All's fair in love and poetry...
And so I enter into evidence
My tarnished coat of arms
My muses, acquired like bruises
My talismans and charms
The tick, tick, tick of love bombs
My veins of pitch black ink
My tarnished coat of arms
My muses, acquired like bruises
My talismans and charms
The tick, tick, tick of love bombs
My veins of pitch black ink
All is fair in love and poetry.
Sincerely. The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department
— Taylor Swift in her teaser statement upon the announcement of the album
The Tortured Poets Department (stylized uppercase as THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT) is the eleventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released at midnight on April 19, 2024.
Two hours after the release of the original edition of the album, Swift released "THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY," a double album containing an additional 15 bonus tracks.
Preceded by Midnights.
Tracklist:note
- "Fortnight" (featuring Post Malone)
- "The Tortured Poets Department"
- "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys"
- "Down Bad"
- "So Long, London"
- "But Daddy I Love Him"
- "Fresh Out the Slammer"
- "Florida!!!" (featuring Florence + the Machine)
- "Guilty as Sin?"
- "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?"
- "I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)"
- "loml"
- "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart"
- "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived"
- "The Alchemy"
- "Clara Bow"
The Anthology
- "The Black Dog"
- "imgonnagetyouback"
- "The Albatross"
- "Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus"
- "How Did It End?"
- "So High School"
- "I Hate It Here"
- "thanK you aIMee"
- "I Look in People's Windows"
- "The Prophecy"
- "Cassandra"
- "Peter"
- "The Bolter"
- "Robin"
- "The Manuscript"
From the Chair of The Tortured Tropes Department:
- Adam Westing: Similar to "Blank Space," in "Who's Afraid Of Little Old Me?" Taylor plays a caricature of herself, this time the one imagined by her critics and detractors in the media and the general public of a mean and ruthless woman who attacks anyone who goes after her or intrudes on her turf.
- Age-Progression Song: "Clara Bow" begins with a young singer from the past being compared to the titular actress, who had her heyday in the 1920s and was the first "It Girl." The second verse has present-day Taylor as the current "It Girl" being compared favourably to Stevie Nicks as she was in the 1970s. The outro introduces a new "It Girl" from some point in the future, whom the entertainment industry has selected to replace Taylor.
- Agony of the Feet: In "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart," Taylor references the amount of walking and dancing she does in high heeled boots every night of the Eras Tour.In stilettos for miles
- Album Closure:
- The standard edition tracks end with "Clara Bow," a reflection on how the entertainment industry pits younger generations of female entertainers against their predecessors. Despite this, Swift still wishes her successor well.
- The Anthology tracks end with "The Manuscript," where Swift looks back on her previous relationships but acknowledges that their time has long since passed and that her songs will be all that's left of what she once felt about them. The final line can be interpreted as Swift handing the stories over to the listener to interpret as they see fit, or acknowledging that the album is out in the world and will be seen in lights she can no longer control.
- all lowercase letters: Two track titles, "loml" and "imgonnagetyouback" are entirely in lower case. "thanK you aIMee" is mostly in lower case, except for three capitalized letters in the middle of the title that spell out "KIM."
- …And That Little Girl Was Me: Most of "The Manuscript" is in the third person, telling a story about a young woman who once dated an older man and was traumatized by the experience. However, the final verse is in the first person, revealing that the young woman was the narrator all along.
- Arc Number:
- Two. The number was significantly teased before the release, with easter eggs planted in all sorts of media, and plenty of peace signs/"two" emojis. The album itself is a double-drop, and the Anthology's total runtime comes down to 2 hours 2 minutes.
- To a lesser degree, 15/1.5 - if the Anthology is not counted as a separate album, it would be Swift's 11.5th album. The original album came to a 1 hour 5 minutes runtime, the Anthology adds 15 new tracks (bringing it to a total of 31, the reverse of Swift's lucky and career-spanning Arc Number 13.)
- Bait-and-Switch: In "But Daddy I Love Him", the narrator says she'll have the love interest's baby, then immediately follows up with "No, I'm not, but you should see your faces!"
- Beware the Nice Ones: The narrator of "thanK you aIMee" says her mom is "a saintly woman" but even she wished the narrator's bully Aimee was dead.
