“Come one, come all, it’s happening again.” Taylor Swift‘s sad lyrics invade The Tortured Poets Department in a way that will have listeners down bad, crying wherever they are, and right alongside the poet herself.
Swift asks “Am I allowed to cry?” nine songs into the album. What does it say about you if you only make it to track two and your eyes are already welling up?
On The Tortured Poets Department, Swift opens with a line about her stint as a “functional alcoholic,” goes mad over her typewriter-toting tragic hero, and declares her name is hers and hers alone to disgrace as she pleases, damn it! Melodrama aside, her sad lyrics are most striking when her pen plummets into the illusions of love and the heartbreak she’s needed to write about over the past couple years. Themes of escapism and longing bring on the misty-eyed moments.
“This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page,” Swift wrote as she set free The Tortured Poets Department and its sad lyrics on April 19. “Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.”
The album was originally announced as a 16-song set, plus four bonus tracks across different physical editions. But two hours after its release, there was much more material to unravel. As Swift explained, “I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.”
It’s time to grab some tissues and — if it’s your thing — a bottle of wine and have “a hell of a time,” as Swift’s duet partner Florence Welch sings on the cathartic album track “Florida!!!” Here are 10 of the saddest lyrics from the Swift’s album, out of all 31 tracks from the prolific singer-songwriter’s full The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology edition.
