{"id":5481,"date":"2024-04-28T19:07:56","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T00:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=5481"},"modified":"2024-04-28T19:11:55","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T00:11:55","slug":"taylor-swift-on-her-new-album-the-tortured-poets-department-the-anthology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=5481","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift On Her New Album “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The completed works of Taylor Swift: Her new album\u2014with 15 extra tracks.<\/p>\n

In the 18 months after Taylor Swift released Midnights, it often felt as though the universe had fully opened up to her. The Eras Tour was breaking records and blowing past the billion-dollar mark; its attendant concert film became the highest-grossing of all time. She generated interest and commerce and headlines everywhere she stepped foot, from tour stops to the tunnels of NFL stadiums.<\/p>\n

In 2023, she was named both TIME magazine\u2019s Person of the Year and\u2014just as iconic, tbh\u2014Apple Music\u2019s Artist of the Year. But do songs about that level of success speak to you?<\/p>\n

As the news broke that her highly private six-year relationship to Joe Alwyn had ended, Swifties started Swiftie-ing, quickly recirculating a clip on social media of Swift a few weeks earlier, onstage during an early Eras show, in tears as she sang \u201cchampagne problems\u201d\u2014a song she and Alwyn had written together. It was a reminder that, despite the superhero-like aura she now radiates, Swift, at her peak, still hurts like the rest of us. What sets her apart is her ability to sublimate that pain into pop.<\/p>\n

When she announced her 11th studio album in early 2024\u2014while accepting another Grammy, as one does\u2014we probably shouldn\u2019t have been surprised. \u201cI needed to make it,\u201d she\u2019d say of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT a few weeks later, to a crowd of 96,000 in Melbourne, Australia. \u201cI\u2019ve never had an album where I\u2019ve needed songwriting more than I needed it on TORTURED POETS.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stream Taylor Swift The Tortured Poets Department The Anthology<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Working again with trusted collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, she returns to the soft, comfortable, bed-like sonics of Midnights. But the stakes feel noticeably higher here: This isn\u2019t so much a breakup album as it is a deep-sea exploration of everything Swift has been feeling, a plunge through emotional debris.<\/p>\n

On \u201cBut Daddy I Love Him\u201d\u2014over strings and guitar that faintly recall her country roots\u2014she lashes out at the crush of scrutiny and expectation she\u2019s been subject to from the start. Naturally, catharsis comes after the chorus: \u201cI\u2019ll tell you something right now,\u201d she sings. \u201cI\u2019d rather burn my whole life down than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning.<\/p>\n

\u201d On \u201cFlorida!!!\u201d she and Florence + the Machine team up for a pulpy escape fantasy wherein they Thelma and Louise their way down to the Sunshine State in hopes of starting over with new lives and identities: \u201cLove left me like this,\u201d they sing. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t want to exist.\u201d At turns hilarious and heartbreaking, TTPD is a study in extremes, Swift leaning into heightened emotions with heightened, hyperbolic, ALL-CAPS language and imagery\u2014how we think when we\u2019re drunk on love or flattened by its sudden disappearance.<\/p>\n

Note the dark humor she weaves through the Post Malone-enriched opener \u201cFortnight\u201d (\u201cYour wife waters flowers\/I wanna kill her\u201d). Or the thrilling self-deprecation of \u201cDown Bad,\u201d a foray into science fiction wherein Swift likens the warmth of a relationship to being abducted by love-bombing extraterrestrials\u2014only to be left \u201cnaked and alone, in a field in my same old town.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this remains her most candid and unsparing work to date: As a listener, you frequently get the feeling that you\u2019ve stumbled across emails she\u2019d written but never sent, or into conversations you were never meant to hear. There\u2019s a density and a specificity and a ferocity to her lyrical work here that makes 2012\u2019s \u201cAll Too Well\u201d feel sorta light by comparison.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re the kind of Swiftie who likes to live in the details, well, this one might be your Super Bowl. \u201cYou swore that you loved me, but where were the clues?\u201d she asks on the devastating \u201cSo Long, London,\u201d a high point. \u201cI died on the altar waiting for the proof.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alone at a piano on the haunting \u201cloml,\u201d she flips the script on someone who\u2019d told her she was the love of their life, by telling them that they were the loss of hers: \u201cI\u2019ll still see it until I die.\u201d The story, as you likely know, doesn\u2019t end there.<\/p>\n

We get a glimpse of new beginnings in \u201cThe Alchemy\u201d (\u201cThis happens once every few lifetimes\/These chemicals hit me like white wine\u201d) and something like triumph in the montage-ready synths of \u201cI Can Do It With a Broken Heart,\u201d when Swift, shattered on the floor, \u201cas the crowd was chanting, \u2018More!\u2019,\u201d still finds the strength to deliver: \u201c\u2019Cause I\u2019m a real tough kid and I can handle my shit.\u201d But we also get a sense of acceptance, of newfound perspective.<\/p>\n

On \u201cClara Bow\u201d\u2014named after a 1920s movie star who was able to survive the jump from silent film to sound\u2014Swift reflects on the journey of a small-town girl made good, sung from the vantage of an industry obsessed with the next big thing. She zooms out and out and out until, in the album\u2019s closing seconds, she\u2019s singing about herself in the third person, in past tense, acknowledging that nothing is forever.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look like Taylor Swift in this light, we\u2019re loving it,\u201d she sings. \u201cYou\u2019ve got edge she never did\/The future\u2019s bright, dazzling.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The completed works of Taylor Swift: Her new album\u2014with 15 extra tracks. In the 18 months after Taylor Swift released Midnights, it often felt as though the universe had fully opened up to her. The Eras Tour was breaking records and blowing past the billion-dollar mark; its attendant concert film became the highest-grossing of all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-music","category-streamapse-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5483,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481\/revisions\/5483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}