I review ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ and admit what I don’t understand.
In “How Did It End?,” probably the best song on Taylor Swift’s long and winding The Tortured Poets Department, Swift sings of a failed relationship, “I can’t pretend like I understand.” I could say much the same about the album as a whole and yet reviewed TTPD for WORLD Magazine anyway.
The Tortured Poets Department is Swift’s fifth album since 2019, and it became the first album to hit 1 billion streams on Spotify in a single week. Swift has more No. 1 albums than any other woman, and she’s the first living artist since Herb Alpert (!) in 1966 to have four titles in the Billboard Top 10.
More than anything, her newest album acts like an imprecatory psalm, with Swift naming and rebuking her enemies. It is a 31-track meditation of wrongs done by her former loves (by all accounts, Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy), by her fans, and, yes, by herself. Swift does not seem interested in forgiveness (“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”) or letting go of grudges (“thanK you aIMee”). These factors may explain the regrettably high volume of explicit language throughout TTPD (including several F-bombs).
In a slightly more rant-y post on my Substack, I admit to feeling meh about my review. Same goes for the album. As I note:
TTPD was a big swing, but I don’t know if Swift made the kind of contact she wanted to. It’s not a swing-and-a-miss. Maybe more of a foul ball?
I think a lot of that has to do with the length. Quantity over quality. I also genuinely think Swift missed an opportunity to go acoustic—not country, just acoustic. Think Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged 2.0: raw, emo, hyper-vulnerable in the presentation. The best songs on TTPD—like “The Prophecy”—kinda lean in that direction.
Would love to hear what you think of The Tortured Poets Department. What do you love / hate? Are you still listening to it?
Thanks, as always, for reading.
