We left off Part 3 having finished the TTPD bargaining playlist tracks, so we’ll be picking up in Part 4 with the depression playlist tracks. Before we do, in case you have not read Part 1, that’s where you’ll find an overview of the Kübler-Ross model of grief, its pros and cons, and the way in which it was utilized as a framework for Taylor Swift to create five heartbreak playlists for Apple Music, starting with denial, and the eight tracks listed on it, which are each explored through the lens of that first stage. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read it before proceeding. 

In case you don’t, a quick review of the fine print. From here forward, I will use “her” to refer to the narrator of each song rather than Taylor herself, unless otherwise mentioned. Similarly, I’ll use “he” for references to romantic partners. Please read Part 1 if you’re interested in my reasoning. 

Depression (“Old Habits Die Screaming”)

Depression is both a non-diagnostic feeling as well as a short-hand for the clinical diagnosis of major depressive disorder. To be clear, what we’ll be exploring together in terms of depression refers to the feeling, not the diagnostic label. In terms of heartbreak and grief, depression often coincides with the reality of the loss setting in. Instead of grappling with questions and pleading with the powers that be to change one’s circumstances, depression involves facing the sadness and loneliness that stems from meaningful loss. It’s a time of mourning when it can feel like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, or if there is, that it’s faint and far off in the distance. It’s important when experiencing depression, or supporting someone through it, that hobbies, exercise, and self-care are prioritized as much as possible, even when they feel challenging, unfulfilling, or futile. The more we maintain our schedules and activities, the better positioned we are to take care of ourselves and prevent worsened outcomes. Of course, professional support may also be helpful, and may provide a safe space for exploring complicated feelings related to grief that are better suited to people with professional training. There’s also a lot to be said about connecting with others who have shared experiences–grief groups, for example, can provide a powerful sense of validation, normalization, and social support that aid coping. 

Unlike the anger and bargaining playlists (and like the denial one), the depression playlist title does not contain the song that includes the lyrics “old habits die screaming.” As you may recall, those lyrics are expressed in “The Black Dog.” As also touched on previously, the term “black dog” metaphorically connotes depression, so it is fitting here. Furthermore, a black dog walks across the screen of the only TTPD music video released thus far (“Fortnight”), which is included on this playlist. Similar to anger, sadness is powerfully felt through music, both lyrically and sonically. The emotional state is heavy and the intensity of it lends itself well to musical expression and kinship. Writing music from this place can be cathartic, helping the writer explore their feelings and express depression rather than internalizing it. Listening to so-called “sad music” is also an effective way of evoking underlying depressive feelings and gaining a sense of connection to someone enduring something similar. Humans are social creatures who benefit from the sense of camaraderie and shared experience that arises from bonding through music. 

In “A Message From Taylor” that opens the playlist, Taylor describes how songs created from a depressed emotional state can be useful for navigating and expressing the feeling, and how listening to songs that other people have made when experiencing depression can also provide a route for gaining a sense of support and communion with others while processing such a difficult feeling:

“Where 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 past that feeling.”

The Apple Music playlist description further echoes how music can serve as both a means of self-expression and as a support mechanism that can help someone through challenging times. It says: “sadness is something Taylor’s captured in song as well as anyone ever has…songs you can fall into, for sure, but songs that can hold you as well.” There are eight depression TTPD tracks, so let’s get going on our lyrical breakdown. 

“Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus”

This track title introduces the theme of the song: two past lovers who are no longer together, but at least one of them has not fully moved on and gained closure despite both of them appearing to be with other people. He saw her “bones out with somebody new who seemed like he would’ve bullied you in school” and “just watched it happen.” She, on the other hand, only saw his “hologram stumbled into my apartment, hands in the hair of somebody in darkness named Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” alluding to potential bisexuality of her past partner or possibly to the genderless nature of seeing people through screens, in mental visions, memories, or in whatever other way might be described as a hologram-esque. Like him, she “just watched it happen.” We also know from “as the decade would play us for fools” that the dynamic between them had existed for a long time, potentially in an on/off relationship characterized by secret closeness and flirting with future possibilities that comes crashing to an end once they try it for real (reminiscent of many other TTPD tracks, including two I’ll touch on shortly). 

