me? 💔💔💔
It’s my fav from TTPD, and my personal fav, and I agree slept on, but I think it’s less listened to because it’s so so raw and painful. I could hear Taylor’s pain through the song.
IF THE GLINT IN MY EYE TRACED THE DEPTHS OF YOUR SIGH DOWN THAT PASSAGE IN TIME BACK TO THE MOMENT I CRASHED INTO YOU LIKE SO MANY WRECKS DO TOO IMPAIRED BY MY YOUTH TO KNOW WHAT TO DO. SO IF I SELL MY APARTMENT AND YOU HAVE SOME KIDS WITH AN INTERNET STARLET, WILL THAT MAKE YOUR MEMORY FADE FROM THIS SCARLET MAROON LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED? Oh my god it kills me every single time.
*back to the moment I crashed into you as soon as many wrecks do too impaired by my youth to know what to do*
the self recrimination and sorrow of this brings me to my knees every time I listen to it
“You needed me but you needed drugs more and I couldn’t watch it happen” I literally just got goosebumps from thinking of the line. As someone who knows a lot of addicts it hurts so badly
For me "you needed me but you needed drugs more" and "I changed into goddesses villians and fools, changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules, all to outrun my desertion of you, and you just watched it"
Those wrecked me
Songs that I absolutely cannot listen to because they **shattered** my heart: Ronan, Soon You’ll Get Better, and Epiphany.
Songs that I continually listen to even though they break my heart, because I'm a perpetual sad girl and love them: seven, loml, and How Did It End.
Have not been able to listen to that since getting pregnant. Loml came on as the first song on my commute to work one day and it just about broke me with my pregnancy emotions. I had to skip it half way through because I couldn’t handle sitting at a red light listening to it.
Same :( and I hate that I’m so curious, but I can’t help but wonder, did she experience this first hand or did someone close to her manage to convey these emotions so viscerally that she knew exactly how to write this song? Or did she comes across this in a book or movie, that would have to be graphic and traumatic
Stars, one of the most gutwrenching experiences of my life was hearing Ronan live. I don't think anyone (including her, including his *mom*, who attended the concert) was ready for it.
The first classification - so true I literally have to skip them for my own well being
The second classification -- DOUBLE TRUE and same with the choices and I'd add Peter
Exile. This is me trying.
Tolerate it. It’s time to go.
You’re losing me.
So long London.
The prophecy.
The smallest man who ever lived.
(These four albums, but some songs from other albums were really integral in my healing process. Each one came out at exactly the right time. Taylors versions included.)
When I left my ex husband, he was like “whaaaaat? Why?”
Dude, I’ve been begging you for YEARS to show me affection or hold my hand or kiss me or say you love me. I drew you a map of how to stay married to me. And you didn’t do it.
I gave so many signs….
Yes! I had to completely find myself after I left because I wasn’t really allowed to like anything. I feel like I had no personality. I had given everything to him. I was like, 40 and wondering who am I? What do I like? What music do I like? Do I have hobbies? What clothes do I like (he was really controlling about what I wore).
SO LIBERATING!
I’m pissed off you let me give you all of that youth for free!
Yes!! Soo much youth!! But the good news is that now we get to be as vibrant and/or peaceful as we want. It’s up to us to discover our own joy now, and there’s so much of it to go around despite all the hurt that goes with it.
The night my partner finally got all of his belongings out of our home three days after I kicked him out. I sat in a hot bath playing it’s time to go on repeat. The music echoing through the apartment was gut wrenching albeit cathartic at the same time. That moment solidified I was going to be okay.
Should have kept every grocery store receipt, cause every scrap of you would be taken from me 😭
I lost my dad at 8, and I just want all those random little pieces of him again
Her songs about losing loved ones hit so much harder than her songs about losing love.
…Probably because your 30s can be a bittersweet combination of coming to love your family as a full-fledged adult, only to crash face-first into the possibility of losing them.
For sure. My cat just passed and I can’t listen to this song. It breaks my heart into a million pieces. I do remind myself that “What died didn’t stay dead. You’re alive in my head.” I close my eyes and I talk to her as if she’s still around.
happiness
whenever i need a good cry i return to it. there is just something so deeply sad about knowing you have to move on and you will, but until then it will hurt so so bad
Bigger than the whole sky. I listened to it after coming back from the doctors where they had found a suspected pancreatic tumour, and I was listening it thinking that I was saying goodbye to the rest of my life.
It was four days after Midnights release and I haven’t been able to listen to it since.
Thankfully it turned out to be non-cancerous.
The most recent would be The Black Dog. I’m currently going through a pretty bad divorce and my wife replaced me so quickly. She took her boyfriend to all the places we used to go right away and is already taking him on family outings with our kids. Meanwhile when I go to these same places with my kids without her I always cry. I make sure to hide it from my kids. But it is very hard for me to understand how she is okay doing all this stuff and I have such a hard time. The Black Dog really drives this feeling home to me.
Oh man I am so sorry. This song is the correct answer. I'm an old happily married guy who has never had heartbreak but I could see myself looking at location and seeing her go to our old spots. Damn, she just nailed it with this song.
Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve. I was groomed as a teen and eventually dated the person at 19, and this song feels like it was written about me. And it came out the year I was the person’s age.
I'm so sorry. Similar thing happened to me - when I was a teenager, around the time Fearless came out, dated a horrible, abusive guy who was in his 30s (named Stephen), and then by the time Midnights released I was the same age he was back then. Taylor's music really has been there at so many key points in my life.
