Since the news of Taylor Swift’s new album broke at the 2024 Grammy Awards, April 19 has been the most important date on my calendar (although graduation day is perhaps a close second). Published at midnight, the 16-song album “The Tortured Poets Department” (TTPD) was followed at 2 a.m. by the surprise release of “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” adding 15 more songs and bringing the total listening time to over two hours. Some listeners protested, some rejoiced and all wondered: How do you reckon with such abundance?
If TTPD were a romance between music and listener, it would be a slow burn. The first time you meet, you aren’t quite sure what to think of it. You want to love it at first sight, but you don’t know each other well enough yet. By the time you reach the end of the 31 songs, you’re overstimulated, your brain oversaturated to the point where you can’t digest another frothy lyric of lost love. But like a priceless wine, heartbreak and maybe Swift herself, some things improve with time.
On your second, third and hundredth listen, TTPD will grow on you.
The first half of the anthology comes out roaring with a poppy, processed sound that is unmistakably reminiscent of “Midnights.”
Is it trying too hard? Maybe. In a song that is half “Mastermind,” half “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” Swift proclaims “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” The use of footage from her record-shattering Eras Tour as the Spotify visual for the song makes lines like “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting, ‘More’” even more potent. Heavy on the sparkles, this song is more striking than subtle.
More nuanced is the haunting “So Long, London,” whose opening church bells turn out to have been alarm bells. Swift’s foregrounded vocals, densely-packed verses and gut-punch bridge (“And my friends said it isn’t right to be scared / Every day of a love affair / Every breath feels like rarest air / When you’re not sure if he wants to be there”) make the song a stand-out from the first listen.
Maybe all the other poets went to die at the lakes, but Swift is as alive as ever. Lyrically, the piano ballad “loml” proves that Swift has earned the title of TTPD chairperson, rhyming “legendary, “momentary,” and “cemetery” and weaving in the words “waltzing” and “embroidered” between clever lines like “better safe than starry-eyed.” The song’s final twist transforms the implied L-word with the devastating reveal that “you’re the loss of my life.”
Beyond the sadness, there is anger (perhaps unsurprising, given that the album was promoted using playlists based on the stages of grief). The much-discussed “Florida!!!,” whose triple punctuation is viscerally palpable in the heavy beats of each chorus, imagines bodies sinking in the swamp, recalling both Swift’s revenge anthem “no body no crime” and the marshlands of the novel-turned-film “Where the Crawdads Sing,” for which Swift wrote “Carolina.” Guns, pistols and the verb “die” circulate freely across tracks. The first half of the album presents every emotion in its strongest form, undiluted as a splash of blood.
The second half of the album stays truer to its muted sepia color scheme, more evocative of the stripped-down sister albums “Folklore” and “Evermore.” The latter 15 tracks meander through Swift’s reinventions, offering something for every era of fan. Indeed, Swifties will adore unpicking the smattering of more specific callbacks to her previous works. In a reversal of the scarf Swift left in her ex’s care in “All Too Well,” TTPD’s title track opens with the line “You left your typewriter at my apartment.” (Given the album’s bookish promotional aesthetic, more of this breed of English major-esque content would have been welcome). Musically, “But Daddy I Love Him” echoes old-Taylor country era, as does her white dress in the Spotify visual, while certain TTPD lyrics respond to her earlier writing (think the admission in “So Long, London" that “I’m not the one” versus “it would’ve been fun if you would’ve been the one” in “the 1”).
For all its callbacks, TTPD cannot be accused of being stuck in the past. The album is decidedly of its decade. The moment in “The Black Dog” when Swift wincingly watches her ex’s location (“you forgot to turn it off”) is a uniquely 21st-century phenomenon. Her double mentions of “Kens” (in “Hits Different” and “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”) and the line “he took me out of my box” can’t read the same after last summer’s “Barbie.” Even the “Clara Bow” reference to “a full eclipse” feels specific to 2024. This contemporary specificity feels new for Swift, who so often strives for timelessness.
If TTPD were a poem, it would have to be an epic. Truthfully, though, the 31 songs could use some editing. Some lines are clunky (“You take my ring off my middle finger / And put it on the one people put wedding rings on”), others goofy (“We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” or “my friends all smell like weed or little babies”). “Fresh Out the Slammer” tops my list for songs to cut, while Swift’s explosively controversial wish to live in “the 1830s but without all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid” ruins the otherwise beautiful “I Hate It Here,” a grown-up, melancholic version of “seven” in which Swift declares, “I’ll save all my romanticism for my inner life.”
It seems the validation of Swift’s crowning as TIME’s 2023 Person of the Year has opened her up to taking more risks. Her lyrics are playful (“I’m havin’ his baby / No, I’m not, but you should see your faces”), unabashed (first-name references to friends — and enemies — abound) and creative (“My beloved ghost and me / Sitting in a tree / D-Y-I-N-G”). Even for an industry trendsetter, her choice to buck tradition by not releasing singles and then daringly doubling her track count is telling. In the last year, Swift has effectively taken over the world. For her, there are no more rules. In a drop-kick answer to the question “what would you do if you could do anything?,” TTPD responds simply: "Everything.”
Acadia Klepeis ’24 (she/her) is an Arts & Culture Editor.
She is an English major and a French and Francophone Studies minor. Last year, Cadi studied literature in Paris and in Oxford through Middlebury’s school abroad programs. She spent this past summer working as a communications intern for the Vermont Arts Council. Previously, she completed internships with Tuttle Publishing, Theatre in Paris, and Town Hall Theater. Cadi is also on the board for Middlebury College Musical Theatre.