This track offers an added layer of insight into why they potentially did not work at the beginning of the decade when the narrator mentions her perspective: “You said some things that I can’t unabsorb. You turned me into an idea of sorts. You needed me, but you needed drugs more and I couldn’t watch it happen.” This references back to many other tracks, such as him having “sunk into stoned oblivion” and having “tried to buy some pills from a friend of friends of mine” (“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”), possibly giving insight into the underlying factors contributing to his problematic behaviors described in tracks like “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” Despite feeling unable to stick around to see him spiral into and from drug problems, she felt the need to “outrun my desertion of you” by changing “into goddesses, villains, and fools” (perhaps different album vibes and characters brought to life in albums like folklore and evermore) and changing “plans and lovers and outfits and rules.” Again, he “just watched it.” She’s clearly sad about the sequence of events that got them to present, but the chorus goes on to say what she fears most deeply at this point: “If you wanna break my cold, cold heart just say, ‘I loved you the way that you were’” (or, the second time, “say you loved me”) and “if you wanna tear my world apart, just say you’ve always wondered” (the second time: “say you’ll always wonder”). 

Essentially, she’s heartbroken enough that they were never able to make it work, but it would shatter her to know that it’s in some way because of how she’s changed over time and that they were close enough that he too questions if they could have been successful. Could it have worked if, when she met him, she was not “too impaired by my youth to know what to do”? And what can they do now to move on from the depth of the sadness and grief? Will it help “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?” (an apparent callout to both Midnights’ “Maroon” and perhaps to the same “woman on the internet” mentioned in folklore’s “the 1”). She recognizes that “like watching wild horses” attempting to make a relationship work is “cooler in theory, but not if you force it to be. It just didn’t happen.” She knows what she lost and she’s feeling the depth of that pain. Now, it would hurt less if she could believe that it was never destined to be because he did not really love her enough to always wonder about them. If this was as real as it felt, the loss is that much bigger. Not just the loss of him, but perhaps also the loss that comes from having changed yourself and taken parts of yourself away in an attempt to please someone else until you lose yourself too. And the devastation of not being sure if you’ll get yourself back or if the pain will ever go away.

“How Did It End?”

For those who don’t know, Taylor explained in a livestream announcing the release of Lover that she tends to put her most “vulnerable, personal, honest, and emotional song as track five.” If you consider the 2 am surprise Anthology portion of TTPD as a double album, this is the second track five. And it is no exception to the vulnerability and emotional honesty of a track five in its description of how people inside and outside of a recently ended relationship voraciously seek answers to the ultimate question: “How Did It End?” In terms of grief, people’s responses are similar despite the context; whether it’s death or a breakup, people feel entitled to the inside scoop of what went wrong. The song begins with a summary of the “post-mortem” after-death examination of the relationship: “He was a hot house flower to my outdoorsman. Our maladies were such we could not cure them, and so a touch that was my birthright became foreign.” Essentially, he was a sensitive, fragile, and pampered flower akin to an orchid that needs everything to be just right, while she seeks adventure and excitement in the unknown elements of the great outdoors. He thrives in the shelter of controlled privacy, and she needs the freedom and light of the outside world. Coming to terms with these differences is hard enough, but having to answer to everyone who really only cares about why “it’s happenin’ again,” why another relationship has failed, adds another layer of turmoil and sadness. It’s not actually about compassion for her, but about obtaining insider knowledge for secondary gain. 

