Taylor Swift Turns To These 3 Songs When Dealing With Breakups, & They’re SO Good
Everyone copes with heartbreak in different ways. Some people may choose to keep busy, while others prefer drowning out the noise with their favorite sad playlist, which most likely has a lot of Taylor Swift on it, let's be honest. She is the Queen of Heartbreak after all. As you flood your ears with the Swift lyrics you just need to hear, you may be wondering what songs Taylor Swift listens to when dealing with heartbreak herself. Turns out, she, too, has her go-to tunes for when she's down in the dumps about love and relationships. Celebs! They're just like us!
Swift penned an essay for ELLE UK's Music Issue about the power of pop music, where she revealed why she puts every ounce of herself into her music and how songs can have an impact on different parts of your life. "I’m highly biased, but I think that the way music can transport you back to a long forgotten memory is the closest sensation we have to traveling in time," she wrote. She explained how certain songs take her to different times in her life — as a 12-year-old in Pennsylvania starting her career, a teenager singing at the top of her lungs with her best friend on those Tennessee roads, 17 years old on tour for months at a time — and the emotions those songs flood her with.
When it comes to dealing with her breakups (the ones that gave us all those way-too-accurate love songs), Swift had her own remedies. "I’m convinced that 'You Learn' by Alanis Morissette, 'Put Your Records On' by Corinne Bailey Rae, and 'Why' by Annie Lennox have actually healed my heart after bad breakups or let downs." I don't know why, but learning that the artist who helped me through so many painful moments in my life has her own go-to songs to deal with heartbreak is incredibly satisfying. It's a nice little reminder that celebrities are real people, and they have emotionally draining moments in their lives the same way I do.
That personal aspect of songs makes certain lyrics resonate with me, and apparently, they do the same for Swift. "This glimpse into the artist's story invites us to connect it to our own, and in the best case scenario, allows us the ability to assign that song to our memories," she wrote. "It's this alliance between a song and our memories of the times it helped us heal, or made us cry, dance, or escape that truly stands the test of time. Just like a great book."
And Swift has applied that alliance to her own songs, as well. In the essay, she said that when she writes her songs, she uses the details that are painted in her memory from the exact moment something went very wrong or very right. "I want to remember the colour of the sweater, the temperature of the air, the creak of the floorboards, the time on the clock when your heart was stolen or shattered or healed or claimed forever," she said. And those specific details are a big part of why her songs often feel so personal, and probably why she turns to her three, go-to songs after a bad breakup or let down.
Music truly is a powerful thing. It has a way of speaking to you when nothing and no one else can. And sometimes, listening to your favorite playlist is the only thing that can help when you really need it. "I think these days, people are reaching out for connection and comfort in the music they listen to," Swift wrote in her essay. "We like being confided in and hearing someone say, 'this is what I went through' as proof to us that we can get through our own struggles." And she's totally right. You can get through your own struggles and you most certainly will. You are a star.
