Tolerate It

Tolerate It — Taylor Swift (2020)

"Tolerate It" appeared as the fifth track on Taylor Swift's eighth studio album evermore, released on December 11, 2020, through Republic Records. The album itself arrived as a companion piece and follow-up to folklore, which had been released just five months earlier in July 2020. Where folklore had surprised the music world with its quiet, indie-folk aesthetic, evermore deepened and extended that sonic territory, and "Tolerate It" was widely regarded as one of the most emotionally devastating entries in a collection already notable for its emotional depth and lyrical craft.

The album was recorded during the ongoing global health crisis of 2020, when performance schedules, promotional activities, and social life had all been disrupted, creating conditions that Swift and her primary collaborators found generative for a certain kind of inward-looking creative work. evermore was produced by Aaron Dessner of the National and Jack Antonoff, who had both worked on folklore and whose production sensibilities were central to the austere, textured sound that defined both records. Aaron Dessner produced "Tolerate It" specifically, building a piano-centered arrangement that supported Swift's vocal performance with spare, intentional care.

"Tolerate It" did not receive a commercial single release but circulated widely on streaming platforms from the album's release date, accumulating substantial plays driven by the enormous listener base that evermore attracted. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in its first week, making Swift one of the rare artists in history to place two number-one albums within the same calendar year. That achievement was unprecedented in the modern streaming era and reflected both the quality of the material and Swift's extraordinary commercial position in contemporary popular music.

The song appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 as part of the album's general streaming activity during its debut week. Like many tracks from both folklore and evermore, it benefited from Swift's ability to mobilize a large, engaged fan base that consumed complete albums rather than merely individual singles, a consumption pattern increasingly rare in the streaming era. The Hot 100's eligibility rules for streaming-driven entries meant that album tracks with significant first-week plays could chart alongside conventionally promoted singles.

Critical reception for "Tolerate It" was exceptional, with numerous reviewers identifying it as a standout among the album's already strong track listing. Publications including Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian praised the song's emotional precision and the vulnerability of Swift's performance. The track earned particular attention for its literary quality, with critics comparing its construction to the short story or lyric essay forms in ways that reflected the album's generally high critical estimation. evermore won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 64th Grammy Awards in 2022, and "Tolerate It" was frequently cited as one of the songs that justified that recognition.

Swift performed "Tolerate It" live during her subsequent touring activity, including performances that incorporated elaborate staging to visualize the song's narrative. The song became a fan favorite at those performances, generating emotional responses that Swift and her team documented and acknowledged. Its reputation continued to grow through the subsequent years of her career, particularly as the folklore and evermore period became increasingly recognized as a creative high point that demonstrated her capacity for serious artistic ambition beyond commercial calculation.

The album's creation during a period of global disruption gave tracks like "Tolerate It" a particular resonance with listeners processing their own difficult circumstances in 2020 and 2021. The introspective quality that Swift and her collaborators achieved across both pandemic-era records spoke to an audience that was itself being turned inward by circumstance, and the emotional sophistication of the material met that audience with something worthy of the moment. "Tolerate It" embodied that meeting as fully as any song on either album.

When Swift released evermore (Taylor's Version) as part of her project to re-record her back catalog and reclaim ownership of her masters, "Tolerate It" received renewed attention alongside the rest of the album's material. The ongoing project, which Swift had publicly committed to following disputes over the ownership of her original master recordings, kept her earlier catalog in active cultural circulation and introduced songs like "Tolerate It" to new listeners who encountered them through the re-recorded versions.