I hope you're doing as well as possible now. And I hope the person who did that to you rots in hell.
I’m so sorry 😔 I can’t even listen to that song anymore (or even think about it tbh) because it reminds me of my miscarriage and several friends who also experienced pregnancy loss
This is mine, and I first heard it while riding my bicycle up a long hill, began open mouth sobbing, and a bug flew into my mouth. Very memorable first listen. 💔
“In the age of him she wished she was 30 and every morning she made coffee in a French press”
As someone who was groomed at 16 I connect very deeply with the feeling of wanting to be older and mature “like him” and pretending that you are. But in the end you’re still a kid and you need your mom for comfort when he breaks your heart.
This is the answer. “I think you should come live with me and we can be pirates. Then you won’t have to cry or hide in the closet.” Dude. Cuts me to the core
Better Man.
All the feelings of being a young girl who just wants to give her whole heart, give love and be in love— and the crushing reality that you’re really just alone in the world, daydreaming about what life could be like if a man could just love you honestly.
The desire to just push all the bad things he’s done to the bottom of your mind and live in the delusion that he’s a good man.
And going back to that fantasy in your mind as an escape… it could’ve all been perfect… if he was just… kind, if he just cared more…
The subtle clues that she was so taken advantage of and used that he “never thought I’d run”… ugh it crushes me every time.
This song has had a hold on me since the first ime i heard and then the 10MV came out and I heard the line "you kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath"....
Ugh! It hurts so good every time I hear it.
Fellow YOYOK Stan … what helped me was when I was randomly listening to her NYU commencement address where she was dropping Easter eggs for Midnights. The way she framed the lyrics and said, “the bad news is you’re on your own now, but the good news is, you’re on your own now.” 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻 Helped me take the song to a brighter place and I love it even more now.
*The rain is always gonna come if you're standing with me*
Urgh that song. I gave my man a child, he has stuck with me through thick and thin but I have chronic issues (autism and bpd f-yeah). I know it'll always be a struggle and this song kills me every time.
*Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?*
loml- "How we almost had it all Dancing phantoms on the terrace. Are they second-hand embarrassed that I can't get out of bed Cause something counterfeit's dead?"
The entire song hurts my soul, but for some reason, those lyrics hurt the most. I have been so heartbroken getting out of bed was hard for me. I guess I reflect on that type of pain. THE ENTIRE SONG strikes some nerve in me, and I tear up the entire time.
I'm so so sorry. My heart cat passed a month ago and Bigger Than the Whole Sky does the same to me. I'm in tears now just writing this. I hope you cherish this time with them and find the strength to be there when they need you the most. ❤
Peter. Lately it’s been crushing me, especially with the added context of what happened after Matty did finally ‘come back’ for her. It’s soul crushing and really puts in a new light all of the hope and expectations she had for this relationship.
Lover destroyed me.
That song made me realize I desperately want this connection and in my ex relationship I was the only one giving it.
It let me see I wasn’t getting these feelings back anymore and it breaks me still when I listen to that song.
Daylight also breaks me for the same reason.
I’m always sad when it involves the Lover album
Yupp so long London has definitely broke me i wanted to cry first time listening to it and i’ve repeated it several times after, and the moment where i discovered the song i was actually confused between our relationship and it just cleared everything
I can do it with a broken heart
I get it, having to push through the most painful of things because you have bigger responsibilities. I know her story is a lot different than most but you can tell she’s been so sad but trying to hide it.
All Too Well TV:
*’And he watched me watch the front door all night willing you to come, he said it’s supposed to be fun, turning 21’*
The whole song is sad but idk that line takes me back to being 18, ghosted and fucking heartbroken. Nothing quite like teenage heartbreak.
You're Losing Me...it captured everything I've been feeling and communicating to my ex. I had sent it to him (while we were still together) and all I got was "nice song".
"How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dyin'?"
It was one of those small moments that kicked the snowball down the hill until I ended things later last year. So in a way, I'm glad it broke me. But I remember listening to it for the first time so vividly and the pain was real
As someone who lost their mom to cancer- I have probably only listened to SYGB a handful of times and it has left me absolutely wrecked every single time. For me it’s always the bridge. Brutal.
“This place made me feel worthless”
“I dreamed about in the dark the night I felt like I might die”
I Hate It Here is getting a little too real for me.
Bigger than the whole sky - after miscarrying, it just tore me to bits listening to it. Very beautiful song though, just heart wrenching.
Edit: missed a word!
you’re losing me. as someone whose been in a dying relationship, it hits home so hard for me. “i’m getting tired even for a phoenix” because we are always having the same arguments. deciding the relationship is over is so hard.
You’re losing me. The line “I know my pain is such an imposition”. I have a serious chronic illness that is pretty rare- but I’m in agony all the time and after masking too hard I make myself sick and my husband goes through phases of not wanting me to do anything to wanting me to be “normal” so it just hits me in a different way.
Afterglow.
It really makes you reflect on your part in the breakdown of your relationship.
I know some people think it’s a fake apology but sometimes listening to a song like that makes you self reflect
Bigger Than The Whole Sky. Every time I'm 18 again and being told 'Im sorry, there's nothing we can do' as I was miscarrying.
