The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

"The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift from her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department (2024).

Described as a breakup song and a diss track, it begins as a simplistic piano ballad that features blinking programming before assuming a rock sound with distorted vocals in the bridge.

Music critics lauded "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived" for its intense lyricism; several of whom picked it as a highlight from the album and one of the best songs in Swift's discography.

Commercially, it reached number 18 on the Billboard Global 200 and the top 20 on the national charts of Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States.

Taylor Swift announced her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards on February 4, 2024.

[16] The lyrics describe a man in a "Jehovah's Witness suit", who shows the narrator off then ghosts her and attempts to buy drugs from her distant friend.

[17][18] She bombards the subject with a series of questions in the 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?

[14] Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone opined that it 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.

[38][39] "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived" additionally reached the national charts of Australia (16),[40] New Zealand (17),[41] Canada (18),[42] Ireland (19),[43] Greece (28),[44] Portugal (31),[45] and Sweden (60).