Taylor Swift may have just changed how her fans view “Lover” forever.
In direct response to fan theories that The Tortured Poets Department album would document the stages of heartbreak, Swift divvied up her current catalogue into five Apple Music playlists representing denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Her first playlist, “I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life,” is easily sparking the biggest reaction online.
“This is a list of songs about getting so caught up in the idea of something that you have a hard time seeing the red flags, possibly resulting in moments of denial and maybe a little bit of delusion,” Swift told fans of her denial playlist.
Fans instantly clocked that many of the songs were on this list were written during Swift’s six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn, but no placement hit the fandom quite as hard as the title track from her 2019 album, Lover.
“Do you know how many weddings she just ruined?” One TikTok user joked in a video that received over 57,000 likes. “I mean, there are several songs of hers that people usually pick for weddings that I never would’ve picked before the playlists, but to just go and drop it all out there…At least before the playlists there was plausible deniability. Good grief!” Though the user didn’t call out any specific song in the video, the post was captioned, “Lover.”
“I’m just going to choose to ignore that it’s on this playlist,” TikTok user Steven Sullivan said in his own video on the subject. “’Lover’ lives in it’s own little bubble where everything is good and everything is grand.”
The discourse got so loud that TikTok creator Jake Deyton made a video discouraging fellow Swifties from permanently recategorizing these songs based on the pop star’s clever promotional tool. “No song or album or piece of art has to just encompass one feeling or one thing or has to remain static until the end of time,” Deyton said. “I think classifying these songs as denial songs will end up being the most relatable interpretation to many, many people—people who thought they were in love and turned out not to be.”
“However, it doesn’t also mean that these songs aren’t also love songs. At one time they were love songs to Taylor, and they still very well probably are. She can, like, look at them as more than one thing. And so can we,” he continued. “So while I think it is totally fine to be shocked by some of the song placements and to allow it to let the songs take on a whole new meaning for us, it doesn’t mean we have to obliterate the old meanings too.”
Personally, I think kicking off “I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life” with “Lavender Haze” was an even bolder choice. Prior to the release of Midnights in October 2022, Swift discussed how the song related to her and Alwyn’s own love story. “Theoretically, when you’re in the lavender haze you will do anything to stay there,” she said in a since-deleted Instagram Reel. “Like my relationship for six years, we’ve had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it. And so this song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff.”
Now it sounds like Swift may have been ignoring more than just the outside noise. Perhaps we’ll find out more when Tortured Poets drops on April 19. In case you’re wondering, that’s exactly 13 days away. IYKYK.