- Brains and Brawn: In "So High School," the narrator is the brains to her lover's brawn:You know how to ball, I know Aristotle
- Call-Back:
- 1989 has "Please leave me stranded, it's so romantic" on "New Romantics", while "Down Bad" has "How dare you think it's romantic, leaving me safe and stranded".
- reputation: "Golden tattoo" from "Dress" vs "tattooed Golden Retriever" in the title track.
- Lover
- "Clearing the air, I breathed in the smoke” on "Daylight", and "The Black Dog" has "Six weeks of breathing clean air, I still miss the smoke".
- "I look in people's windows" from the track of the same name is sung with the same melody as "I look through the windows of this love" from "Death By A Thousand Cuts". "Transfixed by rose golden glows" calls back to the aesthetics of the Lover era and the rose-tinted glasses of love.
- folklore (2020): "You drew stars around my scars, but now I'm bleeding" from "cardigan" vs "And all at once, the ink bleeds'' from "loml."
- evermore (2020):
- The second verse of "Florida!!!" mentions a cheating husband who disappeared and dumping the bodies of the narrator's exes in a swamp. The narrator of "no body no crime" made her friend's cheating husband (and likely murderer) disappear by dumping his body in a lake.
- The piano solo outro from "champagne problems" is on "Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus".
- Midnights is referenced on a few songs:
- "So Long, London" features a few references back to the vault track "You're Losing Me," including "I stopped CPR, after all, it's no use" vs "I can't find a pulse, my heart won't start anymore."
- "You're On Your Own, Kid" vs. "I'm a real tough kid" from "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart."
- "Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus" has the line "Will that make your memory fade from this scarlet maroon," a direct callback to "So scarlet, it was maroon" from "Maroon."
- The “Fortnight” music video is chock-full of references to this album and the previous ones.
- The numbers on the "Forget Him" pill bottle are 19891213 (Swift's date of birth, with the year portion being the name of her fifth album) and 20240419 (the current album's release date).
- Swift running to hug the love interest (played by Post Malone) resembles her viral moments of hugging Joe Alwyn in Miss Americana, Malone at the American Music Awards, and Travis Kelce (helped along by Malone bearing a great resemblance to Kelce without his tattoos) at the Eras Tour.
- Her holding the "Forget Him" pill on her tongue resembles her doing the same with a heart candy in "Blank Space".
- The lovers being framed inside a silhouette of Swift's profile calls back to the video for "Style", and Swift holds a book with "US" on the cover: "The Story of Us".
- The sheet music being thrown into the air in "Lover" is burned here.
- Swift sits under pouring rain ("Delicate") in a shot similar to her sitting atop the sandcastle in "Karma".
- When she's alone, Swift wipes off her makeup to find Post Malone's tattoos on her, calling back to "Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo" from "Dress".
- Call-Forward: Given that "Fortnight" is the first track and first (possibly only) music video, the references in it to the other songs on the album are call-forwards.
- A black dog is present in the room where Swift is experimented upon for the track "The Black Dog".
- Swift and Malone type on dueling typewriters; the love interest in "The Tortured Poets Department" has a fondness for typewriters.
- Caps Lock: The album title is stylized in all caps.
- Cassandra Truth: Swift invokes the trope and casts herself in this role in "Cassandra". She tries to tell the truth about someone to the public, but no one believes her and they turn on her instead. When it turned out she had been right the entire time, nobody apologized.
- Changing Chorus: The final chorus in "I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)" changes the last line from "And only I can" to "Woah, maybe I can't," with the narrator only realizing at the end that her problematic lover is beyond her ability to "fix."
- Deliberately Monochrome: The video for "Fortnight", and many of the promotional photos for the album, are in black and white.
- The Diss Track: "thanK you aIMee" and "Cassandra" refer back to the "Snakegate" controversy of 2016, in particular Kim Kardashian's role in instigating it, and how Taylor has grown past it.
