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The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024)

“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is track fourteen on Taylor’s eleventh studio double album, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024). She wrote and produced the song with longtime collaborator Aaron Dessner. A scathing breakup song, the song begins as a piano ballad before transitioning into a vitriolic bridge.

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

The album’s tracklist, including “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” was revealed shortly after.

Lyrical Theme

Taylor co-wrote “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” with her close friend Aaron Dessner. The song is divided into two distinct parts, the first being an understated piano ballad. Taylor describes a man in a “Jehovah’s Witness suit”, and accuses him of showing her off then ghosting her and attempting to buy drugs from her distant friend. Fellow TORTURED POETS songs “loml” and “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” are closely connected to this part of the story, linking the song to English singer-songwriter Matty Healy, with whom Taylor had a publicized romance in early 2023. He has reported history of substance abuse, and often wears a suit and tie during performances.

Taylor audibly sighs several times during the song, but her voice distorts upon entering the second part of the song: the bridge, which employs extensive references to espionage. She bombards her ex-lover with a series of questions: “Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead? / Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed? / Were you writing a book? / Were you a sleeper cell spy? / In 50 years will all this be declassified?”

Live Performance

Starting with the European leg, which kicked off in May 2024, Taylor added “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” to the regular setlist for her sixth headlining tour, “The Eras Tour” (2023-2024). During the performance, she wore a white military jacket and performed a synchronized march across the stage during the song’s bridge with her backup dancers dressed as a marching band. She ends the performance by getting “shot” and collapsing on the floor along with the band; a pantomime skit follows in which her dancers revive her and force her into a new outfit to perform “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart“.

Critical Reception

In reviews of its parent album, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” received critical acclaim, and many identified it as one of the best songs on the album. In a ranking of all 31 songs from THE ANTHOLOGY edition of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, Billboard ranked “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” in first place, with writer Jason Lipshutz considering the song “another Taylor Swift post-breakup takedown for the ages” and “the beating heart” of the album as a whole. Naming the song a standout track, Ryan Fish of The Hollywood Reporter wrote “It’s perhaps the cruelest and most direct Swift has ever been on one of her breakup/revenge songs.” Alex Hopper of American Songwriter and Callie Ahlgrim of Business Insider both chose it as a standout song on the album, as did Mary Siroky of Consequence and Mary Kate Carr of The A.V. Club. Caroline Darney of USA Today selected it as the sixth best song on the album; she and Grace Wehniainen of Bustle both opined that the bridge was among the best of her career. Nate Jones of Vulture ranked it the 30th best song of her 245-song discography, dubbing it an “old school Taylor Swift knife to the heart.” Jones and Lindsay Zoladz of The New York Times both named the track her best breakup song since “All Too Well” (2012).

Other critics highlighted the song’s intense lyrics and delivery. Chris Willman of Variety placed the song at 25th in his ranking of the 75 best songs by Taylor, writing that it was her most scarring since “Dear John” (2010) and praising its “epic” bridge. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone opined that the song could be retitled “The Angriest Song I’ll Ever Write” for its heated interrogation-style questions and described it as a new perspective of her previous work. Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of the Financial Times lauded the song as a “quietly venomous piano assassination.”

Commercial Performance

When THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT was released, tracks from the album occupied the Top 14 of the US Billboard Hot 100; “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” opened and peaked at No. 14 and made Taylor the first artist to monopolize the Top 14 of the chart. It debuted and peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard Global 200. It peaked at No. 16 in Australia, making Taylor the artist with the most entries in a single week with 29. Elsewhere, the song charted within the Top 20 in New Zealand (17), Canada (18), and Ireland (19), and reached the singles charts of several other European countries.

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Was any of it true?
Gazing at me starry-eyed
In your Jehovah’s Witness suit
Who the fuck was that guy?
You tried to buy some pills
From a friend of friends of mine
They just ghosted you
Now you know what it feels like.

[Chorus]
And I don’t even want you back
I just want to know
If rusting my sparkling summer was the goal
And I don’t miss what we had
But could someone give
A message to the smallest man who ever lived

[Verse 2]
You hung me on your wall
Stabbed me with your push pins
In public, showed me off
Then sank in stoned oblivion
Cause once your queen had come
You’d treat her likе an also-ran
You didn’t measure up
In any measurе of a man

[Bridge]
Were you sent by someone
Who wanted me dead?
Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?
Were you writing a book?
Were you a sleeper cell spy?
In 50 years will all this be declassified?
And you’ll confess why you did it
And I’ll say, “Good riddance”
Cause it wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden

[Outro]
I would’ve died for your sins
Instead I just died inside
And you deserve prison, but you won’t get time
You’ll slide into inboxes
And slip through the bars
You crashed my party and your rental car
You said normal girls were “boring”
But you were gone by the morning
You kicked out the stage lights
But you’re still performing
And in plain sight you hid
But you are what you did.
And I’ll forget you but
I’ll never forgive
The smallest man who ever lived.