And they were right: Swift released the 16-song record Friday at midnight Eastern, then two hours later, at 2 a.m., announced a surprise: It was actually a double album titled “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” with 15 additional songs. (We can only imagine how much Swift mocked people who thought they got the better of her when the first half was leaked on Thursday.)
It was a fitting addition for a project that repeatedly reminds listeners that they don’t really know the pop megastar behind the scenes — and that she’s been through quite the journey to deal with the complexities of fame. Here are the main things to know about the album.
Yes, a major theme is grief
From the title, one might guess that there would be a lot of angst on the record, in addition to some track listings alone: ”I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”, “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)’, as well as ‘So Long, London’ – the latter being the fifth track, which all Swifties know is a place she saves for her most personal songs. Ahead of the release, Swift created a series of playlists for Apple Music that categorized songs from her discography according to the five stages of grief.
Swift delivers lyric after lyric of devastating heartbreak: “You swore you loved me, but where were the clues? / I died at the altar waiting for the proof,” she sings on “So Long, London.” And on “LOML,” commonly used on the Internet for “love of my life,” she changes the words to “waste of my life.”
She drops (a few) clues about the subjects of her songs
Swift rose to fame as a teenage country singer when she hid clues in the liner notes about real boyfriends and crushes in her lyrics. This practice stopped when she became a global superstar — but as usual, fans are already hard at work dissecting who, exactly, Swift is singing on these tracks. (“I had written so much tortured poetry over the past two years and I wanted to share it all with you,” Swift job on social media Friday.)
The obvious assumption before the album’s release was that many of the songs would be about British actor Joe Alwyn, who Swift dated for six years before announcing their breakup in April 2023. But upon hearing the lyrics, the Instead, fans saw more obvious references to Matty Healy, lead singer of British band The 1975, with whom Swift was romantically involved for a few months last year. (People magazine, for example, note than on “Guilty as sin?” (she names Blue Nile, Healy’s favorite band.)
Swift, who gave very few details about the timeline for “Tortured Poets,” said she began recording it after finishing “Midnights” (presumably late 2021 or early 2022) and continued throughout throughout the Eras tour launched last spring. So it’s unclear whether the timing would have worked for her to include her relationship with Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce — but there are a few lines on the theme of sports in “The Alchemy”.
Swift isn’t happy with opinions about her relationships
Although Swift and Healy were spotted together on several occasions and he showed up at a few of her concerts, they never confirmed that they were an item. Still, many people were upset that Swift was associated with the controversial singer, given that he has been criticized for offensive comments over the years, such as laughing and agreeing to a podcast when a host made racist comments on rapper Ice Spice. Some fans started a campaign called #SpeakUpNow that called on Swift to speak out and condemn her behavior.
Swift hasn’t spoken publicly about Healy, but by Friday morning, listeners were already drawing the line between public outcry and her lyrics about “But Daddy, I Love Him.” Swift had harsh words for outsiders who judge her: “God save the most judgmental fools who say they want what’s best for me / Morally performing soliloquies that I’ll never see, thinking that can change the beat of my heart when he touches me. »
“I’ll tell you something about my reputation,” she sings, “It’s mine with all the shame.”
Swift is still dealing with her complicated feelings about fame
While there are many benefits to being one of the most famous and richest celebrities on the planet, it can also ruin your life. Swift has touched on this theme before and continues on “Tortured Poets.”
“You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me,” she mocks in “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”, later adding: “I was docile, I I was sweet until circus life made me naughty.”
Another track, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” seems to be about how she performed even through heartbreak on her record-breaking Eras tour: “By breaking down, I hit the ground, all the pieces of me shattering as the crowd chanted ‘More!’ » Meanwhile, the final song of the first half of the album, “Clara Bow”, references the early 20th century silent film actress whose personal life was heavily scrutinized by the tabloids.
She buries the axes but keeps maps of where she puts them
It’s Swift’s way (on the 2017 song “End Game”) saying she holds grudges — something that’s still true today. She absolutely screws over an anonymous ex in “The Littlest Man Ever” (I would have died for your sins, instead I’m just dead inside / And you deserve prison, but you won’t get no time “).
The second half of the album is filled with songs titled with proper names: “Cassandra,” “Robin,” “Peter,” “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus.” But one of them is called “Thank you Aimee,” stylized as “thank you aIMee”… which fans immediately recognized as spelling out “Kim,” also known as a longtime Swift nemesis known as Kim Kardashian. The song is peppered with expletives directed at Aimee, leaving no confusion about how she feels about a certain person.
However, in a brief statement on Instagram, Swift wanted to let her listeners know that she had no plans to look back any longer, describing “Tortured Poets” as “an anthology of new works that reflect historical events , opinions and feelings of an ephemeral time”. and fatalistic moment – a moment both sensational and painful in equal measure.
“This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and barricaded. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once the wounds are healed,” Swift continued. “And upon reflection, many of them turned out to be self-inflicted acts. This writer firmly believes that our tears become holy as ink on a page. Once we tell our saddest story, we can free ourselves from it.