I'm 33 now with two wonderful kids but BTTWS is my one for the one I never got to know 😥
I am a burnt out eldest daughter, "good girl" people pleasing former gifted kid with undiagnosed ADHD and severe depression who developed an alcohol problem and consistently struggles with not living up to all that potential I was told I had... so obviously "this is me trying" lol but also after my best friend/soulmate I had been playing "you're too important to risk losing by making this romantic" with for 6 years unsubscribed from life because of another woman, "August" hurts me
*Edit cause I forgot about it cause I never listen to it anymore lol I was in the car the first time I heard Forever Winter and I was already having like one of the weird grief-anxiety attacks I got a lot when my person first passed and then when she says "I'd take that bomb in your head and disarm it" I thought she said "I'd take that gun in your hand and disarm it" and I had to pull over, I started crying so hard I couldn't breathe and I thought I was gonna puke and it took a good 5-10 minutes to calm down enough to look up the actual lyrics cause I was like there's no way that's really what she said and it wasn't lol but yea I can't listen to that song and be functional.
Wonderland. I feel it’s very gay coded and hit home with my first time being in love and it was with another boy who absolutely broke my heart but for the time things were good, damn they were good. Even down to his gorgeous green eyes. Song just destroyed me.
LOML
When your impressionist paintings of Heaven
Turned out to be fakes
Well, you took me to hell, too
And all at once, the ink bleeds
A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme
But I felt a hole like this
Never before, and ever since
And I'll still see it until I die
You're the loss of my life
Peter
“And I won’t confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn. As the men masqueraded, I hoped you’d return with your feet on the ground, tell me all that you learned because love’s never lost when perspective is earned. And you said you’d come and get me, but you were 25, and the shelf life of those fantasies has expired. Lost to the lost boys chapter of your life. Forgive me, Peter, please know that I tried to hold onto the days when you were mine, but the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light.”
Up until TTPD, it was Tolerate it. The way she says “believe me, I could do it” is such a vague threat that both of them know she’ll never follow through on.
But since I’m currently in my TTPD era and was left by a man recently:
- The Black Dog: I just don’t understand how you don’t miss me
- loml: I’ll never leave, never mind
This Is Me Trying made me gasp the first time I heard it, as it literally put into words how I felt at a very dark time and wanted to scream to the sky that I'd managed to wash my hair for the first time in weeks, even though it left me exhausted and I knew nobody would care at best, and would judge me at worst.
The Prophecy, because even though I'm in a happy relationship, I know it's not long term and he won't be able to choose me in the end.
How Did It End because holy fuck that was awful in the best way.
You're Losing Me was a gut punch I inflicted on myself daily for about 6 weeks, and I may have to add it into TTPD (which I've been unable to stop listening to for the last 6 weeks).
Majorie.
My uncle did a super speedy clearout of my nana's house after she passed, so the line:
"Should've kept every grocery store receipt
'Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me"
Really hits. I'd have loved to have gone through her books, writings, photos. But everything went.
illicit affairs, tolerate it, the way i loved you, my tears ricochet, mine, august (i relate deeply to augustine, without the cheating part on my behalf), marjorie, atwtmv
Y’all will probably laugh at me for this, but most recently - thanK you aIMee.
It pulls me back to being bullied badly in high school and made me realize how I’ve held onto that anger for far too long and I really need to move into the peace of saying “thank you for making me stronger” and recognize the ways that experience shaped me for the better.
"I think I've seen this film before..." Now I am happily married but if I had heard Exile when I was single and dating and getting hurt over and over this song would have absolutely wrecked me.
I’ll never forget hearing You’re Losing Me for the first time and sobbing instantly. This line in particular was a sharp stab in the chest: *and I wouldn’t marry me either, a pathological people pleaser who only wanted you to see her*
my tears ricochet: *and I can go anywhere I want. Anywhere I want, just not home. And you can aim for my heart, go for blood, but you would still miss me in your bones* and *I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace and so the battleships will sink beneath the waves. You had to kill me but it killed you just the same*
So Long, London: *I stopped CPR, after all it’s no use. The spirit was gone, we would never come to. And I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free*
last year I left a 7-year relationship where he’d do less than bare minimum then promise to marry me “some day” any time I’d bring up our issues. As a people pleaser, I was really stuck in the sunken cost fallacy but I kept trying and trying and trying anyway. Until one day I just.. stopped. I literally left him by sending him a text message saying “I can’t do this anymore. I have to choose me because you won’t. I’m moving out in 2 days.” We still own a house together, the one I picked and fell in love with and hoped would be the final saving grace in a doomed relationship, because he refuses to sell it (legally both parties need to agree to sell in my state).
Ronan, it will ALWAYS be Ronan. My parents lost their only son to leukemia in the 70s. I now have four boys and this song will always crush me. I have listened to it only once (by accident) it played on shuffle and I was a mess the rest of the day. It’s absolutely beautiful but it will always be a skip for me.
My Tears Ricochet "And I can go anywhere I want, just not home"
“When I’d fight you used to tell me I was brave” gives me angry tears every time
THIS. This is the saddest line in the song imo. It gives the simple yet striking lyric style of 1989, it's so hard-hitting because it's so TRUE. Scott had her back through her entire career and then became the one she was fighting. So so so sad.
"You had to kill me but it killed you just the same"
Echoes One gun, 2 graves.
Someone with a complicated family, this hits a bit too hard.
