The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology by Taylor Swift | Album Review
On a surprise double album, Taylor Swift explores heartbreak and loss through striking lyrical poetry.
“What do you think The Tortured Poets Department will sound like?” I asked a friend of mine in the lead-up to the release of Taylor Swift’s 11th album. We speculated based on the few clues we had — the album artwork’s monochrome aesthetic, the track titles, lyrical fragments — but the reality was neither of us knew, which only added to the anticipation.
Now Taylor Swift’s next era is officially upon us, and it began with a huge surprise — in the early morning hours of release day, Swift released an expanded version of the album with 15 additional songs. And while the album’s long runtime means that not every song will speak to every listener, The Tortured Poets Department showcases some of Swift’s most mature songwriting, with melodies and lyrical moments that will stay with you long after the last note fades.
In many ways, The Tortured Poets Department picks up where Swift’s last album Midnights left off. The album opens with the dark, pulsing synths and drum machines of “Fortnight.” Accompanied by Post Malone, Taylor introduces the motifs of emotional ambivalence and heartbreak that are threaded through the double album. “I love you, it’s ruining my life,” she sings, followed by Post Malone’s echo.
But while the sonic heartbeat of this album bears similarities to Midnights, over the course of the record, we get everything from quiet piano ballads like “loml” to the bouncy arpeggiated synths and four on the floor beat of “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart. “You know you’re good when you can even do it with a broken heart,” Taylor sings on the upbeat track. Even at the album’s most energetic moments, Taylor reveals the pain that she is smiling and dancing through.
It’s almost a given at this point that a Taylor Swift album will showcase the artist’s unmatched pop sensibilities and mastery of melody. This album is full of memorable hooks, but the record is aptly titled, because it’s the poetry that really stands out here. While known for her raw and confessional lyrics, on this album Taylor’s personal experiences are often filtered through arresting images, metaphors, and allusions, including references to Greek mythology, 1920s Hollywood, and the Garden of Eden.
In the Instagram post accompanying the release of Tortured Poets Department, Taylor reflected on the moments that inspired the album: “This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed.” Swift has talked about how she tends to put her most honest and emotional songs in the track 5 slot, and this album’s track 5, “So Long, London” evokes that sense of closing the door on a season of life. “So long, London/Had a good run/ A moment of warm sun/ But I’m not the one.”
The Tortured Poets Department lives in the midtempo, giving Taylor the space to vary her vocal delivery between long melodic phrases and the quick, rhythmic flow that has become a signature on her more recent albums. Some listeners may miss the exuberant energy of past hits like “22” or “Cruel Summer,” but for Swifties who gravitate to songs like “All Too Well” and “Clean,” there is a lot to love here.
With the help of Florence and the Machine, “Florida!!!” jolts us out of the midtempo trance with its startling drum hits and Florence Welch’s dramatic vocals, which complement Taylor’s voice well. “I need to forget/ So take me to Florida,” Taylor sings, followed by Florence’s response: “I’ve got some regrets/ I’ll bury them in Florida.”
“Florida!!!” is followed by some of the album’s strongest songs. “Guilty as Sin?” is an inescapably catchy exploration of how our minds can trick us into thinking a relationship is more than it really is.
The album then moves to its emotional apex. “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” contains Swift’s most evocative vocal performance on the record, accompanied by an instrumental that follows and accents the dynamic shifts of her voice. “So I leap from the gallows and levitate down your street/ Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream.” She then takes the melody up an octave and belts the song’s title, “Who’s afraid of little old me?” before delivering the kicker in something close to a whisper — “You should be.” We’ve heard Taylor take down the haters to great effect many times before, but never with this kind of imagistic lyricism and emotional resonance.
The album’s first half comes to a close with the stunning “Clara Bow.” Over a soft, rhythmic bassline, Taylor recounts a scenario in which she is told she resembles Clara Bow, a silent film star who endured exploitation by the Hollywood studio system and tabloid gossip about her personal life. Then, in one of the album’s most poignant moments, Swift closes the song by imagining a future star being compared to herself: “You look like Taylor Swift/ In this light, we’re loving it/ You’ve got edge she never did/ The future’s bright, dazzling.”
The full Anthology version of The Tortured Poets Department contains 31 songs and has a run time of over two hours. There’s something to the argument that the album could have been pared down — the back half of the album is less varied, and after a while the similarities in the sonic textures can make some of the songs start to blend together. But we are living firmly in the world of the double album. After all, Beyonce’s recent album Cowboy Carter contains 27 tracks. And what fan is going to complain about more new Taylor Swift songs? But in a world where there is a tendency to reduce art to “content,” there is something magical about the idea of the album as a carefully crafted musical journey that I hope we don’t lose.
Still, the album’s second half has some standout moments of its own, including a two-song stretch drawing on the ideas of prophecy, faith, and belief. On the acoustic guitar driven “The Prophecy,” a song that contains a reference to Eve in the Garden of Eden, Swift begs the cosmos to change her fate: “Please, I’ve been on my knees/ Change the prophecy/Don’t want money/ Just someone who wants my company.” Then On “Cassandra,” Swift draws on a story from Greek mythology that contains echoes of her own experience in the spotlight. Cassandra is a character from Greek mythology who received the gift of prophecy but the curse of never being believed.
Taylor Swift has been creating lyrical poetry for most of her life, so it’s no surprise that the idea of writing down and archiving life’s experiences appears throughout her new album. “This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page,” Taylor wrote in her introduction to the album on social media. “The Manuscript” provides a fitting ending to this powerful lyric epic, investigating the way time colors memory: “Now and then I reread the manuscript/ but the story isn’t mine anymore,” she sings over atmospheric piano.
With that, Taylor Swift lets the ink dry on a chapter of her life — and releases the story out into the world.
Listen to Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your music.
