Tear Jerker / Taylor Swift

This country-pop singer can do some very emotional songs.

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Taylor Swift (2006)

• If you've recently broken up with a summer romance, or the one that got away broke up with you in the fall, "Tim McGraw" can reduce you to tears.
• "Invisible" was a bonus track on Taylor's first album. Anyone who has ever been in unrequited love with someone who, in turn, was in unrequited love with someone else have their heart ripped out by this song.
  "We could be a beautiful, miracle, unbelievable/instead of just invisible
  Like shadows in a faded light/ Oh, we're invisible."
• "Tied Together With A Smile" from her first album. It's written about a friend of hers who had bulimia, and a person who's losing it but is hiding behind a smile but still coming undone. The secret message is 'you are loved'. Could double as a Heartwarming Moment.
• Teardrops on my Guitar can be this for anyone who has ever had to tell themselves "I Want My Beloved to Be Happy".

Fearless (2008)

• This one is probably more of a Heartwarming Moment than anything, but the ending to the video for "Love Story" can get to certain people. Particularly when the couple being compared to good ol' dead Romeo and Juliet, having been split up by Juliet's dad, reunite, and the chorus is sung a bit differently...* sniff* It's better if you hear the whole song.
  "Marry me, Juliet, you'll never have to be alone
  I love you, and that's all I really know
  I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress
  It's a love story, baby, just say yes..."
• One can be deeply affected by "White Horse", with its quite frankly miserable lyrics about having overly high hopes for a relationship. Take a wild guess why.
  • The video is even more of a tearjerker, expounding on the storyline of a boyfriend who cheats on his girlfriend by dating another girl behind her back. A friend meets with the female protagonist (played by Swift) to break the news of her boyfriend's betrayal and arms her with information about what to look for. When she confirms her friend's information, she breaks up with him. She then goes home to cry her eyes out, the solemn scene punctuated by heavy rain outside ^note (and coincidentally, on the day the video was filmed, it was indeed raining heavily), before the boyfriend calls to give him another chance; she tells him no, hangs up on him and begins bawling her eyes out again.
• "You're Not Sorry". For anyone who's ever been betrayed by someone they loved.
• "Forever and Always" (the piano version) is very tear jerking when you think about your failed past relationships.
• "We Were Happy" is about a relationship the narrator really wanted to last forever, but she fell out of love and the song reminisces on the fact that they planned to get married and by a farm together
• "Don't You" is about the narrator running into her ex after some time broken up and after months of trying to hate him, she ends up forcing herself not to tell him she is still in love and wants him back because she knows he doesn't love her anymore

Speak Now (2010)

• "Innocent". Doubles as Heartwarming when you think of the song's context and who it's for.
• "Never Grow Up" from Speak Now. It's all about the innocence of childhood gradually disappearing; Taylor tells the kid she's singing to "never grow up", and it's heartbreaking. She even sounds like she's crying at one point, too.
  So here I am in my new apartment
  In a big city, they just dropped me off
  It's so much colder than I ever thought it would be
  So I tuck myself in, turn my nightlight on
  Wish I'd never grown up
  Wish I'd never grown up
• And "The Story of Us", although the music video implies that there's still hope.
• "Dear John" in every sense of the word.
• The plainly spoken heartbreak of "If This Was a Movie" qualifies too. Who hasn't felt exactly like that before?
• "Enchanted" will bring the emotions in a positive sense.

  and I was enchanted to meet you

  • The bridge, where Taylor begs the person she's singing to, "Please don't be in love with someone else. Please don't have somebody waiting on you..."
  • The song was written about Taylor meeting Adam Young, better known as Owl City, and her infatuation with him. Later, Adam released a cover of the song... singing directly to Taylor. It's hard not to tear up at the final line:
  I just wish you knew, Taylor, I was so in love with you.
• "Haunted" to anyone who's had a tough time letting go.