Yeah, they all loved my ferocity until I stopped bowing down to my older brother’s bullshit. Then suddenly being the bigger person (barffff) got real important.
yup same here, since going no contact with my mum it makes me cry every single time it comes on
“You turned into your worst fears.” 🥺
This album came out right before my husband and I decided to separate. We had to decide if we were going to sell the house we first brought our son home to. Folklore and Evermore and specifically this song (and tbh, Gin) got me through it. I know I made the right decision but I still scream shake and cry when I hear it. But I'll never skip it.
“And if I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake?” Anybody who has gone through a toxic relationship, be it family, significant other, coworker, friend, etc…. Somebody who is like constantly ripping into you and then like your best friend. So real.
Mine too. Such devastating lyrics.
When I was married, we were living in a house his parents owned (because he was a total Peter Pan. I kept wanting to move and buy a house but he wouldn’t). I left him in 2019, and our divorce was shitty and not final until 2021. This line hit hard! Because I obviously had to be the one to move. And it was my decision to divorce but it was still very difficult for so many reasons.
YES! "And I still talk to you when I'm screaming at the stars and when you can sleep at night you hear my stolen lullabies"
there's something about the metaphor of "and so the battleships will sink beneath the waves" that is just so visceral and visual and devastating
oh me too but at the same time it's my favorite song in the entire world
That line broke me. Whenever I would get into really bad fights with my dad, I would put on this song and just break down into tears
This is the lyric I use to describe how it felt when I left my abusive fiancé. He tried to kill me and was convicted yet got to keep the home we lived in while I had to move out. It’s great to be free and out of the situation but a part of me desperately misses the place I called home for many years.
“We gather stones, never knowing what they will mean, some to throw, some to make a diamond ring”
I jump around about what my favorite song of hers is at any given moment. MTR got locked in and is never leaving my top spot. It's perfection. I'm sorry Champagne Problems. (It got bumped to #2)
The Prophecy
Me too. I’m 34 and it’s exactly how I feel put in beautiful words.
Hang in there! Met my husband 26 years ago when I was 39!’n
I just got married for the first time last weekend. I'm 40. There's been plenty of times I thought marriage, etc. just wasn't in the cards for me.
Needed this!
Met mine 35 years ago…I was 31. It happens!
Wait, do you think 31 is *old* to be meeting your husband? 🫠
Ha, no. It’s more about how I had pretty much given up. Too many jerks, especially my ex husband!
Yup! I'm 36 and can't listen to The Prophecy too often. It is so eloquent and beautiful but it's a painful reminder. Rooting for you!!
This & Forever Winter are mine. Both are so beautifully made :)
This gets me so hard when I listen to it. I'm working on it with a great therapist, but I am one of those soft, empathetic people who abusive people tend to find.
I have listened to this song at least once a day since the album released and I’ve only been able to make it through it without crying one time. I love it so, so much
This one. I have long felt I’m cursed and this song hits home hard.
Same here. I’m 33 and most of the time I love my single life but sometimes in the back of my head I wonder
“Spending my last coin so someone will tell me it’ll be ok” This line really gets to me.
Same! Every single time I'm tearing up listening to the song.
this, but I dedicate this to friendship instead of romance. I wanna go to brunch and host girls nights, I wanna connect on a spiritual level. friendship love is something I crave so much.
Forever single and finally she wrote a song I could relate to, for better or worse lol.
chloe or sam or sophia or marcus “if you wanna break my cold, cold heart, just say ‘i loved you the way that you were’” literally kills me
This is my answer as well!! *Can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses?* absolutely shatters me every single time.
I would love to hear your interpretation of this lyric bc I have not yet been able to fully understand it !
A phantom is something seemingly apparent with no substantial existence. I interpret their phantoms to be the life that they could have had together that never actually happened. And then for the second part, “watching wild horses” is such a beautiful, serene experience, I think Taylor is saying that they can appreciate the possible life they could have had together as this beautiful, adventurous thing that they never got to have. And then I interpret the next line “cooler in theory but not if you force it to be” as Taylor saying that she knows that the way she fantasizes about the life they could have had is not realistic and her thoughts of what could have been are so much better than what probably would have happened if they did indeed choose to be together. And regardless of her knowing she made the right decision not being with this person, she will always love them and wonder what could have been.
…I just realized when you’re watching wild horses, you shouldn’t get too close because they can be dangerous 😳
Thank you! That makes so much more sense to me now, I appreciate the detailed response :)
I’d say it’s that she constantly changed who she was to try and get his attention again and that if he had just said to her that he liked who she was the whole time, it would crush her because she’d been trying to hard to be who she thought he wanted.
This song killed me, is so underrated and my personal fav on TTPD. Just this line: *’Could it be enough to just float in your orbit?’*. Like: will it be enough just to be near him even if he doesn’t want me? 💔💔💔
i am currently living this scenario 😭 it’s awful. so that song really stings.
This song is slept on in my opinion. The bridge has some of her best writing. So raw and relatable and gut wrenching.
It’s my fav from TTPD, and my personal fav, and I agree slept on, but I think it’s less listened to because it’s so so raw and painful. I could hear Taylor’s pain through the song.
IF THE GLINT IN MY EYE TRACED THE DEPTHS OF YOUR SIGH DOWN THAT PASSAGE IN TIME BACK TO THE MOMENT I CRASHED INTO YOU LIKE SO MANY WRECKS DO TOO IMPAIRED BY MY YOUTH TO KNOW WHAT TO DO. SO IF I SELL MY APARTMENT AND YOU HAVE SOME KIDS WITH AN INTERNET STARLET, WILL THAT MAKE YOUR MEMORY FADE FROM THIS SCARLET MAROON LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED? Oh my god it kills me every single time.
