Taylor Swift releases yet another lyrical masterpiece of an album: The Tortured Poets Department on April 19, 2024. In true Taylor fashion, she also released a second album a mere two hours after the original: The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology with a total of 31 tracks in all.
These albums take a more mature stance on “post-breakup hurt” Swift has written so much about early in her career. Lots of songs in the album focus on adult Taylor revisiting her recent failed romantic relationships with Matty Healy and Joe Alwyn.
“Song Long, London” (track five of the album) represents this narrative well. Swift masterfully blends metaphors of exhaustion and emotional despair to paint the ultimate picture of heartbreak. This song feels personal, almost as if the listener is in the head of Swift after her breakup with longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn.
This is a theme across seemingly all the tracks; this album is Swift’s most personal work yet. The Tortured Poets Department is certainly more gloriously chaotic than any of her previous albums or songs, and she does not hold back from her emotions in the slightest.
This is evident in “thanK you aIMee” which is almost an outright diss track on Kim Kardashian. Lines like “There’s a bronze, spray-tanned statue of you,” “I wrote a thousand songs that you find uncool / I built a legacy that you can’t undo,” and “Your kid comes home singing / a song that only two of us is gonna know is about you” makes it very clear she struggled with a hatred for Kim and her ex-husband Kanye.
This song had a very different sound from the rest of the album. The country soundscape was reminiscent of her teenage country work while adding a brand new vulnerability and strength to her lyricism.
“thanK you aIMee” touches on resilience, personal growth, and the forever impact of conflict.
Another song that stood out to me was “So High School” hinting at her recent relationship with football star Travis Kelce. I wasn’t expecting a song about their relationship on the album, but it adds a nice touch of love and romantic energy amongst the large amount of breakup songs on the album.
However, the downfall of the album is the almost identical sound from track to track. It’s a very monochromatic feeling across the 31 songs. Jack Antonoff has become one of Swift’s most consistent collaborators since 2020, and Antonoff produced 16 sounds off The Tortured Poets Department in all.
Each of the tracks Antonoff produced sounds the same: hollowed-out percussion, the same typical piano chord progression, and a synthetic pop vibe Antonoff is known for.
This takes away from Swift’s storytelling-like lyricism and makes the majority of the album hard to listen to through its entirety. I found myself becoming bored or confusing a few songs with one another.
Despite the similar sound, this album is a great representation of Taylor’s growth over the past few years that ultimately highlights her differences when handling romantic failures.
I do wish there were more unique songs on the album, but this album overall has been a big hit amongst the Swiftie community with Swift becoming the first artist with a the top 14 sounds on the Billboard Hot 100 and the highest number of streams in a week with a total of 892 million on-demand streams.
