On February 4, Taylor Swift won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album and Album of the Year for Midnights. In her acceptance speech, she announced a new studio album that she had worked on since 2022, titled The Tortured Poets Department. Swifties counted the days and speculated about songs till its release two months later.
Swift released her album The Tortured Poets Department, April 19, just 18 months after her last album Midnights. This album consists of 16 songs from “Fortnight” to “Clara Bow”. Two hours after the initial release, she dropped 15 more tracks in The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.
The Tortured Poets Department is a lyrical-centric album. Swift has a way with her words and expresses many emotions throughout all her music. Her lyrics, such as “I hate it here so I will go to secret gardens in my mind,” from Swift’s song “I Hate it Here” captures themes of loneliness and escapism. Overall her music encapsulates different things that happen in her life which many listeners can relate to. Swift uses her writing abilities to get through emotions as she says in A Message From Taylor in the Apple Music You Don’t Get to Tell Me About Sad Songs playlist.
The lead song in TTPD is “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone. Swift opened up about the meaning of the song in her Amazon Music Commentary. “‘Fortnight’ is a song that exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout this album, one of which being fatalism — longing, pining away, lost dreams,” she explained in the Amazon Music voice note to her fans. I interrupt this song as someone who wasn’t able to get their dream and lost the person they loved most.
My personal favorite song from the album is “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”. This song shares her struggles of being a performer and what it’s like to perform when you are going through something. “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting, more” is a very powerful lyric that Swift uses to convey her feelings. This touches me as someone who is a performer. When I’m going through a rough time, I still am able to keep up my performance.
In the 15 added songs, there are many relatable songs such as “So High School”. This song describes an adolescent relationship that brings older listeners back to feeling like they’re in high school. Everybody knows the ideal high school relationship and that giddy feeling. Being a highschooler currently, I can see this dynamic between different people. Many people dream of this and she conveys it with her poetic words.
Overall, The Tortured Poets Department has a lot of raw emotion and depth. I would rate this album a 10/10 as someone who loves Taylor Swift.
