what's a tortured poet anyway? ew!

Wow. I start this review on April 19, 2024. Being a swiftie for the last 24 hours has been a whirlwind. As many know, I’ve been a die-hard swiftie for over a decade. I cannot stress enough how excited I was for this album. I listened to the first 16 tracks of the album with my mom, and I could not believe my eyes when the 2 am countdown ended and I saw that it was a double album with fifteen new tracks. I plan to write a separate review for the second album, which I’ve dubbed The Anthology (the full double album is called The Tortured Poets Departement: The Anthology). But let’s get into this one!

The Tortured Poets Department is an album about managing your life in a large period of shifting. While Midnights (2022) took place in the past, Tortured Poets is very much in the present. When it isn’t, she’s either rekindling the flames of old flings or processing how fame changed her. The album is covered with themes of religion and coping with a sheltered way of being raised while in the spotlight. What results is a witty record full of lines about self-esteem, with few even remotely upbeat songs.

Sonically, The Tortured Poets Department is kind of like what Folklore (2020) might be if Jack Antonoff was the only producer – but there truly isn’t any past album of hers that you can compare it to. It has upbeat songs that are somewhat reminiscent of 1989 (2014) or Lover (2019) (“The Alchemy”, “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”, “The Tortured Poets Department”) and synth production like that of Midnights (2022) (“Fortnight”, “Fresh Out the Slammer”). However, a better way to describe the songs would be more akin to Lorde’s Melodrama (2017) (one of my favorite albums of all time, by the way) – more specifically the tracks “Perfect Places” and “Homemade Dynamite”.

In terms of specific production, Aaron Dessner contributed to some of the best songs on the album, while Antonoff had the more boring ones (sorry Jack, I just got a little bored of your synths after the first three songs, I’ll elaborate more on that later). Overall, The Tortured Poets Department is a great, emotionally raw, and slightly messy (but in a good way) album.

On the album cover, Swift is depicted lying in bed with her eyes out of the frame, cradling herself with her arms. She appears distraught, but the bed provides a sense of comfort.

“Fortnight (ft. Post Malone)”

This is one of the best openers I’ve ever heard for a Swift album. Despite being near the bottom of my ranking, it got me excited for the record, which I think is more important. Swift does not waste any time with a lengthy intro (her norm) before singing, even calling herself an alcoholic in the first few lines. I was intrigued.

“Fortnight” is essentially about a fortnight-long relationship and having to pretend nothing ever happened afterward. The song was a little hard for me to follow at first. Unlike some of Swift's other works, it's written in a slightly unconventional lyrical style. For instance, I had a hard time following what Swift was saying in, "I was a functioning alcoholic till nobody noticed my new aesthetic/all of this to say, I hope you're okay, but you're the reason" the first few times. The flow of the chorus is also a little messy. I completely misheard the lyrics at first because I expected each individual thought to be much longer for how the melody flows. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though - it just might throw off people who listen to music solely for lyrics and can't keep up. Plus, Jack Antonoff’s synths are already feeling tired by the time the song has ended.

Otherwise, Post Malone is great on this song, and combining that and the synth-pop sound, it’s a perfectly good choice for a lead single.

My favorite lyric: “All my mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February/I took the miracle move-on drug/the effects were temporary/and I love you, it’s ruining my life” – One of my favorite Swift songs is “Illicit Affairs” (2020). This feels like an update to it's second verse (with the lyric, “A drug that only worked the first few hundred times”) but with more emotions I relate to.

Taylor Swift and Post Malone are depicted together on the single cover for "Fortnight".

“The Tortured Poets Department”

Trigger warning: lyrics mentioning suicide

This song begins to foreshadow some of the wit Swift sneaks into this album. My favorites in this song are, “I think some things I never say, like ‘who uses typewriters anyway?’” and “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate/we declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist”. The song appears to detail a fling – complete with intense attachment (“Who’s gonna love you like me? No-f***ing-body”) and a spiraling bridge.