  Come on, come on, don't leave me like this

• "Back To December", about regret over a relationship haunted by emotional baggage, and the sadness that the relationship may never heal, counts for one, too.
  • Even sadder in that, despite the public often accusing Taylor of never taking the blame for failed relationships this song is her desperately apologising for being cruel and utterly crushing the boy it's about. Also seemingly filled with ambiguous lines plucked straight from the last argument the two of them had.
    This is me swallowing my pride, saying I'm sorry for that night
• "Mean". For anyone who has ever been in an emotionally or physically abusive relationship, those lyrics can really trigger memories of rock bottom, and the need to pull yourself out.
  • As well as for anyone who has been bullied.
• Happy tears at the ending of the "Ours" music video, where Taylor reunites with her boyfriend after he's been deployed. It's a beautiful moment.
• "Last Kiss"
  So I'll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep
  And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe
  And I keep up with our old friends just to ask them how you are
  Hope it's nice where you are
  And I hope the sun shines
  And it's a beautiful day
  And something reminds you
  You wish you had stayed
  You can plan for a change in weather and time
  But I never planned on you changing your mind

Red (2012)

• The monologue at the beginning of "I Knew You Were Trouble" can be this for anyone who has ever been in an abusive relationship.
  • The middle eight, too:
  And the saddest fear/Comes creeping in/That you never loved me/Or her, or anyone, or anything
  • The singer admitting that she picked up on signs that the other person was no good and putting the blame for the abuse and/or heartbreak she suffered on herself because she gave the person a chance anyway.
• "The Moment I Knew". after listening to that song, you would like to give Taylor a big hug.
• "Red", to those who have intense love affairs which "ended so suddenly".
• "All Too Well", where to start, the regret in this song is so strong you can taste it. It's a five and a half minute piano ballad filled to the brim with painstaking detail. This includes road trips, scarves left at houses, family photo albums, nights spent dancing in the light of the refrigerator and Taylor being paralyzed by time after the break up.
  You call me up again just to break me like a promise. So casually cruel in the name of being honest.
  • The entire bridge is soulcrushing. Most of the song is sung softly and gently, but Taylor practically screams out the above line. It really does sound like she's about to cry...
  • The last verse, describing how, inevitably, life must go on.
  Now you mail back my things, and I walk home alone.
  • The long-awaited 10 Minute Version is even more heart breaking, revealing just how much she loved him and how it destroyed her when they broke up.
  You kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath.
• "Sad Beautiful Tragic" "Words, how little they mean, when they're a little too late".
• "Come Back...Be Here" to anybody who ever missed anyone ever.
• "I Almost Do" to people who could almost make up with someone but for some reason can't.
• "Forever Winter," about a friend's struggles with suicidal depression.

1989 (2014)

• "Clean," about finally moving on from a bad relationship. It's triumphant, but also very sad.
  Ten months sober, I must admit
  Just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss it
  Ten months older, I won't give in
  Now that I'm clean I'm never gonna risk it
• The ending of the "Wildest Dreams" music video. Taylor's character finds out that her co-star, who she had an affair with while filming their movie, is married, and finally just leaving, ignoring him when he runs after her.
• Joyful tears at "You Are In Love", which details the romance between one of her producers, Jack Antonoff and her friend Lena Dunham. It's one of the few slow songs on 1989 and only on the deluxe version, but boy is it worth it.
  One night, he wakes.
  Strange look on his face.
  Pauses, then says:
  You're my best friend.
  And you knew what it was.
  He is in love.
• "Blank Space" doesn't sound too sad until you realize she's singing about adding yet another guy to the list of ex-lovers who think she's insane.
• "Say Don't Go"
  I said 'I love you
  You say nothing back
  

reputation (2017)