As the “empathetic hunger descends” on the rumor mill and spectators are “feverishly calling their cousins” after they see her at the shops “walking in circles like she was lost,” they can’t wait to share that “they called it all off.” The invasive question in response: “how did it end?” The worst part is that she “can’t pretend like I understand”–she can’t tell them because she doesn’t fully understand how they ended either. Other verses throughout the song provide further insight into the nature of their maladies. They “were blind to unforeseen circumstances” and “fell victim to interlopers’ glances” despite having “learned the right steps to different dances.” Try as they might, they were not able to make it work. Further compounding her heartbreak is the sense that unlike her, “they’ll go home to their husbands smug ‘cause they know they can trust him.” In what is arguably one of the most emotional bridges on the album, she emphasizes how this breakup is experienced like a death: “Say it once again with feeling how the death rattle breathing, silenced as the soul was leaving, the deflation of our dreaming, leaving me bereft and reeling. My beloved ghost and me, sitting in a tree, D-Y-I-N-G.” A haunting twist of the children’s rhyme–they were once the kids in the tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G, but now, they’ve died and he has become a ghost. Her depression reflects the sadness of having to part ways from him and the relationship, and the recognition that the pattern has repeated. And yet, again, the added layer of pain that comes with not really knowing why. And the incredible loss of a relationship you thought would be forever.

“I Look in People’s Windows”

“I Look in People’s Windows” is a short song that tells the story of someone who has just “died the tiniest death” when realizing that “northbound I got carried away as you boarded your train south.” They were headed on trains going in different directions, which references many previous Taylor songs with train lyrics, like folklore’s “cardigan” (“‘cause I knew you, steppin’ on the last train”), which also implies the finality of leaving her, compared to evermore’s “willow” (“you know that my train could take you home”), suggesting that he should instead take her train north to find their forever together. Later in the song, she also references how she’s “afflicted by the not knowing” and “addicted to the ‘if only,’” which serves as another callback to folklore tracks, including the “cardigan” lyric “I knew you’d haunt all of my what-ifs” (previously touched on in bargaining) and “the 1” lyric “if one thing had been different, would everything be different today?” We know from “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” that it’s the possibilities that continue to torment her–that the worst part would be knowing he thought they were that close too; that the hope was real; that it could have been forever. It feels like such a significant loss to her that it’s confusing for her to wonder if “it feels alright to not know me?” The ache of rejection coupled with uncertainty. Does this even hurt you like it hurts me? 

In response to her anxious rumination, she looks for clues and opportunities for their paths to cross by looking “in people’s windows” and “searching faces on streets.” She needs to know what might happen “if your eyes looked up and met mine one more time?” These windows also allude to previous album tracks, including reputation’s “Call It What You Want” (“Windows boarded up after the storm”), Lover’s “Death by a Thousand Cuts” (“I look through the windows of this love”), and Midnights’ “Midnight Rain” (“So I peered through the window. A deep portal, time travel…the life I gave away”). Windows can serve as a variety of metaphors–for looking at the past, for looking from the outside in, for the highlight reel of pictures posted to Instagram with “rose golden glows” by way of photo filters. There’s also a sense of being an outsider who doesn’t feel they belong, further cementing the parallels she describes between herself and Rebekah Harkness in folklore’s “the last great american dynasty” (who notably also “rode up on the afternoon train”). The narrator is someone who feels “like I’m some deranged weirdo” who has to “attend Christmas parties from outside.” Part of depression is the litany of self-defeating thoughts and warped personal narratives that infiltrate when feeling rejected, broken, and consumed with loss. On the one hand, she’s desperate for answers and closure, but on the other hand, she longs to reconnect with him. The deep sadness that comes from having to face the end of a relationship that still feels like it could have, and perhaps, should have worked, and having to say goodbye to something you still ache to have, and without even getting to know why. 

“Clara Bow”

“Clara Bow” takes a detour from the depression tracks we’ve explored thus far that have focused on romantic heartbreak. In her Amazon Music Track by Track commentary, Taylor provides insight into the meaning behind this song: 

“‘Clara Bow’ is a song that I wrote as sort of a commentary on just what I've seen in the industry…I used to sit in record labels trying to get a record deal when I was a little kid…they'd name an artist and then they kind of say something disparaging about her and be like but you're this, you're so much better in this way or that way, and that's how we kind of teach women to see themselves.”

