Achi news desk-
Taylor Swift released The Tortured Poets Department on Friday, a surprise 31-track double album, and she’s clearly in an emotionally evolved age.
On its surface, the album offers a fairly relaxed listening experience, sounding like a marriage of the haunting depths of 2020’s “Folklore” and the synthy riffs of 2022’s Midnights.
But underneath it all, you’ll find a bravely vulnerable expression of the pop star poet’s inner thoughts, and it takes some reading between the lines to understand the scope of her message – with some entries requiring a deeper dive than others. For that, we are here to help:
1. ‘Fortnite’ (with post Malone)
In an audio clip played during the iHeartRadio premiere special on Friday, Swift said the song “really shows a lot of the common themes that run throughout this album,” including “fatalism, longing, drifting away, lost dreams.”
“I always imagined it happened in this American town, where the American dream you thought would happen to you didn’t happen, did it? You ended up not getting the person you loved and now you just have to live with it every day, wondering what could have been, maybe seeing them outside,” she said . “And that’s a pretty tragic idea, really. So I just wrote from that point of view.”
2. ‘Department of Tortured Poets’
The album’s title track appears to be about the band’s 1975 frontman, Matty Healy, with whom Swift was first linked in 2014 and then, briefly, after her 2023 split from British actor Joe Alwyn.
Cues include the opening where Swift sings, “You left your typewriter in my apartment.” (Healy expressed a fondness for typewriters in a 2019 interview with GQ magazine.) Honorable mentions on this track also go to Lucy and Jack—who could be Swift’s Boygenius bandmate Lucy Dacus and Jack Antonoff, her friend and frequent collaborator—as well as Charlie Puth, That Swift directly name-checks the song and declares that “there’s got to be a bigger artist.”
3. ‘My child only breaks his favorite toys’
“‘My Boy Just Breaks His Favorite Toys’ is a song I wrote by myself and it’s a metaphor from the perspective of a child’s toy that is someone’s favorite toy until they break you, and then don’t want to play with you anymore,” Swift told iHeartRadio on Friday.
4. ‘Down Bad’
One of the more synth-heavy sections that harks back to Swift’s recent “Midnights” era, “Down Bad” also feels a little more contemporary in nature, with the modern-feeling chorus “crying in the gym” in the chorus. The Grammy winner told iHeartRadio that the song serves as a metaphor for “the idea of ​​being a love bomb where someone, you know, rocks your world and dazzles you and then kind of abandons you.”
5. ‘So Long, London’
One of the more devastating tracks on Tortured Poets, it’s a safe bet to assume this song is about Alvin, Swift’s ex-boyfriend of six years. The song covers a wide range of emotions regarding not only parting ways with a city she loved and spent a significant amount of time in, but also letting go of both the good times and the heartbreak that the former couple must have experienced there.
Many see the song as an answer, however bleak, to her optimistic track “London Boy”, which appears on her 2019 album “Lover”, which is also believed to be about Alvin in the heyday of their relationship. Swift and Alvin were first romantically linked in 2016 and split in April 2023.
6. ‘But dad I love him’
This slow-building, rosy track is reminiscent of some of Swift’s earlier pre-“1989” era, and some listeners suspect a double meaning. We’ll leave the decision to you.
7. ‘Fresh Out The Slammer’
The opening guitar riff here resembles something inspired by an Orville Peck song, and turns into an upbeat, breathy pop track that compares getting out of prison to getting out of a relationship.
8. ‘Florida!!!’ (with Florence + The Machine)
Swift told iHeartRadio on Friday that she wrote this song with Florence Walsh of Florence + The Machine, saying, “I came to this idea of ​​what happens when your life doesn’t fit, or your choices that you’ve made stick to you, and you’re surrounded by these harsh consequences and judgment, and the circumstances don’t You’ve been led to where you thought you’d be and you just want to run away from everything you’ve ever known, is there anywhere you can go.”
This place to escape, according to Swift and Welch? Florida!!! Oh, and FYI: Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone is also credited as a contributor on this song, according to Swift’s YouTube page.
9. ‘Guilty as sin?’
“Am I allowed to cry?” she asks. Sounds like the same question we all ask ourselves while listening to this album, to be honest.
10. ‘Who’s afraid of little old me?’
Written solely by Swift, she declares here, “Who’s Afraid of Little Little Me?” Then warns, “You should be.” Reminder: stay on Swift’s good side.
The construction of the song’s title also recalls Edward Albee’s 1962 play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? About a troubled marriage, which in turn also refers to the famous tortured writer and poet Virginia Woolf.
