Taylor Swift has given fans a glimpse of her creative process with the release of a first draft version of her song My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.
The 34-year-old critically-acclaimed music artist — who is dating Travis Kelce — used her Instagram Story to announce the sale of First Draft Phone Memo, featuring an early version of the song, on Saturday.
Her diehard fans quickly deciphered nuances from the nascent iteration of the track, which originally came out on April 19 on The Tortured Poets Department album.
Among the changes was a heart-wrenching lyric swap.
‘Just say when, I’d play again / He was my best friend down at the sandlot,’ are the official last lines of the songs, but initially, in a slower paced version, Swift sang, ‘He was my best friend and that was the worst part.’
Swift explained the meaning behind the song on iHeartRadio in April.
The music artist revealed the number was written from the perspective of a child’s toy.
She has a solo writing credit on the tune, which she described as feeling like ‘being somebody’s favorite toy until they break you and then don’t want to play with you anymore.’
Taylor likened it to ‘how a lot of us are in relationships where we are so valued by a person in the beginning, and then all of the sudden, they break us or they devalue us in their mind.’
The star emphasized, ‘We’re still clinging on to, “No no, no. You should’ve seen them the first time they saw me. They’ll come back to that. They’ll get back to that.”
‘So it’s kind of like a song about denial, really. So that you can live in this world where there’s still hope for a toxic, broken relationship.”
Other songs appearing on the First Draft Phone Memo project include Cassandra, The Black Dog, and Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?.
The digital album is only being offered for 24 hours, until Sunday, August 4 at 12pm — and it’s for the United States only.
Taylor took the stage in Munich on Saturday, July 27 as she continued her Eras Tour
After back-to-back performances in the city, she took to Instagram to express her gratitude.
‘What a magical experience it was playing in Munich… The crowds of 74,000 people a night in the stadium were so passionate, and so generous to us. And I had no idea before I got to Munich that there’s a huge park behind the stadium, but around 50,000 people came out and listened to the show from the hillside both nights,’ she wrote to her 283 million followers.
She added: ‘I’ve been watching so many videos of the crowds out there fully participating in the show from afar, all that joy… I’m feeling really grateful for the unexpected memories this tour has created. We have 11 shows left on the European leg of the tour, kicking off *August* with 3 shows in Warsaw!’