• Despite being a dark song 'Look What You Made Me Do' has a couple. 2016 was a hard year for Taylor with public scrutiny surrounding her from all sides. Thanks to this the carefree kind girl everyone saw is gone, in her place is someone whose innocence has been crushed and now is unable to trust anyone around her and is angry as a result.
  "I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me"
  "I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, 'cause she's dead!"
• "Delicate" is based on the assumption that love is too good to be true because Taylor can't believe anyone would stick with her given her recent issues in the media, and the music video is all about how she feels she can't be herself in the public eye.
  • "My reputation's never been worse so... you must like me for me..." It's a sweet intro, and yet... the idea of even having to question that...
  • The music video is a tearjerker of the happy variety, as Taylor dances joyfully in the rain.
• "New Year's Day." The simplicity is part of what makes it hit so hard.
  Please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere.
• If you believe the popular fan-theory that "Gorgeous" is actually directed at a woman, it suddenly takes on a sadder undertone, despite the cute, bubbly sound.
  I feel like I might sink and drown and die!

Lover (2019)

• "The Archer" if you've ever suffered from anxiety.
  All the king's horses, all the king's men/couldn't put me together again.
  • The second pre-chorus is a breathtakingly accurate depiction of a panic attack.
  I wake in the night, I pace like a ghost
  The room is on fire, invisible smoke
  And all of my heroes die all alone
• "The Man" can sound rather sad to those who experienced the Double Standards Taylor sings about: women are criticized for getting angry or having many lovers while men get praised for exactly the same things. Her ideas and work also get less recognition just because she is a woman:
  I'm so sick of running as fast as I can
  Wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man
• "Soon You'll Get Better," which was inspired by Taylor's mother battling cancer in 2015, and again in 2019. The whole song is a prayer from a scared kid who just wants her mother to be okay.
  You'll get better soon, 'cause you have to.
  • The song somehow managed to be more heartbreaking and sad when Swift performed it live (something she said when the song released that she can't see herself doing for the forseeable future) during the Together at Home fundraising concert because now it applies to all the family of the Covid 19 patients. Her performance is widely considered one of, if not the, best performance of the concert.

folklore (2020)

• All of "illicit affairs" is heartbreaking, but especially the final verse, where the narrator pleads with her lover not to just brush off her genuine feelings:
  Don't call me "kid."
  Don't call me "baby."
  Look at this idiotic fool you've made me.
  You taught me a secret language
  I can't speak with anyone else.
  And you know damn well
  for you, I would ruin myself
  a million little times.
• "seven" heavily implies the narrator's friend is abused by their father which is bad enough in itself; then, the narrator's innocent misinterpretation of what's going on makes it even more heartbreaking:
  And I've been meaning to tell you,
  I think your house is haunted.
  Your dad is always mad, and that must be why.
  And I think you should come live with me
  and we can be pirates.
  Then you won't have to cry
  or hide in the closet...
• "the last great american dynasty" is a nostalgic look at the life of Rebekah Harkness, the heiress who once owned the Holiday House, which was later bought by Taylor. While the narrative celebrates her eccentric behavior, lust for life, and "madness," it's also a bit sad as it describes how the "old money" society rejected her and made her The Scapegoat for her husband's death, and the end of the Harkness line.
  The doctor had told him to settle down.
  It must've been her fault his heart gave out.
  And they said, "There goes the last great American dynasty.
  Who knows, if she never showed up, what could've been?
  There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen.
  She had a marvelous time ruining everything."
• "epiphany", a tribute both to her grandfather and health workers during the COVID pandemic. "Something med school did not cover/Someone's daughter, someone's mother" hits especially hard for anyone who's lost a loved one to COVID, and it perfectly conveys the message that the 1.59 million people who died from COVID were more than statistics- they were humans with loved ones who are mourning them.
• "exile", a breakup song sung from the point of view of both parties, the male one being Bon Iver. The mutual inability to communicate is desolate and sad:
  You never gave a warning sign
  (I gave so many signs)
  All this time
  I never learned to read your mind
  (Never learned to read my mind)
  I couldn't turn things around
  (You never turned things around)
  Cause you never gave a warning sign
  (I gave so many signs)
  

evermore (2020)