In this bridge, Swift sings, “You told Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave/and I had said that to Jack about you so I felt seen” (appearing to refer to Lucy Dacus and Jack Antonoff). She details further manipulation with, “You’re in self-sabotage mode, throwing spikes down the road/but I’ve seen this episode and still loved the show”. Emotional manipulation sets a tone for what Swift grapples with on this album.

My favorite lyric: “I laughed in your face and said ‘You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith/this ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots'" – you know those guys who think they’re so interesting for liking old music and that you’re going to worship them for it? Despite Smith and Dylan being poets (so it isn't exactly the same) this feels so directed at those boys. Listen to what you want to listen to, but it doesn’t make you special.

“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”

This is the most Melodrama song I’ve ever heard that wasn’t on Melodrama. As an avid fan of Lorde, I adore it.

Lyrically, the hook reminds me of when young women are told that their bullies are mean because they like them. The naïve hopeless romantic might fall for this and start the cliché enemies-to-lovers downward spiral, but Swift feels as if it happened the other way around for her. Swift realizes she’s being broken by someone who “saved” her (“stole my tortured heart”), but she’s in denial (“you should’ve seen him when he first saw me”). She loves him to the point that she defends him like a doll you can pull a string for to recite predetermined lines, “Pull the string, and I’ll tell you that he runs because he loves me”. She sadly explains the intense love stopping her from coming to her senses, “He was my best friend down at the sandlot/I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens cause he took me out of my box”. She feels like a child with rose-colored glasses.

I highly doubt this was intentional, but this song contains a really interesting lyrical parallel to a Maisie Peters song. In Peters’ 2023 track, “The Last One”, she sings, “You were seeing castles, they were seeing sand/they’re never gonna get it, no, they’ll never understand/but I believe in you, I’m your number one fan”. Meanwhile, Swift sings, “I’m queen of sandcastles he destroys”. Combining these, it’s as if Swift is saying he was a bit delusional going for her, but she believed he saw her for the beautiful things no one else noticed about her, so she fell for him and was then too shocked by the betrayal to leave at first. By the end of the song, however, she sings, “(He) left all these broken parts, told me I’m better off, but I’m not”. She has come to her senses. Despite this combined meaning not being intentional, it makes the lyric so much more interesting.

My favorite lyric: “Once I fix me, he’s gonna miss me/just say when, I’d play again” 

“Down Bad”

I am in love with this song because it sounds like summer. Opening with a riff with a sound that reminds me of songs on Camila (2018) by Camila Cabello, it starts off feeling like a casual summer day. There’s a meme that represents songs with a happy sound and devastating lyrics, and this song embodies that. Swift sings over an upbeat track, “F*** it if I can’t have him/I might just die, it would make no difference”.

In the verses, Swift discusses feeling love bombed. She confirms this in a statement for iHeartRadio, explaining, “The metaphor in 'Down Bad' is that I was... being... love bombed, where someone rocks your world and dazzles you and then kind of abandons you... like 'Wait, no. Where are you going? I liked it there, it was weird, but it was cool, come back.'"

One of my favorite lyrical parallels on this album is with "New Romantics" (2014). In the 2014 track, she sings, "Please leave me stranded, it's so romantic". In "Down Bad", she sings "How dare you think it's romantic, leaving me safe and stranded". She shows growth in how she perceives love with age, leading to the discombobulation of the scenario.

The big punch of this song is, "F*** it, I was in love, so f*** you if I can't have us".

My favorite lyric: "They'll say I'm nuts if I talk about the existence of you" - in her iHeartRadio segment, she also compares the emotions in this song to an alien abduction. This person gave her an otherworldly experience and then brought her back to Earth. When she talks to people afterward, they think she's crazy for being hurt, which makes her feel more alone.

A Polaroid of Swift posted on Instagram by Jack Antonoff, captioned, "The day we made down bad".

