“The Tortured Poets Department”: Everything You Need To Know

Folks, she’s done it again. At midnight on Friday, April 19, 2024, Taylor Swift released her eleventh studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department” (TTPD). At 2 am that same night, she released “The Anthology,” adding another fifteen songs to the album’s tracklist.

Swift’s double album immediately broke records (including becoming the first album to reach 300M streams on Spotify in its first day and over a billion in its first week), and rightfully so.

Source: Spotify on X (Formerly known as Twitter)

It’s some of the best music of her career, the perfect balance of melancholy, girlhood and female rage all bottled into a 31-song album. However, to truly appreciate “The Tortured Poets Department,” you need to know the background. So, I have provided below a brief explanation of the who, what, when, where and why of TTPD

ALBUM ANNOUNCEMENT:

Swift announced “The Tortured Poets Department” in her speech after her thirteenth Grammy win on February 4, 2024. Most fans thought she would announce “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” after weeks of easter eggs alluding to its release.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF APRIL 19:

After announcing her new album, Swift set April 19, 2024, as the release date. In typical Swift fashion, the date had numerous easter eggs hidden within it, and, of course, a multifaceted meaning that Swift’s fans continue to obsess over. First, the most clear one – if you’re up to date on Taylor Swift fandom – on April 19, 2023, Swift went out to dinner with close friends Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, who both unfollowed her boyfriend at the time Joe Alwyn on Instagram that evening. April 19, 1775, was also the start of the American Revolution. As many fans assumed the album would focus on the split between Swift, who is American, and Alwyn, who is British, the reference makes sense. The 19th is also National Poetry & Creative Mind Day.

THE PLAYLISTS:

Swift released five playlists on Apple Music in the weeks before TTPD came out, each composed of songs from her previous ten albums representing the five stages of grief. The denial playlist was the most jarring to see, as many songs from Swift’s “Lover” album were featured, proving that her six-year relationship with Alwyn was not the love dream we thought it was, and instead, a denial of the truth.

THE SUBJECTS:

The album features songs about four people whose relationships with Swift greatly impacted her: Joe Alwyn, Matty Healy, Travis Kelce and Kim Kardashian.

Joe Alwyn is a British actor most known for… dating Taylor Swift. The pair met at the 2016 Met Gala when Swift was still dating actor Tom Hiddleston, and many of the songs on her album “Reputation” refer to the period of time in which she wanted to date Alwyn. The pair eventually dated for six years, and both “Lover” and “Reputation” are about him. After the two officially split in April 2023, rumors of his infidelity resurfaced, with many fans speculating about his relationship with co-star Allison Oliver. After the breakup, Swift released “You’re Losing Me,” a bonus song on her 2022 album “Midnights.” The song solidified fans’ suspicions about the breakup and was revealed to have been written two years before the breakup, in 2021. As the fifth track on TTPD, notoriously known to be Swift’s most powerful and heartbreaking songs, “So Long London” was the most highly anticipated song on the tracklist. It is also the most important “Joe song” on TTPD, as it’s an ode to their split, alluding to “London Boy,” another song from “Lover.”

Matty Healy, lead singer of the 1975, was one of Swift’s most controversial relationships. The two were briefly involved in 2014 and again in 2023 post-Joe breakup. It was her most publicly scrutinized relationship and many of the songs on “The Tortured Poets Department” reflect that. Although they only dated for a few months, he impacted on her, mentally and emotionally, powerfully enough to inspire nearly half the tracks on the album. We, as fans, have very little information about their relationship, in part because so many people disapproved of it. Healy’s reputation is far from good, in fact, he’s known to be a drug addict (this was confirmed in many songs on TTPD) and overall an incredibly problematic person. Even I, an avid supporter of Swift in almost everything she does, could not get behind this relationship. To the public eye, he was a short fling. To Swift, he was so much more (see: “Down Bad,” “Guilty As Sin,” “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” and “Fresh Out The Slammer”).

Travis Kelce, NFL tight-end and three-time Super Bowl winner, is Swift’s current boyfriend. Two songs on “The Tortured Poets Department” are about their relationship, one of the healthiest of her career. Their relationship went public in September 2023, and since then they’ve been more publicly open than any of Swift’s past relationships. Swift and Kelce’s relationship brought two intense worlds of fandom together: Swifties, and football fans. Speculations and jokes about their relationship run rampant, the funniest one I’ve seen is that their relationship was orchestrated by the CIA, but Swift’s songs say otherwise. Two enamored songs on TTPD are about Kelce, “So High School” and “The Alchemy.”

Finally, Kim Kardashian. The feud between Swift, Kardashian and rapper Kanye West, began in 2009 when West interrupted Swift’s speech at the VMAs, proclaiming she didn’t deserve her award. Seven years later, he wrote an incredibly misogynistic lyric in his song “Famous,” in which he directly references Swift and later, along with help from his then-wife Kim Kardashian, claimed that Swift approved the lyric. After years of back and forth, Swift has set the record straight. In her song, “thanK you aIMee,” she shares her feelings on the feud today, essentially saying that she does not forgive Kardashian’s actions for the way that they wrecked her life, but surviving everything Kardashian put her through is something she’s proud of. Overall, the song shares the deeper, more painful side of what many thought was just a petty celebrity feud.

Finally, here are my current top five songs from “The Tortured Poets Department” (in no particular order).