My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

"My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" is a song written and recorded by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift for her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department (2024). Produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, it is a synth-pop song featuring pounding drums and elements of new wave. The lyrics are about being abandoned by a love interest, using metaphors and from the perspective of a toy.

Some critics praised the song's catchiness while others were critical of its lyrical structure. The track peaked at number six on the Billboard Global 200 and reached the top 10 on charts of Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, and the United States.

Swift developed her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, "for about two years" after finishing her previous album Midnights (2022). She reflected on The Tortured Poets Department as a "lifeline" for her,^[1] and its conception took place amidst media reports on Swift's personal life and her relationships with Joe Alwyn, Matty Healy, and Travis Kelce.^[2] The album was released on April 19, 2024, via Republic Records.^[3]

"My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" is track number three on the standard edition;^[4] it is one of the two tracks solely written by Swift, the other being "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?".^[5] Swift performed the song live on piano, as a "surprise song" outside the regular set list at the second Paris show of her concert tour, the Eras Tour, on May 10, 2024.^[6] This performance was recorded and included in a limited-time digital variant of The Tortured Poets Department.^[7] A "First Draft Memo" version of "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys", a demo recorded by Swift on piano, was released as a bonus track for another limited-time digital variant of the album on August 3, 2024.^[8] This version contains several lyrics that were trimmed from the album cut.^[9]

Swift produced "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" with Jack Antonoff, who programmed the track and played instruments including bass, drums, electric guitar, and synths; Swift herself played the piano on the song.^[4] The track was recorded by Laura Sisk and Oli Jacobs, assisted by Jack Manning and Jon Sher, at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles and Electric Lady Studios in New York. Mixing was conducted by Serban Ghenea and engineered by Bryce Bordone at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, and mastering was handled by Randy Merrill.^[10] Musically, "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" is a mid-tempo synth-pop song with pounding drums.^[11][12][13] Maria Sherman of the Associated Press described the production as "new wave-adjacent".^[14]

Swift told Amazon Music that "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" was about "being somebody's favorite toy until they break you and then don't want to play with you anymore". She elaborated that the song was about being in denial: "[...] you could live in this world where there's still hope for a toxic, broken relationship."^[15] The lyrics describe Swift's narrator from the stance of a toy being abandoned by her deleterious partner, who avoids rather than addresses his problems.^[16][17] The narrator wishes to revisit a failed romance before its breakup: she addresses how her partner gradually lost his interest in her in the pre-chorus ("But you should've seen him when he first got me") and how the couple gave each other another attempt ("There was a litany of reasons why we could've playеd for keeps this time, I know I'm just repeating mysеlf, put me back on my shelf").^[18][19] The chorus depicts the relationship as unhealthy ("My boy only breaks his favorite toys, toys, oh, I'm queen of sandcastles he destroys").^[20] The lyric, "'Cause he took me out of my box, stole my tortured heart", alludes to the lover being a rebound after a recent breakup.^[21] The song also references Barbie in the lyric, "I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens, 'cause he took me out of my box."^[14]

In Billboard, Jason Lipshutz ranked "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" 17th out of all 31 songs on the double album The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, saying that the song "deserves the stadium treatment" and describing it as a "big, booming song".^[13] The Hollywood Reporter's Ryan Fish described the song as a "poppy earworm".^[22] Vulture's Nate Jones wrote that the song was "sadder than you'd think".^[23] Cosmopolitan's Courtney Young ranked it twenty-sixth in her ranking of the top thirty breakup songs by Swift.^[24] In her initial review, Business Insider's Callie Ahlgrim said the track was sonically reminiscent of the vault tracks from Swift's 2023 re-recorded album 1989 (Taylor's Version), "so this isn't necessarily a knock in my book". She added that the song failed to stand out because it relied on a "fast-dulling formula".^[25] In her post-review article published a week after her initial review, Ahlgrim recategorized the song from "background music" to "worth listening to".^[26] John Wohlmacher of Beats Per Minute said it was one of the "strongest songs" from the album's first half, highlighting its "singalong refrain that plays with up-and-down movements".^[27]

In negative reviews, an anonymous Paste journalist opined that the song "features another low-point in Swift's lyrical oeuvre" and added that Swift was "capitalizing on the Barbenheimer mania that none of us could escape",^[28] while Alex Hudson from Exclaim! said the song was "yet another mid-tempo synthpop plodder".^[11]

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 number six.^[29] In the United States, it debuted at number six on the Billboard Hot 100. The song reached the top ten 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).

Credits adapted from the album liner notes^[10]

• Taylor Swift – lead vocals, piano, songwriter, producer
• Jack Antonoff – producer, programming, drums, electric guitar, bass, Moog, Juno, M1
• Laura Sisk – recording
• Oli Jacobs – recording
• Jon Sher – assistant engineering
• Jack Manning – assistant engineering
• Serban Ghenea – mixing
• Bryce Bordone – mix engineering
• Randy Merrill – mastering
• Ryan Smith – vinyl mastering