“So Long, London”

Opening with echoey vocals reciting the title of the song, “So Long, London” reminds me of “My Tears Ricochet” (2020). The theme of the song kicks in with the line, “How much sad did you think I had in me?” She spends the verses detailing how hard she tried to make a relationship work, but she wasn’t strong enough (“my spine split from carrying us up the hill”).

She spends a large amount of the song explaining that she doesn’t understand how her lover didn’t expect this ending. She sings, “Just how low did you think I’d go (before) I’d self-implode?” The song thematically is like “Someone Like You” by Adele. Swift spends the post-choruses saying how much she loved the city and how she wishes the best for it.

She parallels the 2022 track “You’re Losing Me”, singing, “I’m just getting color back into my face”. In “You’re Losing Me”, in comparison, she sings, “My face was grey, but you wouldn’t admit that we were sick”.

Honestly, I found this song relatively boring. It’s gut-wrenching, but there’s nothing particularly monumental about it. I might like it more one day when faced with similar emotions to those tackled in this song.

My favorite lyric: “I’m just mad as hell cause I loved this place for so long” – I might not understand this full song, but I felt this line so heavily.

“But Daddy I Love Him”:

We’ve gone back to 2008, and I’m happy about it. This is a more mature “Love Story”. It discusses religion and being sheltered. While pop, it has an extremely country sound, which I love as someone who fell in love with country music before pop. Swift’s character falls for someone out of rebellion and is determined for her parents to approve. She finally gets her way when she says she’d give anything to be with him. Sparkled with backing vocals and instrumentals similar to that of Swift’s earlier music, but with more curse words and wittier lyrics, “But Daddy I Love Him” is the older version of “Love Story”.

As she explains in her 2020 film, Taylor Swift: Miss Americana, Swift feels as if she was frozen at the age she became famous. This is referenced with the line, “Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all”. It's a bit ridiculous how upset her family is about her relationship choices when she’s a full-grown woman in her 30s, perfectly capable of making her own decisions. This song explains the depth of the issue of getting stuck at a young age.

My favorite lyric: “I’ll tell you something ‘bout my good name, it’s mine alone to disgrace"  – the ultimate thing for a teenager to tell their parents. Is it even a completely incorrect statement?

“Fresh Out the Slammer”:

This song didn’t first catch my attention when I heard it. It’s a song about ending an imprisoning relationship (a slammer is another term for prison) and returning to an old fling. I like that the chorus contains nostalgic lyrics, like “Now, pretty baby, I’m running back home to you” but Swift spends a lot of this song listing things – a songwriting tactic I’m not a personal fan of.

I like “Fresh Out the Slammer” and can’t deny that. I think it’s a good song for this album. But the melody feels relatively boring in every non-chorus part. Where I like the melody, I love it, but otherwise, I don’t feel as if it helps this song truly stand out. This was how I felt about the Midnights (3am Edition) track, “High Infidelity”. It has a couple of lyrics and parts I love, is the perfect length for what it is, and is otherwise perfectly good for its album but doesn’t add much.

My favorite lyric: “At the park, where we used to sit on children’s swings wearing imaginary rings” – I have memories of sitting on swings with everyone I’ve ever been friends with, so I find this so sweet.

A Polaroid Antonoff posted of Swift on Instagram, captioned, "fots day" ("fots" is an acronym for "Fresh Out the Slammer").

“Florida!!! (ft. Florence & the Machine)”:

One of the strongest songs on the record, “Florida!!!” will never face a shortage of compliments from me. I adore the lyric, “Little did you know, your home’s really only a town you’re a guest in”. Then, the drums on the chorus. To die for.

It's also just a humorous, witty song. I would expect nothing less from Swift and Florence + The Machine (with the little I know of their music). It’s about going to Florida after being heartbroken and embracing it for its party culture. They use humor to play on the “Florida man” meme and the state being largely comprised of swamps, with, “My friends all smell like weed and little babies”, and, “I did my best to lay to rest all of the bodies that have ever been on my body/and in my mind, they sink into the swamp/is that a bad thing to say in a song?/little did you know, your home’s really only the town you’ll get arrested”.

