The Tortured Poets Department
all the things I haven't stopped thinking about since April 19
Hello, friends! I’m putting this out there in the world fully recognizing that it won’t be for everyone. So, if you don’t want to read 2,500 words about Taylor Swift, by all means, just scroll right on by. But if you’re interested in the very intense English Major Energy I’ve brought to my listening of this new album, this is for you. ;)
At the Festival of Faith & Writing (FFW) earlier this month, I attended a session with poets Kaveh Akbar and Christian Wiman. The moderator asked Wiman about the ways his newest book, Zero at the Bone1, does not hold to one particular genre. Wiman said she was right about that—while he’s never thought his work fit neatly into genre categories, this book in particular involved many different forms. He said, “I wanted to create a whirlwind of a book,” something that “encompassed everything I was thinking at the time.”
As I write this today, we’re two weeks out from FFW and one week out from the release of Taylor Swift’s eleventh album, The Tortured Poets Department. I’ve avoided reading reviews and critique of the album so far (memes not withstanding), because I wanted to simply enjoy it and solidify my own thoughts. Still, I know the initial critique is Taylor should have edited more. Thirty-one songs is a lot. The quality is maybe uneven and the sound not as tight as her previous work. Some of it feels repetitive; there are moments when the word or phrase she’s chosen doesn’t seem to fit quite right into the melody or rhythm. That’s all fair enough.
But as I listened to the album over the past few days, I was reminded of Wiman’s words: This album is a whirlwind. What else could be appropriate? Taylor has been living a whirlwind of a life—and her romantic relationships and heartbreaks are only one small sliver of it.
Taylor’s fanbase (and culture at large) has demonstrated an insatiable appetite for anything and everything Taylor provides: music videos, a pop-up exhibit, short films, 3 entire hours of live performance (which many have watched repeatedly on TikTok, live in person in multiple cities or even on multiple continents, in movie theaters, and streaming), songs from the vault, re-recordings, remixes…it doesn’t matter. No matter how much art or how much content she produces, her people eagerly and enthusiastically consume it. Taylor does not operate according to supply and demand principles. In the past, she metered out her offerings—keeping songs in the vault, removing herself from social media, and staying out of the public eye. I imagine eventually the pendulum will swing back again, but if you’re Taylor in this moment, what motivation do you have for holding back? We know from experience that if she wanted to release a precise, measured, sculpted album—she would. In many ways, Midnights was that album, and she got her record-breaking fourth Album of the Year Grammy. TTPD is something different. If Midnights was a memoir, TTPD is the journal you keep on your nightstand.
Another thing that happened at the Festival of Faith & Writing is that I met some on-line writer friends in person, including Rachel. Rachel is such a fun follow and provides all manner of fun and thoughtful Swiftie content, from poems and essays to themed cocktails. At FFW, I couldn’t wait to chat with her about all things Taylor, and she said one thing in particular I haven’t stopped thinking about: Taylor is deconstructing.
While The Eras Tour may have been a necessity born of the COVID-era, it gave Taylor the opportunity to dive into her entire catalogue—to revisit, refresh, and honor it. In advance of and in the midst of the tour, she’s also been rerecording her earliest albums, and no doubt she looked at each of them and their content with a critical eye. (One example of this is the lyric change in the song “Better than Revenge.”) On tour, she’s played 82 shows so far with 43 songs each, plus more than 100 “surprise songs,” giving each album its own time in the spotlight. (Except her debut, which has been left out, but that’s a conversation for another day!) She burns the metaphorical house down every single night. Most recently, she started performing mash-ups during the surprise set. Then, in the ramp-up to the TTPD release, she released five Apple Music playlists that more-or-less shuffle her catalogue together, grouping songs from multiple eras and albums according to the five stages of grief.2 She’s holding it all in her hands, and taking it all apart, and shaking things up (or off).
Push the reset button, we're becomin' something new
… bygones will be bygone eras fading into gray
we broke all the pieces but still wanna play the game.—”imgonnagetyouback,” track 18 on TTPD
One of the things I love most about TTPD is that the four very distinctive sounds Taylor gave us in Lover, Folklore, Evermore, and Midnights (the four new albums she released since her last major tour and since leaving big Machine Records) each seem to find a home here. I love how the juxtaposition and paradox help meaning shine through. The best example of this is “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” It’s the TTPD song that would seemingly fit best on Lover, ironically, and despite its upbeat glittery gel-pen vibes, it is painfully sad. Even the two guest appearances on TTPD (Post Malone and Florence and the Machine) work to bridge Taylor’s musical sensibilities. It may seem like she’s just thrown 31 songs up against the wall to see what sticks, but Taylor is Taylor. She’s letting the eras be bygones, practicing melding the different aesthetics and styles she loves, to great effect.
Now that we’re almost 1,000 words into this (ha!), let’s talk about the boyfriends and the break-ups. I, too, have spent untold minutes over the past few days texting and chatting with friends about Joe Alwyn vs. Matty Healy, and ugh, I’m annoyed with myself at this point. Let’s be clear—who Taylor dates is the least interesting thing about her. But if the medium is the message, I think there’s something to unpack here. I won’t go into all the details about her relationships because people who care already know—but the fanbase believed in a particular timeline and narrative when it came to Joe Alwyn, Matty Healy, and Travis Kelce. The storytelling Taylor does on TTPD blew that narrative all the way up. It’s not just deconstructed; it’s pretty much destroyed.
