Taylor Swift proves precisely why she is hailed as ‘the music industry’ herself with her new album. A lyrically heart wrenching poetically crafted masterpiece (that both broke me and put me back together again in the best yet heart tugging ways) entitled The Tortured Poets Department.
Taylor Swift’s eleventh studio album both broke me and healed me at the same time. Like the poets who escaped to the Lake District in her folklore track ‘the lakes’, Swift has now penned her own lyrical tales of woe, rage and heart in her new double album.
She first announced her latest album, after alluding to it with her beautiful white dress and black gloves, at the 2024 Grammys after winning Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights.
The Tortured Poets Department or TTPD, is a 16 song album accompanied by 15! Extra songs as a double album with The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. This double masterpiece features some of Swift’s most vulnerable and poetic innermost thoughts and stories, with features from Post Malone (on Fortnight) and Florence and The Machine (on Florida!!!). It surpassed one billion streams in its first week on Spotify, according to social media.
I woke up at 5am to listen to the album when it dropped, and for its double album surprise two hours later, and I don’t regret a thing! A surprise double album is insane but also the best thing to happen to fellow Swifties like me. And yes I did have a moment when I heard Taylor Swift say my name in her TTPD: The Anthology song – Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus?
It’s impossible to pick a favourite song from TTPD or TTPD: The Anthology. In my playlists, the songs I have on repeat the most include: Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?, loml (loss of my life), I Hate It Here, The Prophecy, imgonnagetyouback, and Peter:
Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me? We are, Taylor, but in the best way. After the release of The Tortured Poets Departments and its anthology, a new era was added to The Eras Tour setlist. This includes the goosebump inducing, female rage spectacular performance of Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me. The same performance where Swift expresses her anger at those who cast her out. It alludes to Reputation’s I Did Something Bad, where she says ‘they’re burning all the witches’ like herself so they might as well set her alight at the stake, like the old witches’ trials of Salem.
On the stage, Swift performs on a spinning moving platform that makes it looks like she’s really floating, and the angry vocal charge on the track’s line ‘what if they did’ after she asks if they really meant to hurt her in the cruel ways they did. The performance was quickly dubbed ‘female rage the musical’ by fans.
Coming back to the track itself, Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me is a clear statement to all her haters. She’s calling out all her enemies, critics and the media to say why yes, you should be afraid of me and this is why. The track is like a lyrical raging battle cry, reflecting the sentiment that it takes going through a hell of alot to endure something and still fight back, refusing to let them win. In her own words, Swift tells her enemies that they wouldn’t be able to cope if they had to through what they put her through, and how that makes her stronger than they’ will ever be.
‘I hate it here’ has been claimed by readers across social media. In track seven of the anthology, the credits lists Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner. Swift uses a gentle skipping through the wood or reading under a tree melody as she talks about going to ‘secret gardens in my mind’ and how she ‘read about it in a book’, making it the perfect anthem for those looking to escape from reality and into fiction.
It’s the lyrical lullaby of ‘I hate it here’ is a unspoken call to something many people do, particularly readers, which is to escape from the real world, or even escape from our struggles with our mental health and to a fictional place (or daydream) where things are easier, softer, kinder or more exciting and happier endings than the ones fate has thrown at us.
The lyrical poem of ‘imgonnagetyouback’ sees Swift ponder whether she wants him back, for love, to get him back, for revenge. This anthology track feels like an older mature sister to Speak Now’s ‘Better Than Revenge’. It has the same playful tone as ‘I Hate It Here’ but less reader cottage core vibes and more as though you can just tell Swift had her signature smirk on her face whilst writing it.
‘loml’ is almost the sister to Folklore’s my tears ricochet. A gentle yet haunting poem of feeling the grief after losing somewhere or someone you thought you’d have all your life. The whole track feels as though her literal heartstrings have their own story, as Swift gives them a metaphysical form through ‘loml’. When you get to the bridge, you can almost hear a heart shattering and breaking into a million irreconcilable shards, a delicate glass version of ashes from a fire. She ‘almost had it all’ but it wasn’t written in the stars as she first hoped it would be, and feeling like a shell of her former self as a significant person in her life, was no longer by her side.
The final reveal that ‘loml’ stands not for love of my life but rather the loss of my life, reflects the ‘depression’ and ‘acceptance’ stages of grief, whether it be a relationship (romantic, familial, platonic or friends) that you’re heartbroken it’s over but you’ve started to accept that this relationship’s story will have no more pages.
Fate has a funny way of getting you to your new beginnings or happy endings. Swift touches upon this with ‘The Alchemy’ and ‘So High School’ which are heavily alluded to be about her new NFL football player boyfriend – Travis Kelce, and how he makes her feel the same all consuming love and support you’d find in a early noughties high school movies where the couple makes the distance.
The Tortured Poets Department also marks a first for Swift, where she references her own name in ‘Clara Bow.’ It reflects an end to an era, and the start of an new age, as she mentions the future awaits, and it’s just as amazing’. The same as her record breaking Eras Tour is still ongoing and two more re-records to release, her eleventh studio album promises to be a very dazzling era indeed, which works with the monochrome emotions of the album. ‘Clara Bow’ is the perfect sentimental track to represent the melancholy, female rage and poetic lullabies that embody The Tortured Poets Department as an album.
the girl and the city of books 
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