The vocals are simply stunning. There is one adlib at 2:27, where Swift sings, “It’s a hell of a drug”, and it's addictive (pun unintended). Florence Welch (the lead singer of Florence + The Machine) sounds incredible on it. I hope this song will lead to me listening to more of their music.

My favorite lyric: “Yes, I’m haunted, but I’m feeling just fine” – love when those feelings co-exist, or rather, co-manipulate.

A photo posted by Antonoff on Instagram of Swift and Welch, captioned, "Florida".

“Guilty As Sin?”:

I was so pleasantly surprised by this song! I had been confused by the title going into the track. I had not predicted the religious themes of this album, so the title had felt out of place, but it’s so good.

The most sensual song on this record, “Guilty As Sin?” appears to be about shame around both having sexual fantasies and thinking romantically of someone who has a bad reputation while dating someone else (although "bad reputation" is potentially an understatement considering that this is rumored to be about Matty Healy, who I’m not well-versed on the persona of, but who Swift got a lot of bad press for having a fling with last year).

Sonically, this is a classic-sounding Swift song. With a more country melody in the chorus, the sound is comforting. It’s slightly boring, but in the most perfect way. Its strengths are in its lyrics. From, “Am I allowed to cry?” to “Someone told me, ‘there’s no such thing as bad thoughts, only actions talk’” to “What if the way you hold me is actually what’s holy?”, the lyrics are never lacking.

My favorite lyric: “They don’t know how you’ve haunted me so stunningly; I choose you and me religiously” – so devastating yet so romantic.

“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”:

Wow! The fan favorite (mine too) of the album, and for a good reason. This is like the “I Did Something Bad” of The Tortured Poets Department. If the line, “You don’t get to tell me about sad” doesn’t get listeners interested, the scream of a vocal on the hook the first time it plays certainly will. And it’s powerful too. “Who’s afraid of little old me? You should be”, like, hello?

Like 2020’s “Mad Woman”, Swift spends a perfectly reasonable amount of time blaming society for the persona they gave her, “You caged me and then you called me crazy/I am what I am cause you chained me” (with incredible drums playing in the background, by the way). She also parallels that track’s lines, “It’s obvious that wanting me dead has really brought you two together”, “Do you see my face in the neighbor’s lawn? Does she smile, or does she mouth ‘f**k you forever’?” and “They say, ‘move on’, but you know I won’t” with, “If you wanted me dead, you could’ve just said", “Isn’t that what they all said? That I’ll sue you if you step on my lawn” and, “Say they didn’t do it to hurt me, but what if they did?”

The saddest part of this song is that people will laugh at Swift for it. I’ve seen a couple of interesting analyses of this album, and many explain how this is Swift’s most brutally honest work. She isn’t trying to be a better person than she is – she’s acting like a normal, flawed human being, and it’s beautiful. Some of the most powerful emotions can’t be displayed without coming off as dramatic, which is why this song works so well.

My favorite lyric: “I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me/you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me” – the most brutally blunt lyrics that hit the emotion right where they need to.

Swift pictured in the Tortured Poets album photoshoot.

“I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”:

Considering that this song covers the topic of being disgusted by disturbing men, I would’ve thought I would resonate with it more. Maybe if the hook had been something other than being about fixing someone, I would. But alas, I try not to associate myself with people who’re always making disgusting jokes (“The jokes that he told across the bar were revolting and far too loud” – my favorite line in the song). I would also like it more if the hook (the same as the title) wasn’t followed up with “And only I can”.