So much of her songwriting has always been about her relationships—and she’s never been afraid of specifics. One of my favorite things about listening to Taylor’s music is to deep-dive into the storytelling: noticing symbols and motifs, looking for themes across albums, catching the connections. And now we have 31(!) new songs that intentionally and dramatically disrupt the narrative we thought she was writing. TTPD reveals that Taylor controls the narrative even more tightly than we initially thought; we only know what she wants us to know, when she wants us to know it. Thus, the theme of this entire album and all its associated content! (Did you notice all the books that appeared burned in the Spotify library?) I, for one, am thoroughly enjoying the process of listening back to the past several albums in light of this new narrative she’s telling.
But the most surprising thing about this album is not the Matty Healy content. It’s the way she comes after her fanbase. (I’m using “fanbase” broadly but specifically referring to the more extreme segments of that group—the kind of people who take to the internet to unleash their bitterness and unreasonable expectations.) Let me be abundantly clear: the criticism Taylor lobbies here is well-deserved. I will never, ever forget scrolling through comments in a Facebook group after she went public with Healy and being shocked by the vitriol. (There were people, for example, swearing to never listen to her music again until she broke up with him, and those were the nicest comments.)
These songs are, ultimately, about a woman: her desire, her emotion, her heartbreak, her work. Maybe we feel uncomfortable with the intense levels of anger, despair, and desolation we hear in these songs, so we distract ourselves by obsessing over which details refer to which relationship. But I think we’re all collectively missing the point if that’s where we choose to focus our energy. (I am not immune to this tendency and this critique.)
I am reminded of the prologue from 1989 (Taylor’s Version), where she writes the following:
You see — in the years preceding this, I had become the target of slut shaming — the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today. The jokes about my amount of boyfriends. The trivialization of my songwriting as if it were a predatory act of a boy crazy psychopath. The media co-signing of this narrative. I had to make it stop because it was starting to really hurt.
It became clear to me that for me there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hang out with. If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him. And so I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian Era.3
Over the years, Taylor has so strategically and effectively made the public feel as though she is sharing her personal life with them, and that somehow made people feel entitled for her to behave (and live, and love, and break-up, and speak, and date) in a particular way. The result? An absolutely scathing “But Daddy I love Him.”
I am not trying to imply that Taylor is above critique. I don’t think TTPD is as lyrically poetic or interesting as Folklore, Evermore, or Midnights. I do think the 31 songs vary in quality, and I worry that the sheer volume of songs will distract from the handful that are some of her best ever. (Also, I don’t believe there’s a such thing as an ethical billionaire, so….) The album is not for everyone, Taylor Swift is not for everyone, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend that Taylor is somehow unaware of the affect she has or unaware of what she is or isn’t accomplishing with this album (or any other). She knows. Whatever criticism someone might lob at this album, Taylor has already addressed it in the songs themselves.
I know I’m just repeating myself. / Everything comes out teenage petulance. / Too high a horse for a simple girl to rise above it. / I’ll tell you something about my good name: it’s mine alone to disgrace. / I was tame, I was gentle, 'til the circus life made me mean. / Everyone would look down ‘cause it wasn’t fun now. / A greater woman stays cool, but I howl like a wolf at the moon.
As a writer and as someone who dabbles in creative nonfiction, I am kind of fascinated by the way Taylor controls the narrative so tightly. At the same time, she so strategically and effectively makes the public feel as though they are begin given access to her personal life, like a splayed open diary. This has made her vulnerable, and this album illustrates better than any other that she’s also been hurt. There are plenty of artists who choose toughness and aloofness in their work, but Taylor is not one of them.
I’ve often said (drawing on the insight of many writers before me) that I write to know what I think, and I guess that’s what I’m trying to do here, as someone for whom this album resonates deeply (even while I understand some of the critiques and recognize the ways it falls short of some of her other work).
As someone whose own narratives about so many things (church, faith, politics…) have been crumbling for quite some time, I am finding deep resonance here. (Watch as “But Daddy I Love Him” becomes an anthem for ex-evangelical women and “I Hate It Here” for millennial moms trying to survive in the 2020s.) There is something about watching Taylor do what I’ve tried to articulated here—somehow honor her past while not being afraid to scorch it, never afraid to evolve—that I find resonant and permission-granting.
The two ideas I heard over and over again at the Festival of Faith & Writing were, “Everything is connected,” and “Be honest.” It’s a message I hear again in The Tortured Poets Department, and it’s a message I can’t get enough of in this season.
Taylor chose the cyclone, and I love this whirlwind of an album.
I’m excited to tell you that I am now participating in Bookshop.org’s affiliate program! That means that if you purchase a book I’ve linked to from Bookshop.org, I’ll receive a small commission. This feels like a small way to invest back in the time I spend writing (at no additional cost to you), and I appreciate your support in that way!
Except for her debut album and Reputation, which are the only albums still awaiting their “Taylor’s Version” rerelease. No surprise she left them out—she doesn’t want a single extra penny directed toward those originals.
Note the reference to the “Victorian Era,” and think about the dress she wears in the “Fortnight” music video, keeping in mind that 1989TV was released in August 2023, just a month after breaking up with Healy (again), and well into the period when she was writing TTPD. I also think it’s worth noting that later in this note, she makes reference to “golden retriever puppies,” similarly to how she refers to someone (presumably Healy) as a “tattooed golden retriever” in TTPD’s title track.
Well done, Lindsey. This was insightful and fun!