The song progresses through three so-called “it girls,” starting with Clara Bow, a star of the silent film era of the 1920s who also struggled with publicized scandals that took their toll on her mental health. Decades later, when the next ingénue arrives, she’s presumably compared to the last (harkening back to the sadness reflected in Red’s “Nothing New” line “she’ll say she got the map from me. I’ll say I’m happy for her, then I’ll cry myself to sleep.”). By the second verse, we assume it’s Stevie Nicks who is compared to Clara Bow, and who later serves as the point of comparison for the next young starlet: Taylor Swift. They all hear the same thing from the people in power at the record label–you’re similar to the icon before you, but you’re even better. They tell each woman that “‘This town is fake, but you’re the real thing…Take the glory, give everything…You’re the new god we’re worshiping. Promise to be dazzling.” Sacrifice your life to the music machine and you’ll replace her. You’ll be the new star replacing her as she fades away.

But dazzling does not come easy. She goes on to give the insider perspective of the pressures of perfectionism and fame: “Beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours demanding more. Only when you’re girlish glow flickers just so do they let you know. It’s hell on earth to be heavenly.” This life does not come effortlessly. There’s immense sacrifice required to get to the top, and once you’re there, the next person is waiting in the wings. The song ends by emphasizing that Taylor will be replaced too. They’ll tell the upcoming star the same thing they told her about Stevie Nicks. “You look like Taylor Swift in this light. You’ve got edge, she never did. The future’s bright, dazzling.” You look like her, but you’re even better. Stick with us, do what we say, give everything you have, and you will be next. The depressive aspect here is not only that there’s someone young waiting to replace her (women losing value as they age is certainly sad), but also that whoever comes next will be similarly manipulated by the business of music and suffer the perils of fame. Another cog in the wheel pitted against the woman before her. The disillusionment that comes with age and seeing things for what they really are. Grieving for your own inner child, and for theirs. 

“loml”

“loml” is an acronym that typically stands for “love of my life.” She mentions that “you said I’m the love of your life about a million times” (seemingly referring back to folklore’s “illicit affairs” in which she says “but they lie and they lie and they lie a million little times”), lulling the listener into accepting the common interpretation of loml. What the listener realizes over the course of the song is that the lyrics never fully align with that meaning–“love of your life” would be loyl. Instead, we learn her meaning in the closing lyrics: “you’re the loss of my life.” Loss can insinuate the relationship, of course, but perhaps it also extends to loss of time, loss of hope, loss of trust, loss of stability. This relationship affected her so deeply that she “felt aglow like this never before and never since” and that she has “felt a hole like this never before and ever since.” While she never again felt the glowing impact he once had on her, the hole he left continues to exist despite her awareness that the future she hoped for was apparently founded on lies. She’s grieving the relationship she thought she had and the time she waited believing she “was better safe than starry-eyed.” Even when it’s hanging by a thread, she’s “killing time at the cemetery” because, to her, they’re “never quite buried” (a common motif throughout Taylor’s discography). The on-off, hot-cold nature of their relationship leaves her hanging on to hope. They have been apart before and have come back together; they’ve “embroidered the memories of the time I was away, stitching ‘we were just kids, babe” which leaves her wondering “who’s gonna stop us from waltzing back into rekindled flames if we know the steps anyway?” 

Arguably the most hurtful part is the way in which he built up her hope only to leave her heartbroken. He is “a con man” who sold “a fool a get-love-quick scheme,” insinuating that he knowingly sold her dreams he never intended to fulfill (and possibly, that he love bombed her in the beginning to achieve that). His “impressionist paintings of heaven turned out to be fakes”–all the “talkin’ rings and talkin’ cradles” to swindle her ultimately resulted in her realization that she “should’ve let it stay buried.” She’s also self-conscious about having fallen for his lies. She questions, “are they second-hand embarrassed that I can’t get out of bed ‘cause something counterfeit’s dead?” Interestingly, both “counterfeit” and “stitches” are mentioned repeatedly in Midnights’ “Glitch,” suggesting that this track is written about the same muse. The song ends by sharing a summary of the relationship: “Oh, what a valiant roar. What a bland goodbye. The coward claimed we was a lion. I’m combing through the braids of lies. ‘I’ll never leave,’ ‘Never mind.’” The hopes and “field of dreams engulfed in fire” with her newfound awareness that he was never the roaring lion and that the promise of never leaving was amongst the many lies told. Having to grieve for the life that never was, for the person you never knew, and for the truth that was never told. “Grieving for the living” (from evermore’s “ivy”) can feel like grieving a death–longing for what once was, cherishing the good memories, and having to let go anyway.