None of this is to say I need to relate to a song to like it – because I do like it. It has a great melody. It has an interestingly simple production compared to the rest of the album. I love the ominous, dangerous-sounding production, and the flow of the chorus is addicting… 

They shake their head saying, “God help her”

When I tell ‘em he’s my man

But your good Lord doesn’t need to lift a finger

I can fix him, no, really, I can

But the delusion of being able to fix someone comes off awkwardly. After ten albums across eighteen years, something about Swift being so hellbent and convinced she can fix a messed-up person feels out of place. But even if I put that aside, there are other things I don’t like about the song, like the line in the bridge, “Good boy, that’s right, come close/I’ll show you Heaven if you’ll be an angel all night”. In the past, I’ve had a hard time agreeing with critical swifties for calling some of Swift’s lyrics cringey, but this one is just so hard for me to get behind.

“loml”:

I hear this like an update to “New Year’s Day” (2018). A fully piano track, “loml” is devastating. Swift starts the song by saying how her ex-lover called her the love of his life, and she ends the song by calling him the loss of her life. Obsessed.

While “New Year’s Day” might be the most similar song Swift has released, it reminds me most of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Logical” (2023). Another fully piano track, both songs have the singers brutally call out their exes in the bridge. Both songs are so rich in good lyrics that I don’t even know how to properly break them down.

Since I can’t do that, there’s one lyric I want to relate to one of my own lyrics. One of Swift's lyrics is, “The coward claimed he was a lion”. While this lyric didn’t make it into one of my songs because not enough people understood it, “His confessions are eye-rolls/he acts like mine are lions” was almost a lyric in a song I recorded last year. Even though Swift’s version doesn’t mean the exact same thing, I love that the concept got a chance to live after all.

My favorite lyric: “Are they second-hand embarrassed that I can’t get out of bed cause something counterfeit’s dead?” – There aren’t enough songs about second-hand embarrassment in how relationships end. I wrote a song about this once.

“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”:

By far the coolest song on this record. Have you seen those TikToks that play what artists hear in their in-ears when on stage? This song is played over one of those types of tracks, complete with countdowns to new sections of the song. The way the beat works, it sounds in the chorus like she’s singing her thoughts while performing, interrupting her sad spiraling occasionally to say things like “smile”. In the second verse, she navigates the pain with the amazing line, “I keep finding his things in drawers/crucial evidence I didn’t imagine the whole thing”. Meanwhile, the in-ear track is decorated with sounds of chanting backing vocals (as if fans are singing along) and photo-snapping.

My favorite parts are how Swift talks at the end as if she’s speaking to an audience – laughing, incredulous – and how the instrumentals sound like they were recorded at a concert. I love live versions of songs, so I’m obsessed with this song.

My favorite lyric: “I cry a lot, but I am so productive, it’s an art” – distracting yourself from sadness by working is so real.

Swift performing on the tour the events of "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart" occur during.

“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”:

If “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” was this album’s “Mad Woman” in lyrics, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is this album’s “Mad Woman” in sound, as well as its “Dear John” (2010), “All Too Well” (2012), and “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” (2022).

This song is pure despair. Also rumored to be about Matty Healy, it’s made more brutal by having happened right after breaking up with Alwyn. Swift feels as if her reputation (the one she fought for in “But Daddy I Love Him” and “Guilty as Sin?”) has been destroyed by a fling with someone she thought she could trust. Beyond that, there isn’t much to say, so I’ll leave you with the bridge, which I could not even pick a favorite lyric from,

Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?

Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?

Were you writing a book?

Were you a sleeper cell spy?

In fifty years, will all this be declassified?

And you'll confess why you did it and I'll say, "Good riddance"

Cause it wasn't sexy once it wasn't forbidden

I would've died for your sings, instead, I just died inside

And you deserve prison, but you won't get time

You'll slide into inboxes and slip through the bars

You crashed my party and your rental car

You said normal girls were boring

But you were gone by the morning

You kicked out the stage lights, but you're still performing

“The Alchemy”:

I’m sure this song is amazing if you adore football, but I don’t. In fact, my disliking of it runs kind of deep. I hate the little football puns. Like, “When I touch down, call the amateurs and cut ‘em from the team”? I hate that. Even worse, “These blokes warm the benches/we’ve been on a winning streak”. By “blokes” being a British term, Swift could be referring to Alwyn and Healy, which would be iconic if it wasn’t just kind of unnecessary. Overall, I have a hard time not finding football puns anything other than incredibly corny. They’re clever lyrics, but there’s a such thing as a clever lyric that isn’t good. I know it’s hard for me to say this about Taylor Swift, of all people, but I just cannot get behind these lyrics.

