Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album, The Society of Tortured Poets, revealing just three hours after its release that it is a surprise double album.
The pop titan’s latest record, announced earlier this year when she won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album (midnight),was released on the night of Friday April 19.
Physical copies of the LP feature a prologue/poem written by legendary Fleetwood Mac star and solo singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks, a longtime champion of Swift, and an epilogue written by Swift herself.
In a five-star review of the album, The Independents critic Helen Brown praised the “playful narratives” and “anchor-like hooks”.
“In keeping with the album’s literary (if ungrammatical) title, Swift is here at her most piercing polysyllabic form,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that Swift “broke” Spotify, with Downdetector showing huge spikes in outage reports starting around 5:30 a.m., about 30 minutes after Swift’s album was released on the streaming platform. The streaming service appears to be working at the time of writing.
Follow live updates for reactions, reviews and reveals on the album so far.
‘Thank you my love’
Now it’s Kim’s turn! That’s right, it seems Swift wrote a song especially for the Kardashian star, with the song title “thank you aIMee” in all lowercase aside from the letters “K, I, M.”
There are plenty of allusions to Swift and Kardashian’s long-running feud, which was sparked after the reality star leaked a phone conversation that appeared to show Swift approving of lyrics by Kardashian’s husband, rapper Kanye West, for his single “Famous”.
“All that time you were throwing punches, I was building something,” she sings. “And I can’t forgive the way you made me feel/I screamed ‘Fuck you, Aimee’ into the night sky, as blood spurted/But I can’t forget the way you I got healed.
Swift also mentions her mother, Andrea Swift: “Everybody knows my mother is a holy woman/But she said she wished you were dead.” »
She later apparently references a viral TikTok of Kardashian and West’s daughter North dancing to the pop star’s hit song “Shake It Off” on TikTok, a song that Swift now suggests was written at About Kardashian.
“And maybe you reframed it,” she sings. “And in your mind, you never beat my black and blue mind/ I don’t think you’ve changed much/ And so I changed your name and all the real determining clues/ And one day your child comes home at home singing/ A song only the two of us will know is about you.
Swift’s famous Kardashian branding as a “snake” led the pop star to take a long hiatus due to the backlash she received. She was later vindicated after the full conversation proved that she did not approve of West rapping “I made that bitch famous” on the track, which West and Kardashian had claimed she had.
“My career was taken away from me,” Swift said Time in an interview for his 2023 Person of the Year award.
“You have a completely fabricated frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, that Kim Kardashian edited and then released to tell everyone I was a liar. It took me psychologically to a place I had never been before.
“I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t move out of a rental house for a year. I was afraid of receiving phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I no longer trusted anyone. I went down really hard.
Roisin O’ConnorApril 19, 2024 10:40 a.m.
In which songs does Swift refer to Matty Healy?
Fans are now scrambling to dissect the meaning of the songs The Department of Tortured Poets, with the title track, as well as songs such as “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, “Loml”, “But Daddy I Love Him”, “Fresh Out the Slammer” and “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”, all interpreted to talk about Healy. She also appears to reference him on “The Black Dog”, from the extended version of the album.
Here’s a look at the references we’ve spotted so far:
Roisin O’ConnorApril 19, 2024 10:21
Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt perform the duet “Barbenheimer” on Taylor Swift’s song in the “SNL” monologue
Roisin O’ConnorApril 19, 2024 10:01
On “Guilty as Sin?” Swift sings about “fatal fantasies” for someone from her past who sends her the 1989 song “The Downtown Lights” by Scottish band The Blue Nile.
Healy has previously mentioned that The Blue Nile is his “favorite band of all time” and that the 1975 song “Love It If We Made It” was inspired by “The Downtown Lights.”
Fans wrote an open letter in April urging Swift to “reflect on the impact of your own behavior and that of your associates.”
In “But Daddy, I Love Him,” Swift appears to respond to this criticism of her romance with Healy.