- Escapism: A core theme in "I Hate It Here"I hate it here, so I will go to secret gardens in my mind
(...) I'm there most of the year cause I hate it here - Genre Shift: The Anthology edition transitions in the middle from the more synth-heavy pop (akin to Midnights) of the standard version's tracks to a quieter folk-style production (similar to folklore or evermore) on the bonus tracks.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: "So High School" has a few innuendos. The narrator could be stifling her sighs because she doesn't want to seem bored when in fact she was sighing in admiration of her lover who makes her feel giddy like a schoolgirl, or she could be trying to keep their intimate activities quiet. She requests that her lover touch her while his friends play Grand Theft Auto, but that touch could easily be interpreted as more than a hand on the thigh. "It's true, swear, scout's honor" can merely stand for the narrator attesting to the depths of her feelings, or a reference to a sexual act (the scout's honor hand sign). The ambiguity of the language is thematically very appropriate - many American teenagers explore and experiment with emotional and physical intimacy during high school, and are expected to keep it under wraps, never to talk about it bluntly (especially girls and people socialized as girls).
- Hotter and Sexier: The album cover depicts Swift lying on a bed of pillows in only her undergarments, making it the most revealing album image yet. The album also features some of her more overtly sexual lyrics, including outright saying the word "sex" in "The Manuscript".
- "I Am Great!" Song: In "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart," Taylor praises herself for being able to perform on the Eras Tour without missing a beat and successfully hiding her heartbreak and sadness from the crowd.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: In "I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)":I can fix him, no, really, I can (No, really, I can)
Woah, maybe I can't - Implausible Deniability: In "thanK you aIMee," Swift claims that she changed her bully's name to Aimee and "removed any defining clues" so that the bully wouldn't know the song was about them. However, the selectively capitalized letters in the song's title as well as details in the lyrics strongly imply that Swift's feud with Kim Kardashian is the real subject of the song.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In "So Long, London", even though their relationship didn't work out, the narrator still wishes her former lover well and sincerely hopes that he can find someone else.
- Lyrical Dissonance: "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart" depicts Swift grieving for her lost love and having to pretend she's having the time of her life every night on stage at the Eras Tour, coping in an almost manic way, to upbeat music that can be interpreted as either happy or frantic. The lyric video pairs pertinent lines with appropriate tour footage. ("'Cause I'm a real tough kid, I can handle my shit" with Swift flexing and kissing her bicep, for example.)
- Mood Whiplash: Avert this for the main album, but the Anthology version has "How Did It End" - a slow, devastating piano ballad about how the narrator has to explain the reason of her break up to a large audience despite her finally exclaimed that she doesn't know how it ends, follows by "So High School" - a Silly Love Song about a new relationship that made the narrator feel young and in high school again.
- Non-Appearing Title: The title "Robin" isn't mentioned in the lyrics.
- Odd Name Out: The first of Swift's albums to have a name longer than two words.
- Ode to Youth:
- In a sort of continuation of the theme from "Nothing New" from Red (2012), in "Clara Bow" Taylor accepts that one day her time as a star will fade and that some day in the future a new star will be compared to her.
- "Robin'' paints a picture of a child's innocent and whimsical life, as well as the efforts by the adults in their life to shield them from the world's cruelties for as long as possible.
- Only in Florida: "Florida!!!" portrays the titular state as "one hell of a drug", populated with people who've fled there, trying to lay low after having committing a crime or gone through heartbreak. In an interview, Swift stated that she was inspired from watching Dateline and other true crime stories where fugitives fled to Florida.
- Precision F-Strike: In the post-chorus of "The Bolter," a song that otherwise contains no profanity:All her fucking lives
Flashed before her eyes - Questioning Title?: Two in a row: "Guilty as Sin?" and "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?"
- Ruder and Cruder:
- "Down Bad" is one of Taylor Swift's most profane songs yet, with a total of 17 F-bombs throughout the song.
- "Guilty as Sin?" is about "emotional cheating" and masturbation.
- Rule of Three: Three female stars are discussed in "Clara Bow" as part of the cycle of fame and the next big thing: the titular actress, Stevie Nicks, and Taylor name-dropping herself.
- Self-Deprecation:
- In the title track, the narrator mocks her lover for using a typewriter. The promotional campaign for the album heavily featured typewriters.
- In "Clara Bow", it's mentioned that the singer from the future being compared to Taylor has "edge that [Taylor] never did".