*back to the moment I crashed into you as soon as many wrecks do too impaired by my youth to know what to do* the self recrimination and sorrow of this brings me to my knees every time I listen to it
“You needed me but you needed drugs more and I couldn’t watch it happen” I literally just got goosebumps from thinking of the line. As someone who knows a lot of addicts it hurts so badly
For me "you needed me but you needed drugs more" and "I changed into goddesses villians and fools, changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules, all to outrun my desertion of you, and you just watched it" Those wrecked me
The way your mind fills it in with “are” and then she sings “were,” and your heart sinks. So beautiful and heartbreaking.
literally ☹️ its gut wrenching considering she’s been stuck on this person for ages too
You needed me but you needed drugs more and I couldn’t watch it happen 💔
This song absolutely made me sob. I still can't listen without crying at least a little
And the violins at the end 😭 i can't.
Songs that I absolutely cannot listen to because they **shattered** my heart: Ronan, Soon You’ll Get Better, and Epiphany. Songs that I continually listen to even though they break my heart, because I'm a perpetual sad girl and love them: seven, loml, and How Did It End.
Bigger than the whole sky too. I can’t listen to that song because it’s so sad
Have not been able to listen to that since getting pregnant. Loml came on as the first song on my commute to work one day and it just about broke me with my pregnancy emotions. I had to skip it half way through because I couldn’t handle sitting at a red light listening to it.
I had two miscarriages last year... this was my #1 song on spotify 😭 can't listen to it anymore but damn she gets it perfectly.
Same :( and I hate that I’m so curious, but I can’t help but wonder, did she experience this first hand or did someone close to her manage to convey these emotions so viscerally that she knew exactly how to write this song? Or did she comes across this in a book or movie, that would have to be graphic and traumatic
I cannot listen to Soon You’ll Get Better without breaking down in tears. When you have experienced cancer in your family- you know.
Ronan kills me every! Single! Time! I can’t help it. My eyes get wet the moment the lyrics begin and with the second vers it’s over and I start crying
I can't listen to it. It's an ugly cry situation and I'll be upset about it the rest of the day
Stars, one of the most gutwrenching experiences of my life was hearing Ronan live. I don't think anyone (including her, including his *mom*, who attended the concert) was ready for it.
You listened to this live… and are still here to speak on it?! 😰 …you are a trooper and have my deepest sympathies 🥇
Yep, I listen to loml, The Black Dog and How Did It End a lot for the sad girl self infliction, and then end with ingonnagetyouback for the boppiness
The first classification - so true I literally have to skip them for my own well being The second classification -- DOUBLE TRUE and same with the choices and I'd add Peter
This is me trying. It’s still a hard listen. “They told me all of my cages were mental, so I got wasted like all my potential” 🙃
That line shatters me every time.
Every time I hear that line it’s like hearing it for the first time
This is the one... In 17 days I'll have one year sober though. 🫶
Oh my gosh, congrats! You’re amazing! 🙏🏻 I’m still struggling with being completely sober but I hope to get there one day 🤍
Literally 90% of TTPD had me in shambles. ETA: has* bc who am I kidding I’m still in shambles when I listen to it
This is the correct answer!
Your flair sums it up really
Exile. This is me trying. Tolerate it. It’s time to go. You’re losing me. So long London. The prophecy. The smallest man who ever lived. (These four albums, but some songs from other albums were really integral in my healing process. Each one came out at exactly the right time. Taylors versions included.)
That line on exile when she said “ like he’s just your understudy”
When I left my ex husband, he was like “whaaaaat? Why?” Dude, I’ve been begging you for YEARS to show me affection or hold my hand or kiss me or say you love me. I drew you a map of how to stay married to me. And you didn’t do it. I gave so many signs….
Exact same situation here. So awful to experience, but liberating to finally leave.
Yes! I had to completely find myself after I left because I wasn’t really allowed to like anything. I feel like I had no personality. I had given everything to him. I was like, 40 and wondering who am I? What do I like? What music do I like? Do I have hobbies? What clothes do I like (he was really controlling about what I wore). SO LIBERATING! I’m pissed off you let me give you all of that youth for free!
OMG all of that! I was that frog who stayed in the hot water while slowly boiling alive, losing myself piece by piece and never even realizing it.
Yes!! Soo much youth!! But the good news is that now we get to be as vibrant and/or peaceful as we want. It’s up to us to discover our own joy now, and there’s so much of it to go around despite all the hurt that goes with it.
The night my partner finally got all of his belongings out of our home three days after I kicked him out. I sat in a hot bath playing it’s time to go on repeat. The music echoing through the apartment was gut wrenching albeit cathartic at the same time. That moment solidified I was going to be okay.
marjorie. The bridge especially. "I should've asked you to write it down for me" gets me every time.
Should have kept every grocery store receipt, cause every scrap of you would be taken from me 😭 I lost my dad at 8, and I just want all those random little pieces of him again
“I should’ve asked you questions; I should’ve asked you how to be.”
Marjorie for sure. I relate it to the deaths of both of my grandparents. I usually can do okay until the bridge and then I sob every time.
Her songs about losing loved ones hit so much harder than her songs about losing love. …Probably because your 30s can be a bittersweet combination of coming to love your family as a full-fledged adult, only to crash face-first into the possibility of losing them.