• "champagne problems" tells a story that's heartbreaking all around. A young woman's boyfriend—who is, from what we can tell, a Nice Guy—proposes to her in front of his entire family, at Christmas... and she says no. The song describes him taking the train home alone in the middle of the night, alone with his thoughts, totally heartbroken. He was so excited, using his mom's ring to pop the question and telling his family about it weeks in advance, only for him to lose the woman he loves in a very public setting. The narrator, meanwhile, clearly feels terrible for hurting him, and while she never comes out and explains why, seems to grapple with mental health issues and self-loathing, as well as everyone demonizing her for the rejection. She genuinely wishes him well and seems confident that he'll find someone else eventually, but right now, the situation sucks for everyone involved, and the fact that it's nobody's fault kind of makes it worse.
  "This dorm was once a madhouse."
  I made a joke, "Well, it's made for me."
  How evergreen, our group of friends.
  Don't think we'll say that word again.
  And soon they'll have the nerve to deck the halls
  that we once walked through.
  One for the money, two for the show;
  I never was ready so I watch you go.
  Sometimes you just don't know the answer
  'Til someone's on their knees and asks you
  "She would've made such a lovely bride.
  What a shame she's fucked in the head," they said.
  But you'll find the real thing instead.
  She'll patch up your tapestry that I shred...
  • Notice that Nice Guy isn't on one knee, as if he's proposing. The narrator has already turned him down, and now he's on his knees begging her to reconsider.
• "tolerate it" is an incredibly painful song about loving someone who doesn't appreciate you. The narrator is implied to be much younger and less experienced than her target of affection and is drawn in by their maturity, but soon that maturity revealed them to be cold and unfaithful despite all of her best effort. At the end of the song she is implied to have a freak out and wanting to leave, but is implied that she can't yet. Some people even interpret the song is about a parental relationship, which made it doubly painful since the narrator is very likely a minor and literally can't leave on their own.
• "happiness" is a Break-Up Song directed at an ex who honestly isn't a bad person, and who made the narrator very happy when they were together. She wants to hate him, but she can't, and acknowledges that while he broke her heart, she broke his, too. It's all about the mess of complicated emotions in this situation, with an underlying message of, "I want to wish you well, but I'm just not there yet."
• "marjorie" is already an incredibly bittersweet and sad song about keeping someone's memory alive in your head despite them being gone (in this case, Taylor's own grandmother Marjorie Finlay), but the bridge of the song verge hard into this territory as it captures, as Rolling Stone writer Claire Shaffer wrote, "the delayed tragedy of losing a loved one when you're too young to see their full worth":
  And I complained the whole way there
  The car ride back and up the stairs
  I should've asked you questions
  I should've asked you how to be
  Asked you to write it down for me
  Should've kept every grocery store receipt
  'Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me
  Watched as you signed your name Marjorie
  All your closets of backlogged dreams
  And how you left them all to me.
  • If that doesn't get you, the very end of the song, where we hear a second, faded voice singing in the background. That's archived audio of Marjorie Finlay. Hearing the voice of a dead woman as her granddaughter repeatedly says, "You're still around."
    And if I didn't know better
    I'd think you were singing to me now
    cue old recording of Marjorie Finlay singing opera
  • The official lyrics video shows photos of Marjorie, some of them with a young Taylor. They look so alike, and hearing their voices together... it's hard not to tear up.
• "evermore", the closing track of the album of the same name, is about a narrator who is implied to have a Dark and Troubled Past whose mind keep take her back to that darkest moment. Luckily, the memory of her lover (sung by Bon Iver and is implied to have his own Dark and Troubled Past separately and together with her) brought her out of her darkness and she acknowledge that she can begin healing.
• The bonus track "right where you left me" hides a lot of sadness behind its chipper melody.
  • The narrator describes her partner suddenly ending their relationship because they met someone else, moving on without a care while she's stuck with the emotional scars. Years pass and she still cannot move on, wondering what happened and feeling like the world is going on without her while she's frozen in the worst moment of her life forever. Taylor brings a real sense of desperation to the narrator's voice as she sings, "Help, I'm still at the restaurant, still sitting in a corner I haunt," and tells her ex that if they ever change her mind, she'll still be there waiting on them. It really does paint a picture of someone who was outright destroyed when her heart was broken, and is unsure she'll ever truly recover.
  • "Did you hear about the girl who lives in delusion? Breakups happen every day. You don't have to lose it." The narrator repeats what others say about her, and how they dismiss her heartache. Worse, she seems to know it's not healthy to dwell on it forever, but she can't help herself.
  • It all gets even worse if you believe the narrator is Este, the murder victim of "no body, no crime." Then, all the talk about being frozen in time and stuck in the moment of the breakup becomes literal. By murdering her so he could take up with his mistress, Este's husband doomed her to a fate of having her soul trapped on Earth, only able to relive the moments before her death, lurk in the restaurant where she and her friend used to meet, and wonder if he's married the other woman and started a family, forgetting all about her, unaware that justice is coming in the form of her friend going after him.
    "You've left me no choice but to stay here forever!"
  • Another possibility is that Este doesn't even realize she's dead, being stuck in some sort of limbo or purgatory where she remains stuck in her worst memories, trying to move on when she is literally unable to do so. Talk about The Woobie.

