Two months ago, receiving Grammys for Midnights, Taylor Swift announced her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, to be released on April 19 2024. However, it was only just before the album’s release that she revealed the surprise within the promised surprise;
“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past two years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs.”
Yes, we have a double album now – a total of 31 songs, on love, dating, heartbreak, depression and believably Swift’s exes. She has managed to not only produce a double album in less than 16 months, after her last album Midnight’s release in October 2022, but has also made them extremely relatable with lines that stab us like jewels in the sand.
The Tortured Poets Department has two guest appearances – of the American rapper Post Malone in Fortnight and the rock band Florence and the Machine, led by Florence Welch, in Florida.
The album is co-written by Swift’s longtime collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner. It uses synthesizers and other electronic instruments simultaneously with live instruments like guitar and piano for music, in an effort as noted by many critics, to bring together the glossy pop rock, the “intimacy of Folklore and Evermore” (Rolling Stone) and the “understatement of Midnight” (The Guardian).
The sophisticated music of the album is only accentuated by the lyrics that are often both symbolic and relatable to the dating mise en scène of this new-media age. They mirror Swift’s own tug of war with dating, break-ups, and the ‘anxious’ thirties, and speak for us who are still trying to figure it all out, like her, probably also under the thirties’ pressure of getting settled. It is a solace we all can hold onto in our common chaos.
Whether it is the dilemma in I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) which ends ironically in “Woah, maybe I can’t”, or the feigned pride in I Can Do it With A Broken Heart, in which some lines read: “They said, ‘Babe, you gotta fake it ‘til you make it’ and I did”, or “I’m so depressed, I act like it’s my birthday everyday”, they hit you with the right measure.
Swift has also addressed the toxicity and abuse that has pervaded today’s dating arena. In ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’, the lyrics turn metaphorical as she tries to address them, like, “I’m queen of sand castles he destroys” or “Left all these broken parts/ Told me I’m better off”’.
In Down Bad, where the lyrics goes like, “I’ll build you a fort on some planet/ Where they can all understand it/ How dare you think it’s romantic”, it becomes a much direct accusation of “hostile takeovers” and “indecent exposures”. Also, in But Daddy I Love Him, Swift harshly criticises people for plunging into her privacy and judging it.
It is not so surprising to see how keenly the album has been welcomed by the Swifties. Shauna McElligott, doing her Master of Arts in English at the University of Galway, finds it “relatably wise”.
“It’s really impressive that she released 31 songs! I really related to thanK you alMee, and how she is reminiscing on the pain, trying to find the silver lining,” she says. “It’s not my favourite, just because some of her previous albums have been the definition of perfection for me, like Red and Folklore, and they are hard to top!”
Rebekah O’Reilly, who has helped in setting up the University of Galway’s Swiftie Society – “Ireland’s first society dedicated to Taylor Swift”, finds it to be “a departure from the manicured image of Taylor that we are used to seeing.”
“She touches on themes of alcohol and drug abuse, as well as controlling relationships, even going so far as to take aim at her fans for invading her privacy. It appears that Taylor is trying to reshape her narrative once again – with TTPD achieving the angst that many fans would’ve expected of 2017’s reputation album,” she said.
Aksha K Raju, another Taylor Swift fan of our university says, “I Can Do it With A Broken Heart lyrics along with Swift’s current achievements during her break-up period is like a wake-up call to all the broken hearts. I could just understand the pain and the strength she was trying to pull out. Focusing on her career was the best decision she made and she did win our hearts.”
TTPD, as we all know, is now a record-breaker. It has achieved the highest single-day streams for an album on Spotify, surpassing Midnights and has the largest pre-order sum in the history of Target to its name. Swift will resume her Eras Tour next month in Europe with shows scheduled in Ireland, on June 28, 29 and 30 at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium.