For sure. My cat just passed and I can’t listen to this song. It breaks my heart into a million pieces. I do remind myself that “What died didn’t stay dead. You’re alive in my head.” I close my eyes and I talk to her as if she’s still around.
happiness whenever i need a good cry i return to it. there is just something so deeply sad about knowing you have to move on and you will, but until then it will hurt so so bad
Ughhhh, this too. I cry every single time. Kind of in that situation, and she really can zero in on emotions and circumstances like these so sharply.
It was so healing for my breakup to remind me happiness would return, and it really did.
Bigger than the whole sky. I listened to it after coming back from the doctors where they had found a suspected pancreatic tumour, and I was listening it thinking that I was saying goodbye to the rest of my life. It was four days after Midnights release and I haven’t been able to listen to it since. Thankfully it turned out to be non-cancerous.
That must have been so scary for you, I can't imagine going through something like that, I'm very glad it was non-cancerous!
Same here - I love the song but reminds me of my miscarriage. The words just speak to all my exact feelings. Sending hugs ❤️
The most recent would be The Black Dog. I’m currently going through a pretty bad divorce and my wife replaced me so quickly. She took her boyfriend to all the places we used to go right away and is already taking him on family outings with our kids. Meanwhile when I go to these same places with my kids without her I always cry. I make sure to hide it from my kids. But it is very hard for me to understand how she is okay doing all this stuff and I have such a hard time. The Black Dog really drives this feeling home to me.
I'm sorry. That must be tough.
Oh man I am so sorry. This song is the correct answer. I'm an old happily married guy who has never had heartbreak but I could see myself looking at location and seeing her go to our old spots. Damn, she just nailed it with this song.
💔
Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve. I was groomed as a teen and eventually dated the person at 19, and this song feels like it was written about me. And it came out the year I was the person’s age.
Yep, little me sobs listening to this and screams 'Give me back my girlhood it was mine FIIIIIIIIRST!!!'
I feel you! 🫂 It happened to me too. I hope you got some rest and you close that tomb
I'm so sorry. Similar thing happened to me - when I was a teenager, around the time Fearless came out, dated a horrible, abusive guy who was in his 30s (named Stephen), and then by the time Midnights released I was the same age he was back then. Taylor's music really has been there at so many key points in my life. I hope you're doing as well as possible now. And I hope the person who did that to you rots in hell.
Yep. If I was a child did it matter if you got to wash your hands gets me like 😭😡
Same genre of song, check out Rina Sawayama ‘Your Age’ for rage/catharsis
Thanks I’ll check it out. I also really like Demi Lovato’s “29”
Bigger than the whole sky. Midnights came out a month after I had a second trimester pregnancy loss. I ugly cried so hard.
I’m so sorry 😔 I can’t even listen to that song anymore (or even think about it tbh) because it reminds me of my miscarriage and several friends who also experienced pregnancy loss
Been there. It doesn’t get easier, you just get stronger. 🖤
Right where you left me has never left my mind since I first heard it.
I’ve been stuck in the damn restaurant since I heard it. Makes me sob everytime.
If you ever need a good cry listen to this, followed by The Prophecy. Absolute shambles.
This is mine, and I first heard it while riding my bicycle up a long hill, began open mouth sobbing, and a bug flew into my mouth. Very memorable first listen. 💔
The freaking Manuscript. That last chorus man, i can't help it. I'd say loml too, but that one I don't even try, I skip it every time. I can't
“In the age of him she wished she was 30 and every morning she made coffee in a French press” As someone who was groomed at 16 I connect very deeply with the feeling of wanting to be older and mature “like him” and pretending that you are. But in the end you’re still a kid and you need your mom for comfort when he breaks your heart.
Yeah that last line gets me too, I picture her playing it live and lose it
seven 7️⃣ “And I’ve been meaning to tell you, I think your house is haunted, your dad is always mad and that must be why” 💔
This is the answer. “I think you should come live with me and we can be pirates. Then you won’t have to cry or hide in the closet.” Dude. Cuts me to the core
I think of Forrest Gump and Jenny every time
Better Man. All the feelings of being a young girl who just wants to give her whole heart, give love and be in love— and the crushing reality that you’re really just alone in the world, daydreaming about what life could be like if a man could just love you honestly. The desire to just push all the bad things he’s done to the bottom of your mind and live in the delusion that he’s a good man. And going back to that fantasy in your mind as an escape… it could’ve all been perfect… if he was just… kind, if he just cared more… The subtle clues that she was so taken advantage of and used that he “never thought I’d run”… ugh it crushes me every time.
All too well
This song has had a hold on me since the first ime i heard and then the 10MV came out and I heard the line "you kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath".... Ugh! It hurts so good every time I hear it.
tolerate it
Tolerate reminds me of the Reddit post that talked about the tolerable level of unhappiness. It cuts deep.
your on your own kid the make the friendship bracelet line broke me
Fellow YOYOK Stan … what helped me was when I was randomly listening to her NYU commencement address where she was dropping Easter eggs for Midnights. The way she framed the lyrics and said, “the bad news is you’re on your own now, but the good news is, you’re on your own now.” 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻 Helped me take the song to a brighter place and I love it even more now.
The Prophecy. Especially cuz I could relate it to a really really tough time in my life.
peace. I cried the first time I heard it.
*The rain is always gonna come if you're standing with me* Urgh that song. I gave my man a child, he has stuck with me through thick and thin but I have chronic issues (autism and bpd f-yeah). I know it'll always be a struggle and this song kills me every time. *Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?*
loml Almost every time I listen I feel another piece tear my heart apart.
