The global superstar has done it again: Taylor Swift released her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department to critical acclaim and record breaking numbers on Friday. The album, which was announced back in February at the Grammys, takes on a synth-pop sound created with the help of her long time collaborator, Jack Antinoff. Swift released an expansion of the album, The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, two hours after the release of the original version, which contained 15 new tracks. The album was created in the wake of her breakup with her longtime partner, Joe Alwyn, who she was with for 6 years. During the two hour and three minute run time, The Tortured Poets Department addresses the breakup, and gives listeners a unique insight into her life as a superstar.
The majority of the tracks allude to her relationship with Alwyn, talking about the loss of someone she thought she would be with forever, but there are also references to her more recent relationships. She talks about the football star, Travis Kelce, as well as the singer-songwriter, Matty Healy. Swift is currently dating Kelce, frequently attending his football games and being spotted with him in public. She broke up with Healy after being together publicly for about a month, a period in which she faced controversy for dating him over the racist remarks he made.
Quite honestly, this album is one of the most depressing I have listened to in a while. You can hear Swift’s pain in her lyrics; longing for a person she can no longer hold, her anger over the way she was treated, and grief over the loss of a person she cared for. But, with the sadness, there is also a sense of incredible emotional depth and maturity coming from this album. The lyrics are some of her best, painting intense pictures of situations and feelings in the diaristic style she is best known for. This is what I came to the album expecting, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The production on this album follows what I have come to expect from her collaborations with Jack Antinoff; uninventive and stale. Sporting the same laid back, synth-pop sound as her previous record, Midnights, the majority of the songs bring nothing new to her discography in terms of their sound. While the production doesn’t take anything away from the songs, it makes the album feel stale after so many years of releasing songs in the same sub-genre. Taylor is at her best when she experiments, as exemplified by her 1989 and Folklore albums, two of her most well-known works, so she should have tried taking more of a chance on the production of The Tortured Poets Department. Following the same synth-heavy formula that she has done for so long really isn’t helping her albums, and for an artist with such a focus on distinct eras, I wish she could have made this album sound worthy of its own.
Out of the 31 tracks, my favorites included “But Daddy I Love Him”, “Florida!!! (feat. Florence + the Machine)”, “The Black Dog”, “So High School” and “The Bolter”. Honestly, I don’t have any songs on this album that I thought were bad. Swift brings her all with the lyrics, making even the songs that I thought had a boring production redeemable and worth a listen. Her songwriting has always been her biggest claim to fame, and she kicks it into high gear on The Tortured Poets Department. The album is poetry through and through, a gem in the world of modern songwriting.
