Taylor Swifts album “The Tortured Poets Department” quickly jumped to the top of the music industry when it was released in April of 2024. When asked about the album, Swift described it as a trip through the 5 stages of grief, as she associated an emotion with each track on the album. The album itself is about a traumatic, artistic tragic kind of take on love and loss. She describes that she wrote the album because she believes that once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. Common themes include grief and longing after romantic loss, as well as the struggle with self-identity and public perception. Her uncensored, raw feelings are highlighted in each of the 31 songs included in this album.

Denial

Denial is a psychological defense mechanism where a person refuses to accept reality or the truth of a painful situation, often as a way to protect themselves from emotional overwhelm. The tracks that highlight denial include “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart,” “imgonnagetyouback,” “Peter,” “The Bolter,” and “Robin.” This theme across each of these songs highlights Taylors longing to delay emotional truth and not accept the fact that something is over or will never become. You can clearly see this in “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart,” as she insists that she is fine but is just suppressing her emotional feelings after a breakup by distracting herself. In each songs, it becomes clear that she believes hanging on will hurt less than letting go.

Anger

Anger is the stage where the pain of loss turns outward, often expressed as frustration, resentment, blame, or bitterness. Anger is associated with the songs “Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?,” “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” “The Black Dog,” and “Cassandra.” In some of these songs, Taylor is often criticizing the music industry, highlighting directly in “Cassandra” that she feels as though shes the first one to ever be blamed for something she felt innocent of. She also expressed how she feels as though she can never win when it comes to the industry. In other songs, she expressed anger over her lost love with Matt Healy, critizing his immaturity and addiction. She ultimately is expressing her want to be heard in multiple aspects of her life.

Bargaining

Bargaining is a desperate attempt to regain control, reverse, or lessen the pain of a loss through negotiation. “The Tortured Poets Department,” “Guilty As Sin,” “The Albatross,” “I Hate It Here,” and “The Prophecy” all excapsulate Taylors longing for permenant love, pointing multiple times to her relationships with Matt Healy and Joe Alwyn. While her relationship with Healy was short lived, she dated Alwyn for over 6 years, showing that love doesn’t have a time stamp, and both of them made a lasting impact on her. In many songs, she expresses fear over her future love life, stating that she doesn’t know if she will ever find her person.

Depression

Depression is a quiet stage of deep sorrow, loss of energy, changes in appetite or sleep, and profound sadness. Songs that feature signs of Depression include “Fortnite,” “Down Bad,” “Florida!!!,” “loml,” “Clara Bow,” “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” “How Did It End?,” and “I Look In Peoples Windows.” All of these songs include themse of emotional numbness and isolation, as she experiences the guilt of what could’ve been. In “loml,” she illustrates signs of being permenantly out of tune with life post-breakup.

Acceptance

Acceptance is described as reaching a state of calm, understanding the loss, and beginning to move forward. “So Long, London,” “Fresh Out The Slammer,” “The Alchemy,” “So High School,” “thanK you aIMee,” and “The Manuscript” all show signs of acceptance of past situations and include illustrations on what it looks like to move forward. These songs encapsulate Swift letting go of her past, but not forgetting it. These songs are her way of moving forward despite heartbreak, loss, and depression. She is embrassing being chosen again!

All in all, this is how each stage of grief is incorportated into The Tortured Poets Department. These stages plays a key role in the development of her lyrics, as she reflects on her feelings during this stage of her life and ultimately finds ways to grow from it. It’s like a trip through her feelings, where grief isn’t something to escape, but something to sit with. The Tortured Poets Department captures the messiness of healing and reminds us, the listeners, that growth doesn’t come from avoiding pain, but from feeling it all the way through.