Midnights (2022)

• "You're On Your Own, Kid" tells the story of a young woman who has gone through many, many heartbreaks, and ultimately realized that she couldn't depend on anybody but herself. It's a very Bittersweet Ending; she can handle being alone, but that doesn't mean she likes it.
  You've got no reason to be afraid.
  You're on your own, kid.
  Yeah, you can face this.
  You're on your own, kid...
  You always have been.
• "Mastermind": The narrator admits she's convinced no one will love her or want to spend time with her on their own, so she finds ways to "trick" them into it. Which makes it all the sweeter when the ending reveals that this isn't the case; her partner is there because they want to be.
• "Bigger Than the Whole Sky," from the 3 A.M. edition, is about mourning a loss of someone who never had the chance to meet their full potential - or possibly a miscarriage.
  Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
  You were bigger than the whole sky
  You were more than just a short time
  I've got a lot to pine about
  I've got a lot to live without
  I'm never gonna meet
  What could've been, would've been, should've been you
• "Anti-Hero", the opening single of Midnights:
  • Many lines portray a very messed-up narrator who thinks she's the problem and unable to cope and face herself. Taylor has been upfront that the insecurities she vets about in the song are doubts that plague her especially in light of her incredible celebrity status, fearing that because she's so famous, her relationships and generosity can only be interpreted as insincere, perfunctory transactions, and that no matter what she does, she will always be to blame for the drama in her life. In 2010, Taylor wrote a song about how some day, she'll be so big that no one could hit her, but in 2022, she's on top of the world, and she's more vulnerable than ever.
    "When my depression works on graveyard shift, all of the people I've ghosted stand there in the room"
    "I wake up screaming from dreaming one day I'll watch as you're leaving cause you got tired of my scheming (for the last time)"
    "Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby and I'm a monster on the hill"
    "Pierced through the heart but never killed"
    "It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me"
    "I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror"
  • The video doesn't help matters, with scenes like Taylor's alter ego teaching her "EVERYONE WILL BETRAY YOU", giant Taylor being shot at and abandoned by people who are dining without her, Taylor being chastised by the bathroom scale and her alter ego for being fat, and the funeral scene where instead of paying respect to deceased Taylor, the attendants quarrel about inheritance, prompting Taylor to leave the scene dejected.
• "Bigger Than The Whole Sky" is a song about a loss of something so important to the narrator that she can't find the strength to even stand up to cry about it. Throughout the song the narrator keep forcing herself to move on but the sadness from the loss (signify by the repeating chorus) keep overwhelming her.
• "Would've, Could've, Should've" is directed at the narrator's abusive ex-boyfriend, with her ripping into him for taking advantage of her teenaged self's naivete and the pain he put her through, and wishing she could go back and change it. But she can't, and she's left with the emotional scars while he got to walk away unscathed. The bridge is especially heartbreaking, as Taylor's voice becomes borderline frantic as she sings, "God rest my soul, I miss who I used to be," and all the death imagery in the song doesn't help.
  Give me back my girlhood! It was mine first!
• "You're Losing Me", which was released on The Late Night Edition of Midnights, is a devastating song detailing the narrator's relationship slowly falling apart. The love interest seems to not notice or care that the narrator feels unnoticed and unloved by him, and the narrator is desperate to keep the relationship together, even if it clearly won't work out. Not helping matters is the heartbeat-sounding instrumental pounding in the back of the song, especially with the lyrics serving as a metaphor equating the narrator's heartbreak with her death.
  How long could we be a sad song
  Til we were too far gone to bring back to life?

