Swifties met at midnight once again on April 19 as Taylor Swift welcomed the newest era to her extensive discography with her latest album. “The Tortured Poets Department” (TTPD) marks Swift’s 11th studio album and a surprising double-release with 15 additional songs titled “The Anthology.” The spontaneous double-release was just one of the many surprises this new era had to offer.
TTPD serves as a personal insight that gives numerous hints at Swift’s failed relationship with actor Joe Alwyn. The full album, a musical library of 31 captivating tracks, is gridlocked with all the raw emotions and intimate details about the singer’s 6-year-long relationship, and she does not hold back on how she truly feels.
Songs such as “But Daddy I Love Him,” “So Long, London” and “loml” are just a few of the many tracks that seemingly describe details about aspects of her relationship with Alwyn. Each song captures Swift’s heartbreak and hopelessness she felt at the brink of her failing relationship. Her lyrics never fail to grasp our attention, but the lyricism in TTPD perfectly displays her feelings of grief and goodbye toward Alwyn.
Swift threw us for a major emotional curveball when she described specific instances involving the difficulties she faced amidst the breakup. In the track “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart,” the positive, jaunty tune of the song serves as a mask to the heart-wrenching lyrics that so blatantly refer to her feelings of heartbreak while she was “happily” performing during her record-breaking Eras Tour. She mentions the fact that while she was dazzling on the outside, the side effects of the break up were so internally painful to her; she sings, “He said he’d love me all his life / But that life was too short / Breaking down, I hit the floor / All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting, ‘More’”. This song hit really deep for me, and I’m sure for others that went to the Eras Tour, not knowing the level of emotional anguish she was facing.
Aside from her genius lyricism, I believe her artist collaborations were more than deserving of a standing ovation. Swift invites Post Malone in the contemporary and mellow track “Fortnight,” the first track in the library of emotions that were in store for listeners. Florence Welch also unsurprisingly serenades and stuns alongside Swift in the mixed-genre ballad “Florida!!!.”
TTPD goes through a plethora of emotional turmoil, from anger to sadness to heartbreak. Swift has always had a powerful way with words, and this album proves yet again that she has that golden touch. The uniqueness of each track is one of the album’s many strengths. There is truly a track for any emotion you are feeling. All is fair in love, loss and poetry in Swift’s roller coaster of an album, and with that being said, I give it five out of five goats.
