Be gentle with the Swifties in your life: They just spent an all-nighter wallowing in “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Not only is the biggest pop star in the world full of poetry, she’s also full of surprises.
The midnight drop of her 11th album, the followup to “Midnights” and her massive Eras Tour, was already set to be the album event of 2024. Sixteen new entries of love and heartbreak with no reveal of what they would sound like.
The Tortured Poets Department Board Meeting, she declared it. Swifties had their snacks, their drinks, their “TPD” bingo cards ready with squares like “Mention of alcohol,” “Mention of a specific date,” “A word I don’t know the meaning of.” They had review sheets to rank the songs and drinking games for details like the mention of a color.
It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album. ✌️ I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine… pic.twitter.com/y8pyDK8VTd
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 19, 2024
Sixteen songs to luxuriate in during the wee hours of a Friday, workday morning.
But, wait.
“It’s a 2am surprise,” Swift posted on social media. “The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album. ✌️ I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.”
“YOU ARE LITERALLY A GENIUS AND MY WORST NIGHTMARE AT THE SAME TIME I LOVE YOU,” replied Taylor Swift Updates.
For the fans, the rest of night, if they were up to the challenge, was spent becoming acquainted with 31 songs that will be their soundtrack of 2024, while fretting about what a bleary-eyed Friday will be like and wondering how on earth she found the time.
“I was supposed to be sent away but they forgot to come and get me,” she opens the album over a stark, rubbery bassline. “I love you, it’s ruining MY life,” she goes on to sing on “Fortnight” before letting the melody swell in a duet with Post Malone.
One song later, on the more uptempo title track, she hits her listeners with this little piece of brilliance, directed at a boyfriend who left behind his typewriter: “I laughed in your face and said/‘You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith/This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel/We’re modern idiots.’”
With that, Taylor got her fans to look up Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith just like Bob Dylan, who wrote in the Chelsea Hotel, got his faithful to seek out Dylan Thomas, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.
There’s much to savor here: the stark elegance of the beats; the breathy beauty of her delivery; the vocal acrobatics with Florence Welch on “Florida!!!”; the barrage of f-bombs on “Down Bad”; the self-reflection on “Clara Bow”: “You look like Taylor Swift in this light / We’re loving it / You’ve got edge / She never did.”
Those looking for some football lyrics will find them on track 15, “The Alchemy,” with its references to trophies and beer-sticky floors and the chorus, “Touch down/Call the amateurs and cut 'em from the team/Ditch the clowns, get the crown/Baby, I'm the one to be.”
In the deluge of tortured poetry, with production and co-writing split between Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, one line really jumps out: “I cry a lot but I’m productive/It’s an art/You know you’re good when you can do it with a broken heart.”
There seems to be a strong connection between the productivity and the broken heart. It’s almost essential in being a member of the tortured poets department.
First Published: April 19, 2024, 11:19 a.m.
Updated: April 20, 2024, 12:55 a.m.
