I'm not much of a Swiftie, but I wish I could be.

Taylor Swift is an incredible storyteller... sometimes. She's an excellent lyricist... sometimes. She innovates and pushes pop music into new territories, sometimes. And since we have seen flashes of how brilliant she can be, such as in the Folklore/Evermore duology, I find myself hoping she continues that poetic trajectory in her music.

I'm eager for her to do a true pop/rock concept album, taking the artistry of Folklore/Evermore and fusing it with the production and hooks of Reputation and Lover.

Instead, in the last couple of years, she has rushed three albums—one of which had an absurd thirty-one tracks on it—while traveling around the world on her record-breaking Eras Tour.

Taylor Swift is, of course, entirely her own person and has every right to create whatever she wants to create whenever she wants to create it. What she's doing is clearly working for her.

At the same time, I want to be a Swiftie, and since she doesn't seem interested in creating the concept album I want to listen to, I decided to create my own concept album by pulling the best tracks from her last two albums: The Tortured Poets Department and The Life of a Showgirl.

These two albums, to my ear, actually share a lot of thematic elements, despite their different tones, and I think they can work together to create a fairly dynamic storyline.

I'm calling this playlist "Taylor Swift: Tortured Showgirl," and it tells the story of a woman trying juggle her desire for romance and her dreams of show business. Here's a quick rundown of the tracklist and how the story takes shape:

Act 1: In her budding career, she believes she can have it all, the young love with whom she wants to grow old and the career she always dreamed of. But life takes her and her lover in different directions, and she finds that they can't make it work, and she processes the pain of heartbreak.

  • The Prophecy
  • Clara Bow
  • Peter
  • The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
  • I Can Do It With a Broken Heart
  • The Fate of Ophelia

Act 2: She experiences new romance, but it is shallow and tumultuous, and she learns that she can't twist herself into the person someone else wants her to be. Her heart is worth more than that. She decides to be her full self, and if she's going to give her heart away, it's only going to be to someone who loves everything she is.

  • Elizabeth Taylor
  • The Black Dog
  • The Bolter
  • So Long, London
  • Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?

Act 3: As she embraces herself, abandoning pretenses about who she is and what she wants, she meets someone who loves her for all of it, and she finds herself falling deep into it. In the end, she does not have to abandon her life as a showgirl in order to experience love; she finds that her performances are a meaningful means of connection for her, not just with her fans, but also with other artists, and they contribute to the fullness of her life alongside her special someone.

  • Opalite
  • Wi$h Li$t
  • Cassandra
  • Eldest Daughter
  • The Life of a Showgirl
  • The Alchemy
  • The Manuscript

What do you think? Does this storyline concept work for you? To make it easy to listen for yourself, I've created "Taylor Swift: Tortured Showgirl" as a playlist on YouTube Music and Spotify.