“I chose this cyclone with you” is the end of the first stanza of the new Taylor Swift album’s titular song, The Tortured Poets Department. The first half of 2024 has been one chaotic cyclone for Swift after being nominated for a Golden Globes Award, winning Artist of the Year at the iHeartRadio Music Awards, and setting a record by winning Album of the Year for the fourth time at the Grammys, which has never been seen before. Swift then announced her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, which came out on April 19. What fans didn’t know was that the new release was actually a double album boasting 31 songs. The surprise second-half of the album is called The Anthology. Throughout the album, Swift addressed her last two relationships as well as her struggle with criticisms and online hate that she has faced while being in the spotlight.
Despite Swift’s lack of marketing for the album, she is already breaking records with The Tortured Poets Department. The album passed one billion streams on Spotify less than one week after its release. According to NPR, this is the first album in Spotify’s history to reach over 300 million streams in one day, as well as breaking an additional record, stating, “Swift beat her own single-day album streaming records with Tortured Poets and now holds all three top spots for this record: her newest project has only surpassed her 2022 album, Midnights, and 1989 (Taylor’s Version), which came out in 2023,” (Tsioulcas, April 22, 2024).
There has been much speculation about who some of the songs are about, with some supposedly referencing her ex-boyfriend of six years, Joe Alwyn, or the more recent ex from her one month relationship: Matty Healy. Many of the songs in The Tortured Poets Department are most likely about past relationships, personal reflections, and the beginning of the end of her relationship with Joe Alwyn.
While this new album is technically a pop album, it has many alternative-sounding elements; the melodies are slower than typical upbeat pop songs and are filled with deep and meaningful lyrics. As of May 9, Taylor Swift performed some of her new songs at the Eras Tour in Paris, but since the concert was already over three hours long, some of the older songs have been removed from the setlist. The new songs that have been included in the concert are But Daddy I Love Him, So High School, Fortnight, Down Bad, I Can Do It With A Broken Heart, Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me, and The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. Swift has also included two new outfits for that part of the tour.
While the double album’s length can seem intimidating at first, it is definitely worth the listen.
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