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My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024)

“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” is track three on Taylor’s eleventh studio album, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024). The lyrics compare a broken relationship to a cherished toy, constantly subjected to the whims of a careless child.

Background

Taylor developed her eleventh studio album, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, “for about two years” after finishing her previous album Midnights (2022). She reflected on the creation of the album as a “lifeline” for her, as it took place amidst media reports on her personal life and her relationships with Joe Alwyn, Matty Healy, and Travis Kelce:

«TORTURED POETS is an album that I think, more than any of my albums that I’ve ever made, I needed to make it. It was really a lifeline for me, just the things I was going through, and the things I was writing about. It kind of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life. And I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I’d needed it on TORTURED POETS.»

Taylor Swift

Lyrical Theme

Taylor wrote “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” alone on piano. It is one of several tracks on THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT that chronicle fickle lovers who treat commitment with the same enthusiasm as a discarded toy they grew tired of playing with. Upon the album’s release, Taylor told Amazon Music:

«It's a metaphor of being somebody's favorite toy, until they break you, and then don't want to play with you anymore. Which is 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. 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.»

Taylor Swift

The song explores the emotional chaos of a turbulent relationship, with Taylor linking its downfall to her partner’s penchant for dismantling dolls and demolishing sand castles.

Production

Produced by Taylor and Jack Antonoff, “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” is a synth-pop song featuring pounding drums and elements of new wave, even though it was originally written on piano. In a first draft voice memo of the song, Taylor said:

«This is kind of an abnormal structure, but I think it could be really cool this way. And just, it sounds sad 'cause it's on piano, and I'm sad in general. But it's gotta have, like, a driving synth beat, or whatever.»

Taylor Swift

Live Performances

“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” received its first live performance acoustically on piano on May 11, 2024, in Paris during one of Taylor’s shows on “The Eras Tour” (2023-2024). The audio was officially released a couple of days later. On August 17, 2024, she paired the song with “coney island” (2020) in London. In Toronto on November 14, 2024, she performed it together with “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” (2017).

Critical Reception

Some critics praised the song’s catchiness while others were critical of its lyrical structure. In Jason Lipshutz’s Billboard ranking of all 31 songs of the parent album, the song was placed at seventeenth, adding that the song “deserves the stadium treatment” and called it a “big, booming song”. The Hollywood Reporter described the song as a “poppy earworm”, while Vulture said it was “sadder than you’d think”. John Wohlmacher of Beats Per Minute said it was one of the “strongest songs” from the album’s first half, writing: “a singalong refrain that plays with up-and-down movements”.

Commercial Performance

Upon the release of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, its songs claimed the Top 14 positions on the Billboard Global 200. “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” debuted and peaked at No. 6. In the United States, it debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song reached the Top 10 in charts of Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines and Singapore, attaining peaks of five, six, ten, seven, nine, and seven, respectively. The track also occupied the Top 25 positions in Belgium (17), Denmark (17), Greece (11), India (14), Luxembourg (12), Malaysia (11), Portugal (15), South Africa (17), Sweden (13), and the United Arab Emirates (14).