She sings: “I’d rather burn my whole life/ Than listen to one more second of all this bitching and whining/ I’ll tell you something about my reputation/ It’s mine with all the shame/ I Don’t worry about all these vipers dressed as empaths.
Roisin O’ConnorApril 19, 2024 09:40
“The Black Dog”
On “The Black Dog,” Swift shouts out another of Healy’s favorite bands, the pop-punk band The Starting Line. The 1975 covered their 2002 track “The Best of Me” on tour last year, days before Swift and Healy were first spotted holding hands.
She sings: “I just don’t understand how you don’t miss me/ In The Black Dog when someone plays The Starting Line/ And you jump, but she’s too young/ To know that song/ That was intertwined in the magic fabric of our dreams.
Roisin O’ConnorApril 19, 2024 09:22
How Taylor Swift takes aim at Matty Healy in the tortured poet department
Fans who were expecting an accounting of the musician’s six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn were in for a surprise, as Swift appeared to spend more time dissecting her brief fling with the 1975 frontman.
Roisin O’ConnorApril 19, 2024 08:45
Travis Kelce says his relationship with Taylor Swift is ‘a wild ride’
Roisin O’ConnorApril 19, 2024 08:36
When did Matty Healy and Taylor Swift date?
Swift and Healy were first briefly linked in 2014. Although neither party confirmed it at the time, Swift appears to reference it in the song “loml,” as she sings, “Who will keep us from waltzing into rekindled flames/If we know the steps anyway/We have embroidered the memories of my absence/Couture: ‘We were only children, baby.’
They met backstage in Los Angeles in November 2014, at a concert in 1975; Swift was there with Ellie Goulding and Selena Gomez. A few months later, Healy dismissed rumors that they were dating, calling them “ridiculous.”
Things were relatively quiet over the next few years, as Swift dated Calvin Harris, Tom Hiddleston, and then her longtime boyfriend, now ex, British actor Joe Alwyn.
But then Swift made a surprise appearance at a 1975 concert in early 2023, where she performed her song “Anti-Hero” live for the first time.
She and Alwyn reportedly split in April. A month later, fans are stunned as she and Healy appear to make public appearances as a couple, with Healy flying from the Philippines to Nashville to watch Swift play her first Eras concert in the city.
They are seen together, apparently on a date, at Casa Cipriani on May 11.
However, just a month later, it was reported that Swift and Healy ended their brief relationship. The Sun reported that things were “back on track” in July, but that was quickly shut down in a report released the same day by “sources close to Swift’s team,” as well as sources close to The 1975 .
Swift spends quite a bit of time unpacking this brief relationship on The Department of Tortured Poets, including in “The Littlest Man Ever”, where she appears to allude to Healy “ghosting” her.
“You tried to buy pills/From a friend of friends of mine,” she sings. “They just ghosted you/Now you know how it feels.”
Roisin O’ConnorApril 19, 2024 07:42
So we have 15 more songs on “The Tortured Poets Department”
Honestly, no one does it like Taylor. Three hours after release The Department of Tortured Poets, BAM, there you go, it’s a surprise double album, so here are FIFTEEN ADDITIONAL SONGS. Damn it.
First there’s ‘The Black Dog’, probably a reference to the Vauxhall pub (fun fact, I’ve been there). It’s a moody piano-based track, on which Swift sings in her most fragile falsetto about how an ex walks into the pub after forgetting to turn off his phone. It’s quite heartbreaking – I want to believe it’s Joe Alwyn, her boyfriend of six years, but the line: “Were you making fun of me/With an esoteric joke” makes me think that It’s Matty Healy. ‘Because you know.
Roisin O’ConnorApril 19, 2024 07:27
LATEST NEWS: The Tortured Poets Society is a secret double album
“It’s a 2 a.m. surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a DOUBLE secret album,” Swift wrote on Instagram.
“I’ve been writing so much tortured poetry over the past 2 years and I wanted to share it all with you, so here is the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 additional songs. And now the story is no longer mine…it’s all yours.
Roisin O’ConnorApril 19, 2024 07:12