By Bridget Griminger
I will preface this controversial article with the assurance that I am a Taylor Swift fan, and I also have the ability to make complicated and nuanced takes regarding her music. I don’t love the album, but I love Taylor Swift, and those two things can co-exist.
I cannot help but look at The Tortured Poets Department from the perspective of an evermore fan, who values romanticizing sadness through poetic nonsense and literary references. I had hoped, after Midnights, we might return to the bygone era of acoustic indie depression. However, I knew my hopes were foiled when I saw Jack Antonoff’s name, and steeled myself for synth-pop. What I ended up with, at the end of 31 songs, were some high highs and low lows. The best and worst Swift has to offer.
The title track, “The Tortured Poets Department,” has a truly heinous line, “You smoked, then ate seven bars of chocolate/ We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist/ I scratch your head, you fall asleep like a tattooed golden retriever.” Absolutely abhorrent. Relatable, at the beginning, but devolves into madness. “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” cuts itself short before it can really get off the ground, and “So High School” has the infamous line “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto.”
These flops, which should’ve been weeded out as they finalized the album, overshadow the more interesting and substantial works. “So Long, London” is a fantastic track five, with “You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days/ And I’m just getting color back into my face,” as she watches her relationship succumb to the pensive melancholy that once bonded them. A surprise fan favorite, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” with the scathing bridge culminating in “You kicked out the stage lights, but you’re still performing/ And in plain sight you hid/ But you are what you did/ And I’ll forget you, but I’ll never forgive/ The smallest man who ever lived.” Small lines that stick out like “With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you’d learned/ ‘Cause love’s never lost when perspective is earned” (“Peter”) or “Pick your poison, babe, I’m poison either way” (“imgonnagetyouback”). The entirety of “The Prophecy.”
The song, “loml”, “Dancing phantoms on the terrace/ Are they second-hand embarrassed/ That I can’t get out of bed/ ‘Cause something counterfeit’s dead?/ Our field of dreams engulfed in fire/ Your arson’s match, your somber eyes/ And I’ll still see it until I die/ You’re the loss of my life” is a personal favorite. However, what could’ve been my top song, “I Hate It Here,” is sullied by the polarizing line about a game with her friends picking a different decade to live in, “I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists/ And getting married off for the highest bid/ Everyone would look down ’cause it wasn’t fun now.” I mean. I agree. But it pulls you out of the song abruptly, ruining the moment like she ruins the game. It was an odd choice.
I love Taylor Swift, and I love loving Taylor Swift, even as she falls in and out of public favor on an hourly basis. I know she’s fun to hate, and either everything she does is perfect or terrible, and this album annoys me because it’s neither. It has beautiful lyrics hidden in otherwise inconsequential songs, or almost-hits until she offhandedly says something that makes you cringe. You can cry as she examines her role as an icon in “Clara Bow,” and dance as she does the same in “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.” She speaks of love as an alien encounter in “Down Bad,” or a prison sentence in “Fresh Out the Slammer.” She reflects on how fame has changed her (“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me”) and takes the opportunity to drag Kim Kardashian, as she sings about a childhood bully, specifically not cluing her identity, then turns around and titles it “thanK you aIMee”, capitalizing KIM. She touches on break-ups, sex, whirlwind romance, drugs, fame, identity… but she doesn’t really come to a conclusion about any of them.
As with Midnights, there’s less cohesive storytelling than fans have come to expect. The song to sum up this album is “How Did It End?” with the line “Come one, come all, it’s happenin’ again/ the empathetic hunger descends,” an underrated song about how she knows that she’s famous for her breakups, and everyone’s on the edge of their seats to understand the end of her recent six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn, but she, herself, doesn’t even understand it. And, at the end of 31 songs, the listener is still only a fraction closer to understanding it, too. However, it’s still fresh. I didn’t like Midnights until almost a year later, and some of the TikTok edits using TTPD are making me appreciate it more.
Someone said that Taylor Swift is like the Marvel Cinematic Universe- there’s more and more content, and you only really care and engage with it if you’ve been there since the beginning to understand the lore. If you’re not interested in easter eggs, loose ends, the marauders (iykyk), or Taylor Swift herself, there’s very little here for you. It’s just not the best music of her career. And if you’re as polarizing as Taylor Swift, you can’t afford to not be the best. Nonetheless, take some time to form your own opinion. It’s worth a listen.
the paper 