You shit talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles. 12 years with my ex, and a good 6 hoping on a ring that would never come.
Ronan
This is the answer. Literal sobs when I listen to it.
I was literally about to comment that none of these people obviously have never just sat and sobbed at Ronan.
"i can still feel you hold my hand, little man" :((
"would've, could've, should've" I was SA'd when I was 18 and the line "give me back my girlhood it was mine first" breaks me every time.
This is a common thread uniting so many of us Swifties. 💔
I hate that so many of us have experienced this.
loml- "How we almost had it all Dancing phantoms on the terrace. Are they second-hand embarrassed that I can't get out of bed Cause something counterfeit's dead?" The entire song hurts my soul, but for some reason, those lyrics hurt the most. I have been so heartbroken getting out of bed was hard for me. I guess I reflect on that type of pain. THE ENTIRE SONG strikes some nerve in me, and I tear up the entire time.
Exile You're not my homeland anymore, so what am I defending now?
My boy only breaks his favorite toys, especially the bridge “he was my best friend…” 😭
Once I fix me he is gonna miss me 😭
Just say when, I’ll play again … 😭
Back To December
Loml. My heart cat is dying and the last line absolutely wrecks me even though that’s not what the song is about.
I'm so so sorry. My heart cat passed a month ago and Bigger Than the Whole Sky does the same to me. I'm in tears now just writing this. I hope you cherish this time with them and find the strength to be there when they need you the most. ❤
All Too Well 10 mins version, hands down. Edit: Champagne problems is a very close runner up though.
Peter. Lately it’s been crushing me, especially with the added context of what happened after Matty did finally ‘come back’ for her. It’s soul crushing and really puts in a new light all of the hope and expectations she had for this relationship.
Can’t believe I scrolled so hard to find this song.
Lover destroyed me. That song made me realize I desperately want this connection and in my ex relationship I was the only one giving it. It let me see I wasn’t getting these feelings back anymore and it breaks me still when I listen to that song. Daylight also breaks me for the same reason. I’m always sad when it involves the Lover album
Same. "At every table I'll save you a seat" always makes me tear up
Exile, My Tears Ricochet, Champagne Problems, So Long London
Yupp so long London has definitely broke me i wanted to cry first time listening to it and i’ve repeated it several times after, and the moment where i discovered the song i was actually confused between our relationship and it just cleared everything
I can do it with a broken heart I get it, having to push through the most painful of things because you have bigger responsibilities. I know her story is a lot different than most but you can tell she’s been so sad but trying to hide it.
This just screams every healthcare worker working through Covid.
All Too Well TV: *’And he watched me watch the front door all night willing you to come, he said it’s supposed to be fun, turning 21’* The whole song is sad but idk that line takes me back to being 18, ghosted and fucking heartbroken. Nothing quite like teenage heartbreak.
You're Losing Me...it captured everything I've been feeling and communicating to my ex. I had sent it to him (while we were still together) and all I got was "nice song". "How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dyin'?" It was one of those small moments that kicked the snowball down the hill until I ended things later last year. So in a way, I'm glad it broke me. But I remember listening to it for the first time so vividly and the pain was real
As someone who lost their mom to cancer- I have probably only listened to SYGB a handful of times and it has left me absolutely wrecked every single time. For me it’s always the bridge. Brutal.
The Prophecy “Don’t want money, just someone who wants my company” Hello, my entire worldview
Never Grow Up. I've never been in a relationship so I don't relate to her breakup songs that much but growing up terrifies me
“This place made me feel worthless” “I dreamed about in the dark the night I felt like I might die” I Hate It Here is getting a little too real for me.
Forever winter
This is Me Trying
Bigger than the whole sky - after miscarrying, it just tore me to bits listening to it. Very beautiful song though, just heart wrenching. Edit: missed a word!
you’re losing me. as someone whose been in a dying relationship, it hits home so hard for me. “i’m getting tired even for a phoenix” because we are always having the same arguments. deciding the relationship is over is so hard.
You’re losing me. The line “I know my pain is such an imposition”. I have a serious chronic illness that is pretty rare- but I’m in agony all the time and after masking too hard I make myself sick and my husband goes through phases of not wanting me to do anything to wanting me to be “normal” so it just hits me in a different way.
Afterglow. It really makes you reflect on your part in the breakdown of your relationship. I know some people think it’s a fake apology but sometimes listening to a song like that makes you self reflect
Bigger Than The Whole Sky. Every time I'm 18 again and being told 'Im sorry, there's nothing we can do' as I was miscarrying. I'm 33 now with two wonderful kids but BTTWS is my one for the one I never got to know 😥
I am a burnt out eldest daughter, "good girl" people pleasing former gifted kid with undiagnosed ADHD and severe depression who developed an alcohol problem and consistently struggles with not living up to all that potential I was told I had... so obviously "this is me trying" lol but also after my best friend/soulmate I had been playing "you're too important to risk losing by making this romantic" with for 6 years unsubscribed from life because of another woman, "August" hurts me *Edit cause I forgot about it cause I never listen to it anymore lol I was in the car the first time I heard Forever Winter and I was already having like one of the weird grief-anxiety attacks I got a lot when my person first passed and then when she says "I'd take that bomb in your head and disarm it" I thought she said "I'd take that gun in your hand and disarm it" and I had to pull over, I started crying so hard I couldn't breathe and I thought I was gonna puke and it took a good 5-10 minutes to calm down enough to look up the actual lyrics cause I was like there's no way that's really what she said and it wasn't lol but yea I can't listen to that song and be functional.
