Overall Rating: 9/10
Three months after the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), Taylor Swift announced her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. After much anticipation following its announcement at the Grammys, the album was released on April 19. Shortly after the album was released at midnight, two hours later, Swift released the surprise second volume, The Anthology, shocking many fans. TTPD debuted atop the Billboard 200, and made Swift the first artist to have the first fourteen spots of the Billboard Hot 100 with her own songs. Despite charting at the top, the album received mixed reviews— some praised Swift’s songwriting, while others found the album to be lacking. But I am here to answer: how good is The Tortured Poets Department?
The album kicks off with “Fortnight,” the first single of the album, and a collaboration with Post Malone. I think that this song is my personal favorite off of the album due to the well-made music video and the song’s lyrics. The music video was released on the same night as the album, and the visuals in it were beautiful. If you haven’t watched it yet, I recommend that you do. The lyrics are just as beautiful. One line in particular that made my jaw drop was, “My husband is cheating, I wanna kill him.” I immediately paused the song and couldn’t help but wonder, could this lyric also be taken from her personal life? The song itself is comforting—despite the dark lyrics, the instrumental had a slow pace to match the melancholic vibe. I would love to listen to it for the first time again.
Next up is “The Tortured Poets Department,” the track that the album is named after. “The Tortured Poets Department” did not capture my attention at first, but the song slowly grew on me. The song expresses Swift’s self-awareness of her current relationship, reflecting on whether it’s healthy or not, as well as acknowledging that her partner and her are just normal people in a relationship, nothing special.
Five more songs that I overlooked on my first listen were “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “Fresh Out The Slammer,” “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” “Clara Bow,” and “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” I can’t deny that these songs are beautifully crafted. The slow pace combined with the dark lyrics did eventually grow on me, but they simply didn’t stick out to me. Would I listen to these songs again? Yes. But will they be my go-tos? No.
Moving on to the songs that broke my heart, I can’t fail to mention “So Long, London” and “loml.” I believe that these two songs are the most heartbreaking ones of the album. The beginning of “So Long, London” made me so emotional, as it incorporated wedding bell-like sounds into the instrumental. This clever touch made me interpret the message as Swift wanting to get married, but then coming to terms with the fact that the person just wasn’t the right one. This message is further supported by her repetition of the line, “So long, London, you’ll find someone.” Next, “loml” in my opinion, is even sadder than “So long, London.” First, when thinking of the acronym “loml” you might think of “love of my life,” but the meaning of it in Swift’s song is actually “loss of my life.” Swift is expressing that the person she broke up with is actually the most beloved thing she lost. In the track, she describes a relationship that she thought would last forever, but only ended up as a chapter in her life.
Despite this album being a bit more mournful, there are upbeat songs as well. These include “Down Bad,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “Guilty as Sin,” and “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” All of these tracks are songs you can vibe to, and I really enjoy these additions as they contribute to the album’s complexity, expressing how Swift copes with heartbreak.
The songs that grew on me as I listened to them more would be “Florida!!!” and “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can).” When I heard “Florida!!!” I was not really captivated by it, but it was the bridge that made me come back to this song. It expresses Swift’s desire to go to Florida to forget everything that affected her— a way to run away from her problems. I recently came to like “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” as Swift expresses how she is the one for her lover, believing she’s the one who can change him. But sadly, the last line of this song was “maybe I can’t,” signifying that Swift has accepted her fate and that she is not the one for him.
The last song to talk about for this album is “The Alchemy” —the only actual love song, in my perspective. Swift uses alchemy as a metaphor for the relationship between two people, demonstrating that chemistry is unstable and that alchemy only moves to make things better. This relates back to Swift’s personal relationship, how her lover is the reason why she’s managing everything that’s going on right now in her life. My favorite lyric from this song would be “Where’s the trophy? He just comes running over to me” as Swift is expressing that her lover sees her as his biggest achievement in his life rather than an item.
The second volume of the album, The Anthology, did not captivate me the way previous songs did. But, some songs worth mentioning would be “Imgonnagetyouback,” “The Albatross,” “I look in people’s windows,” “Cassandra,” and “The Bolter.” Despite these songs having the same vibe around them, they each have their own unique story. For example, “The Albatross” depicts the warnings her partner received about her – “She’s the Albatross, She is here to destroy you.”
The Tortured Poets Department was such a unique album to listen to, but did it make it to my top five of Swift’s albums? Yes, it actually did. This album perfectly captured all sorts of emotions such as anger, mourning, and humor. I can understand why some people think it’s lacking as all the songs have a similar vibe and beat around them. However, this album is not the upbeat pop album that 1989 is. The Tortured Poets Department is an album that takes time to grow on you.