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024)

• "So Long, London" calls back to the Midnights track "You're Losing Me". The narrator has finally given up on her crumbling relationship along with her regret of spending the last bit of her youth trying to save it.
  I stoppеd CPR, after all, it's no use
  The spirit was gonе, we would never come to
  And I'm pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free.
• In "Guilty As Sin" the narrator talks about a relationship that didn't get very far, but not because the guy was terrible, instead it's about how the narrator's parasocial fans tore the relationship apart.
• "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart" talks about how miserable the narrator is, but she's continuing with her job because that's what her fans want.
• "Clara Bow" feels like a hopeless, endless repeating cycle of the next young star being compared to the one before her, with the industry promising them the world, and how hard they'll have to struggle to be beloved and worshipped.
• In "Chloe Or Sam Or Sophia Or Marcus", the narrator's lover not only cheated on her, but is also struggling with a drug addiction. Eventually, he chose drugs over her. If he gets married and has kids, the narrator would wonder "what if?" and hopes that he does too.
• During the aftermath of the breakup, the narrator of "How Did It End?" watches her friends speculate on how or why they called it off, but the narrator herself doesn't even know why, all she knows is that they can't be together anymore
• After the breakup, the narrator of "I Look In People's Windows" is reduced to looking in on others' happiness, hoping her love interest would be there one day and notice her again.

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• "Safe and Sound," especially when taken in the context of the movie it was written for (The Hunger Games). Listen to it and think of the scene with Rue and the flowers (you know the one), and say with a straight face that it doesn't make you at least WANT to cry.
  • Also with the music video, it almost feels like Taylor is playing the ghost of Prim Everdeen, seeing District 12 after the war.
  • And the recently released re-recording somehow takes it further and makes the song even softer and gentler than it already was.
• Her cover of "Drops Of Jupiter" (Originally by Train) on her Speak Now Tour live CD is not for public listening, you will cry!
• Her charity single "Ronan," inspired by a blog created by the mother (credited as co-writer) of a four-year-old who died of cancer, gets even more powerful when you learn Swift used only phrases from the blog. Therefore, this is true insight into what it's like to lose someone so young. After the song's bridge Swift can be heard inhaling as if trying not to sob.
  What if I'm standing in your closet, trying to talk to you?
  What if I kept the hand-me-downs you won't grow into?
  What if I really thought some miracle would see us though?
  What if that miracle was even getting one moment with you?

• Not released on an album (yet), but "Brought Up That Way", an unreleased song from a father's point of view about watching his daughter grow up and nearly losing her, is about as heartbreaking as it can get.
  He says, "God, I didn't bring her up to watch them lay her down
  Nearly killed me the day they put her mama in the ground
  Only thing kept me alive was that little girl's smile
  So please, don't take that away
  It won't be easy taking her today
  She wasn't brought up that way."