“Florida!!!”

“Florida!!!” is one of two tracks on TTPD with features, in this case, with Florence + the Machine. Upon first listen, I found it to be one of the more cryptic songs. Taylor’s Amazon Music Track by Track commentary helps orient the listener to what Florida represents lyrically:

“‘Florida’ is a song that I wrote with Florence + the Machine…what happens when your life doesn’t fit or your choices you’ve made catch up to you…Is there a place you could go? I’m always watching, like, Dateline. People, you know, have these crimes that they commit. Where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida…And, I think, when you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks, ‘I want a new name. I want a new life. I don’t want anyone to know where I’ve been or know me at all.’ And, so, that was the jumping off point behind where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? Florida!”

In many ways, this song represents the desire to escape the sadness of loss and of feeling that “your home’s really only a town you’re just a guest in.” When you “need to forget” because you have “some regrets;” when “love left me like this and I don’t want to exist” so you metaphorically seek the “rush” of Florida. Now, Florida could simply represent escapism, but I also think it’s potentially the “one hell of a drug” of a rebound relationship (perhaps the same person who “brought me back to life” in Midnights’ “High Infidelity”). It’s unlikely a coincidence that Florida was the first stop of the Eras tour following Taylor’s long-term relationship breakup, and about when she had a short-term relationship with someone else (also, the “shitstorm back in Texas” may refer to the previous Eras stop soon after her long-time breakup). 

She asks, “Can I use you up?,” suggesting that the relief of a rebound will act as a drug-like remedy for the pain she’s experiencing (further supported by the “forget him” pill she takes in the “Fortnight” music video). When “your friends all smell like weed or little babies,” you’re surrounded by those dabbling with escapism via modulated existence and those who have settled down with families. She hopes Florida will help “lay to rest all of the bodies that have ever been on my body” so she too can move on. She does not want to sit with the guilt, grief, and sadness of loss, so she looks to Florida (the place and person) to get her through her pain, to reinvent herself, and to leave everything else behind.  

“Down Bad”

In contrast to “Florida!!!,” “Down Bad” is straightforward lyrically and metaphorically. It begins by describing a return to earth following an alien abduction, which thematically weaves throughout the entire song: “Did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on? Tell me I was the chosen one. Showed me that this world is bigger than us. Then sent me back where I came from.” This relationship felt like being taken to a new world by someone other worldly (possibly the same person who inspired the line “your eyes are flying saucers from another planet” from Midnights’ “Snow On The Beach”), offering a glimpse into the “cosmic love” of being “heavenstruck” before crashing back down to the starting point of reality where she’s left questioning if he took “all my old clothes just to leave me here, naked and alone in a field in my same old town that someone seems so hollow now.” She’s vulnerable and forever changed; she can’t look at things the same way she did previously. As described in “loml,” perhaps the worst part again is the hindsight of fraudulence and the resulting sense that it happened so quickly and secretly that people will “say I’m nuts if I talk about the existence of you.” She can’t even openly talk about how desperately she’s “down bad” and “starin’ at the sky” begging him to “come back and pick me up.” That it feels like she “lost my twin” and has now regressed to the extent that “everything comes out teenage petulance” as she’s “cryin’ at the gym.”  

