By Annette Greenberg
Before the release of almost every one of Taylor Swift’s recent albums, there have been clusters of fans convinced that she would release a double album. This strange fan behavior and speculation doesn’t come from pure delusion; Swift is known for being cryptic and unpredictable with the timing of her projects, especially since July 2020, when she surprise-released folklore.
The double album theory actually rang true with her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. The standard version of what Swift described as her “lifeline album” was released at midnight on April 19, 2024 and at 2:00 AM she released fifteen additional songs as part of a collection titled The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. The Anthology songs were mainly produced by Aaron Dessner, whom she worked with on folklore, so the sound is much more bare and the instrumentation is more defined and raw than the synth-pop Jack Antonoff production of the standard album.
The lengthy title of this album is itself a deviation from her previous records, which all had one or two word titles (except 1989). So it’s fitting that the full release ended up including thirty-one songs rather than the expected sixteen. These songs are incredibly intimate and confessional. Swift seems to care less in Tortured Poets about whether her lyrics speak to a broader audience than she has before, placing more emphasis on cathartic songwriting. “Old habits die screaming,” she laments on “The Black Dog,” one of the songs included in The Anthology. Indeed, the lyrics include many references to her other albums, and she seems to be pained by her cemented role as a heartbreak artist. On “The Prophecy,” she describes the fear that she is fated to fail in relationships for the sake of her art. She prays to be relieved from the “tortured poet” role in favor of a stable companionship.
Another recurring message Swift expresses on Tortured Poets is that her audience should know their place. As her fanbase has grown, some people have become quite parasocial in the way they speak about her and her music. In both songs “But Daddy I Love Him” and “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me,” she flippantly references and mocks fans’ obsessive speculation and judgements of her life. “But Daddy I Love Him” is addressed to those fans “sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see” when they disapprove of a personal choice of hers. She reminds the audience that “no, you can’t come to the wedding” – this is a likely reference to a recent incident where crowds swarmed Jack Antonoff’s wedding over reports that she was there, but it’s also a declaration that she wants to be left alone in regards to her day-to-day life; she wants the liberty to keep certain things to herself.
Interestingly, Swift name-checks a great deal on this record, something she’s said in the past that she tries to avoid, but she still doesn’t name the love interests the songs are supposedly written about. While her relationships have gained considerable media attention, I personally never cared for the paternity test that people try to conduct each time she releases new music. I believe it detracts from the beauty and integrity of a song to look for clues about who in the artist’s life the piece is inspired by, and the sentiments of this album suggest that Swift agrees. In “Clara Bow,” the final song of the standard album, she declares that “it’s hell on earth to be heavenly.” Some may interpret this as a lack of gratitude for her success, but the song as a whole is a reflection on the fleeting nature of her level of fame, which the name-checks of previous stars Clara Bow and Stevie Nicks give voice to.
While The Tortured Poets Department is certainly longer than expected and not the most cohesive of Swift’s albums, it is an incredibly honest work, full of conviction and literary references. This record reflects on Swift’s relationship with herself, her past, and her role and image as a singer-songwriter.