- In "The Tortured Poets Department", Taylor calls herself and her lover (heavily implied to be Matty Healy) "modern idiots", and notes that they're not the great poets they envision themselves to be, explicitly referencing Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith as comparison.
- "I Look In People's Windows" has Taylor comparing herself to a "deranged weirdo" for engaging in the titular activity.
- Self-Referential Track Placement:
- "The Prophecy" and "Cassandra" are next to each other in the track order.
- Shout-Out:
- The album title is a reference to Dead Poets Society. Two of the stars of that movie, Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles, even make a cameo in the music video for "Fortnight."
- "So High School" has two — the narrator asks her lover to touch her while his boys play Grand Theft Auto, and references a night spent watching American Pie.
- "Fortnight" and its music video:
- Swift works hard at the typewriter, only to repeatedly punch out "I love you, it's ruining my life", like the "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" in The Shining.
- "Fortnight" also maps well with Bertha Rochester from Jane Eyre: a mad woman locked away and forgotten by her partner, who wants to kill her husband's new love.
- The asylum scenes also bear a strong resemblance to the aesthetics of Metropolis, right down to Swift staring at the camera with heavy, dark makeup on.
- The music video takes heavy visual influence from Poor Things, including Taylor's Victorian-inspired black dress and the asylum scenes mirroring the laboratory scenes from Poor Things.
- The narrator of "thanK you aIMEe" repeatedly mentions the Sisyphean task of pushing boulders uphill.
- "Peter" extensively references Peter Pan in its lyrics, with the narrator casting herself in the role of Wendy waiting for her love interest "Peter" to grow up and get together with her, but finally gave up after waiting for too long.
- The narrator of "I Look In People's Windows" does what the title says and "attend[s] Christmas parties from outside" like The Little Match Girl.
- Silly Love Songs: Despite the angry and depressed moods of the other tracks, a couple of these are still on the album. These tend to be related to Taylor's current relationship with NFL player Travis Kelce, which had just begun shortly before the album was completed.
- In "The Alchemy," Taylor sings about making her triumphant return to the stage with a new lover with whom she has "alchemy."
- "So High School" has Taylor singing about how her new lover makes her feel like she's back in high school experiencing love for the first time.
- Singer Name Drop: The next star is told that she "looks like Taylor Swift" in "Clara Bow".
- Spell My Name with a "The": All four exclusive bonus tracks have the title format "The (Noun)".
- Spoken Word in Music: The outro of "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart" is almost entirely spoken, where Taylor talks about how she's secretly miserable while performing on tour but nobody knows because she's smiling and grinning on stage.
- Stalker with a Crush:
- The narrator of "The Black Dog" stalks her ex to his favorite bar the Black Dog because he forgot to turn off his location after their break up.
- A downplay example in "I Look In People's Window". The narrator looks through other people's window when she passes by to check if her ex is there and still has any kind of feeling for her.
- Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Played for Drama in the bridge of "Down Bad," with the omission of the rhyming word "over" suggesting that Taylor was in denial about the end of the relationship.I loved your hostile takeovers
Encounters closer and closer
All your indecent exposures
How dare you say that it's- - Suddenly Shouting:
- Most of the bridge of "Down Bad" is sung in a lower register until the instrumental builds up to the final line which is practically shouted:
'Cause fuck it, I was in love- "The Black Dog" starts with a wistful longing tone, until the end of the penultimate chorus and final bridge, which has her volume increase to reflect the lyrics.
Old habits die... SCREAAAAAAAMING. - Take That, Audience!:
- In "But Daddy I Love Him" Taylor calls out the media and her most parasocial fans for their criticism and opinions on her relationships.
- "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart" has been interpreted as criticizing and/or shaming her fans for demanding that she entertain them even as she was in the midst of a devastating breakup.
- A more subtler version in "How Did It End?". Taylor portrayed the people who are curious about the breakdown of her long term relationship as Gossipy Hens, offering different explanations for the break up before finally admitting at the end of the song she doesn't know.
- Villain Song: "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" is a song where the narrator repeats all the bad rumors about her and basically admits them to be all true, explaining that her actions are the result of being in "the circus life" and caps it off by saying the listeners should be afraid of her.
- Witch with a Capital "B": Averted in "Cassandra":When it's "Burn the bitch," they're shrieking