The loss is hitting her so powerfully that she “might just not get up.” She longingly reflects on her memories of their initial flirtation (another apparent reference to his potential love bombing behaviors); how she “loved your hostile takeovers, encounters closer and closer” only for it to end with landing back to where you started. But, she can’t even bring herself to say the words. “How dare you say that it’s–”–the listener knows it’s over, but it’s too painful for her to say outright. She “was in love” and she’s furious that she “can’t have him.” With all of her fame, money, and power, she has to face that another dream has died. That she can’t “build you a fort on some planet where they can all understand it.” That she can’t make him see that it’s not “romantic, leaving me safe and stranded.” She’s devastated, and she wants him to know the depth of her despair. Everything feels pointless and meaningless without him–perfectly echoing the core of depression’s sense of emptiness and purposelessness. It feels like she’ll be “wakin’ up in blood” and “down bad (wavin’ at the ship)” forever, desperate to regain what they had, to relive the magic they once shared, while deep down knowing she’s forever changed and may never feel that kind of spark again. And that she may never feel like herself again, either. 

“Fortnight”

The last depression track is the first song on the album, only music video, and second feature, this time with Post Malone. As the introductory track, it situates the listener to the thematic elements of the album, preparing them for what lies ahead. The following is Taylor’s Amazon Music Track by Track commentary: 

“‘Fortnight’ is a song that I think really exhibits the common themes that run throughout this album, one of which being fatalism–longing, pining away, lost dreams…hyperbolic, dramatic things to say, but it's that kind of album…dramatic, artistic, tragic, kind of take on love and loss…You ended up not with the person that you love and now you have to just live with that every day, wondering what would have been, maybe seeing them out, and that's a pretty tragic concept, really, so I was just writing from that perspective.” 

The song begins with picking up where one of the final Midnights (Til Dawn Edition) tracks, “Hits Different,” left off by asking, “is that your key in the door? Or have they come to take me away?” “Fortnight” opens with “I was supposed to be sent away, but they forgot to come and get me.” She’s been a “functioning alcoholic,” likely alluding to coping with alcohol, but also serving as a metaphor for her overall struggles with mental health and perhaps other unhealthy coping mechanisms (alcohol is another common reference scattered throughout her discography, particularly in the past handful of albums). Both the lyrics and the music video appear to refer back to another Midnights’ track (this time on the 3am Edition), “Dear Reader,” in which she has a “fourth drink in my hand” and tells the so-called reader to “burn all the files, desert all your past lives,” which is visibly illustrated in the music video with papers from files burning all around her. 

Her mixed feelings are apparent from the beginning. She does “hope you’re okay” and acknowledges that “no one here’s to blame” but also states that he’s “the reason” in light of his “quiet treason.” For a brief amount of time, presumably the two weeks of a fortnight, they “were forever,” but now they are “good neighbors” who make small talk when they “run into” each other. The fact that she still loves him is “ruining my life” and she simultaneously wants to “kill her” (presumably his wife) and “kill him” (her “husband” who is “cheating,” which may refer back to the same “husband” mentioned in Midnights’ “High Infidelity” who may be the same person who was “playing with fire” with another “her” in Midnights’ “The Great War”). She’s stuck in a depressive state, feeling like “all my mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February.” Every day starts off frigid, lifeless, and dull as she faces the week ahead. 

She thinks of him, but does not believe he’d “pick up” if she called, so another fortnight goes by “lost in America.” He could “move to Florida” and “buy the car you want” but getting that started requires her in some way (whether that’s her touch or perhaps the fame and royalties derived from her work; this could also be taken as directed at her rather than said by her). Whereas earlier in their relationship, “you ruined my life, by not being mine” (“Gorgeous” from reputation), now she’s had you and it’s being in love with you that’s ruining her life presently. The ultimate contrast to albums created earlier in the relationship that chronicle falling in love, TTPD details the aftermath of falling out of it. The dark, harrowing journey of grieving for what once was so beautiful and fulfilling–for the past, but also for the future that never came to be. A relationship that was so special to you that you concluded “life will lose all its meaning” if I have to “watch as you’re leaving” (Midnights’ “Anti-Hero”). The depression so profound that life feels hopeless and meaningless; so consuming that it lurks like a shadow everywhere you go as you stumble through the journey towards acceptance. 

We’ve reached the end of Part 4 of this blog. Click here for Part 5 where I’ll finish this blog series with the final playlist: acceptance.