My favorite lyric: “He jokes that ‘It’s heroin, but this time with an E’” – this made me like Travis a little more, even if I would cringe if I were told this.

Clara Bow:

Screaming, crying, throwing up. Similar to other albums I’ve reviewed like Gracie Abrams' Good Riddance and Lana Del Rey’s Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd?, The Tortured Poets Department ends with a new love and an emotional final track that summarizes, in a way, who the artist is. Swift does this so well. Comparing the song's subject to Clara Bow, Stevie Nicks, and herself, Swift sings, “Promise to be dazzling”. In the bridge, she advises her subject, “It’s hell on Earth to be heavenly, them’s the breaks, they don’t come gently”. For those who don’t understand that last part, it means “That’s just the way things are”.

“Clara Bow” is a gorgeous, slower song and holds so much power coming from Swift – currently the most famous artist in the world, having nearly 20 years of longevity under her belt. The album ends on a high note, with the line, “The future’s bright, dazzling”. This is one of my favorite songs on the entire double album.

My favorite lyric: “This town is fake, but you’re the real thing” – regardless of whether we all know superstars or not, this is the epitome of those people who are just the coolest people you know. They don’t care about what people think, and they’re so good at it.

Old Hollywood star Clara Bow

To end this review and pre-lude into a potential review for The Anthology, I have a few critiques for Swift. Firstly, I hope this album is the last one where Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner are the main producers. Every time I hear a new album Swift and Antonoff work on together, I feel like it’s going to take me at least five times looping each song before I can tell them apart. Dessner, meanwhile, relies on acoustic instrumentals, but lately, they sound so fake. I don’t have an issue with computer-generated sounds (considering how the industry thrives off of them in today’s day and age) if that’s what he’s using, but he makes them sound so unnecessarily unnatural. He’s done so much amazing work with Swift, and it’s hard to believe they’ve been working together for four years now and have done four albums together (even more including re-records), but it feels like Swift needs to leave this musical phase.

Lastly, I love Swift, and this album already feels like an instant classic, but I think she should've taken a moment longer to sit with each draft of this album before she put it out. I think it would’ve hit a lot better if it was released even a few months closer to autumn – with more well-thought-out lyrics, more time to figure out how to condense the full anthology into fewer tracks, and a seasonal vibe better fitting the emotions on this album. I assume she's planning to release re-records later this year and wanted this out of the way, but I think a re-record would've been a better choice for this spring.

Now that I have that over with, I want to deeply thank Taylor Swift for this album. It's an incredible work of art, and I am so excited to hear these songs performed on Eras Tour, whether she adds them to the setlist or keeps them as surprise songs. The Tortured Poets Department and The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology are available now on all streaming services.

Some other lyrics I love but didn't mention:

“I touched you for only a fortnight, but I touched you”

“Who else decodes you?”

“You should’ve seen him when he first got me”

“God save the most judgmental creeps who say they want what’s best for me”

“All the wine moms are still holding out, but f**k ‘em, it’s over”

“I dream of cracking locks, throwing my life to the wolves or the ocean rocks”

“You don’t get to tell me you feel bad”

“Is it a wonder I broke?”

“I’m fearsome and I’m wretched and I’m wrong”

“If you know it in one glimpse, it’s legendary”

“You said I’m the love of your life about a million times”

“Lights, camera, bitch, smile even when you wanna die/he tsaid he’d love me all his life but that life was too short”

“I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday every day”

“I’m miserable and nobody even knows”

“All your life, did you know you’d be picked like a rose?”

“No one in my small town thought I’d see the lights of Manhattan”

“Beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours, demanding more”