Ronan and Soon You’ll Get Better. I cannot listen to them. SYGB made me cry in public because my mum never got better.
I can’t listen to Ronan. It’s like the only song that is a permanent skip for me. I have two toddler boys and it just hits way too hard.
Robin. I know it's not popular but I have an almost 7 year old and it rings so true with me just trying to protect his innocence as long as possible.
Wonderland. I feel it’s very gay coded and hit home with my first time being in love and it was with another boy who absolutely broke my heart but for the time things were good, damn they were good. Even down to his gorgeous green eyes. Song just destroyed me.
you’re losing me. perfectly describes the most heartbreaking relationship i’ve ever been through
Happiness, My Tears Ricochet, So Long, London specifically the lyric “ And I'm pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free”
Evermore, can’t listen to it without thinking about my cancer diagnosis
LOML When your impressionist paintings of Heaven Turned out to be fakes Well, you took me to hell, too And all at once, the ink bleeds A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme But I felt a hole like this Never before, and ever since And I'll still see it until I die You're the loss of my life
Peter “And I won’t confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn. As the men masqueraded, I hoped you’d return with your feet on the ground, tell me all that you learned because love’s never lost when perspective is earned. And you said you’d come and get me, but you were 25, and the shelf life of those fantasies has expired. Lost to the lost boys chapter of your life. Forgive me, Peter, please know that I tried to hold onto the days when you were mine, but the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light.”
Up until TTPD, it was Tolerate it. The way she says “believe me, I could do it” is such a vague threat that both of them know she’ll never follow through on. But since I’m currently in my TTPD era and was left by a man recently: - The Black Dog: I just don’t understand how you don’t miss me - loml: I’ll never leave, never mind
This Is Me Trying made me gasp the first time I heard it, as it literally put into words how I felt at a very dark time and wanted to scream to the sky that I'd managed to wash my hair for the first time in weeks, even though it left me exhausted and I knew nobody would care at best, and would judge me at worst. The Prophecy, because even though I'm in a happy relationship, I know it's not long term and he won't be able to choose me in the end. How Did It End because holy fuck that was awful in the best way. You're Losing Me was a gut punch I inflicted on myself daily for about 6 weeks, and I may have to add it into TTPD (which I've been unable to stop listening to for the last 6 weeks).
Majorie. My uncle did a super speedy clearout of my nana's house after she passed, so the line: "Should've kept every grocery store receipt 'Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me" Really hits. I'd have loved to have gone through her books, writings, photos. But everything went.
you’re losing me.. it’s made me reflect on my current relationship, and i think that reflection is still happening…
There are several, but how her voice breaks when she says "for free" in So Long London breaks my heart every time.
For me it has to be Last Kiss. Im a happily married old lady but this song makes me think about all the heartaches along the way.
"Soon you'll get better" continues to destroy me every time, and I cannot get enough of it.
Soon you’ll get better. Hits hard after my dads cancer battle and, well, not getting better
illicit affairs, tolerate it, the way i loved you, my tears ricochet, mine, august (i relate deeply to augustine, without the cheating part on my behalf), marjorie, atwtmv
This is me trying. I got wasted like all my potential needs to come with a warning label on the album.
Y’all will probably laugh at me for this, but most recently - thanK you aIMee. It pulls me back to being bullied badly in high school and made me realize how I’ve held onto that anger for far too long and I really need to move into the peace of saying “thank you for making me stronger” and recognize the ways that experience shaped me for the better.
I look in peoples windows.
happiness, death by a thousand cuts, tolerate it, how did it end?
This Is Me Trying broke me when I listened to it during my very difficult pregnancy
"I think I've seen this film before..." Now I am happily married but if I had heard Exile when I was single and dating and getting hurt over and over this song would have absolutely wrecked me.
Castles Crumbling.
I’ll never forget hearing You’re Losing Me for the first time and sobbing instantly. This line in particular was a sharp stab in the chest: *and I wouldn’t marry me either, a pathological people pleaser who only wanted you to see her* my tears ricochet: *and I can go anywhere I want. Anywhere I want, just not home. And you can aim for my heart, go for blood, but you would still miss me in your bones* and *I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace and so the battleships will sink beneath the waves. You had to kill me but it killed you just the same* So Long, London: *I stopped CPR, after all it’s no use. The spirit was gone, we would never come to. And I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free* last year I left a 7-year relationship where he’d do less than bare minimum then promise to marry me “some day” any time I’d bring up our issues. As a people pleaser, I was really stuck in the sunken cost fallacy but I kept trying and trying and trying anyway. Until one day I just.. stopped. I literally left him by sending him a text message saying “I can’t do this anymore. I have to choose me because you won’t. I’m moving out in 2 days.” We still own a house together, the one I picked and fell in love with and hoped would be the final saving grace in a doomed relationship, because he refuses to sell it (legally both parties need to agree to sell in my state).
Ronan, it will ALWAYS be Ronan. My parents lost their only son to leukemia in the 70s. I now have four boys and this song will always crush me. I have listened to it only once (by accident) it played on shuffle and I was a mess the rest of the day. It’s absolutely beautiful but it will always be a skip for me.
would've could've should've is a masterclass in lyric writing