11. ‘I can fix it (no really I can)’
We’ve all argued about this case at some point in our lives, haven’t we?!
12. ‘Lommel’
Translation: “loml” is internet slang for “love of my life”.
Co-written with Aaron Dessner, Swift sings on this kind track, “I wish I couldn’t remember how we almost had it all.” After singing the words “You said I was the love of your life” several times throughout the song, she concludes, “You’re the loss of my life.” ooze
13. ‘I can do it with a broken heart’
Imagine going through a breakup and then having to go on stage, put on a sparkling smile and perform in front of tens of thousands of people. That’s what Swift is exploring in this track. “I’m so depressed, I act like it’s my birthday every day,” she sings.
14. ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’
It’s a brutal song with notes of anger directed at someone (who may or may not be Hilly) who pissed her off after he “rusted” her “sparkly” summer, presumably in the summer of 2023, when they were thought to have briefly dated (Healy and Swift were seen attending concerts each other’s at the same time, among other things). Other potential references to Healy include one at the top of the song, where Swift mentions “your Jehovah’s Witness suit,” reminiscent of the frontman’s favorite fashion choices in 1975.
15. ‘The Alchemy’
Swift’s boyfriend, three-time Super Bowl champion Travis Kelce, appears to be the subject of this track, which also happens to be one of the only classic love songs on the album. the mound? It includes several football references with buzzwords such as “touchdown”, “warm the benches” and “biggest in the league”.
Swift, of course, attended Kelsa’s football games throughout last season, including the Super Bowl where his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, defeated the San Francisco 49ers. “Where’s the trophy? He just came running to me,” she sang, perhaps alluding to the long hug and kiss the couple shared on the field following the presentation of the trophy.
16. ‘Clara Keshet’
While the title of this track refers to the famous silent film star from the 1920s and 1930s (certainly a visual inspiration for Swift’s just-dropped music video for “Fortnight”), Swift also sings here about Stevie Nicks – who wrote a song about both of their stars’ past relationships sheet music for physical copies of the album.
The chorus to the song may be an Easter egg for Swifties and Marvel fans alike, who have long speculated that Swift will make a musical appearance in her friend Ryan Reynolds’ surefire blockbuster Deadpool 3 this summer. A gifted mutant named Dazzler. The lyrics include “promise to be dazzling” and the last line, “the future is bright, dazzling.”
17. ‘The Black Dog’
Although entirely speculative, this poem may refer to a well-known pub in the Vauxhall area of ​​London. Swift sings wistfully about trying to figure out why an ex-lover doesn’t miss her and then mentions how the subject she’s singing about forgot to turn off his location, so we’ll let you read between the lines.
18. ‘imgonnagetyouback’
Swift can’t decide if she wants to “smash” an on-again, off-again lover’s bike or be his wife. Either way, as the title suggests in this song, she is determined to get him back.
19. ‘The Albatross’
“She’s the albatross,” sang Swift. “She’s here to destroy you.” ‘Enough said.
20. ‘Chloe or Sam or Sofia or Marcus’
Some Swifts speculate that one of the names in this song is the still-unknown moniker of Reynolds and Blake Lively’s fourth child. The couple are close friends with Swift, who mentioned the names of three of their daughters — Betty, James and Inez — on several tracks on “Folklore,” and featured the voice of one of their daughters on the 2017 song “Gorgeous” from “Reputation.”
21. ‘How did it end?’
With a rolling piano melody, she conducts a “post mortem” about the end of a relationship, and in a devastating way. “The deflation of our dreams / leaves me sad and shaken,” she sings. Grab the tissues.
22. ‘So High School’
If it feels like Swift and Kelsea’s relationship has played out in public like an affair between the coolest kids in high school, you’re not alone. Swift sings, “You know what you want and, boy, you got her,” a line that may be a reference to the fact that Kelsa’s public announcement of his desire to date Swift led to the beginning of their romantic relationship. She also references the “Kiss, Marry, Kill” game that Kelsea was seen playing (and choosing to “kiss” Swift) in a recently resurfaced 2016 interview.
23. ‘I hate it here’
“This place made me feel worthless,” Swift sings. We don’t know where she hates so much, but we sure hope she’s not there anymore.
24. ‘Thank you Amy’
Woe. It’s wild. While it may sound like Swift is singing about a mean high school girl named Amy, the references in this song—and there are many—clearly point to Swift taking a shot at Kim Kardashian, with whom she’s had a…seasonal history. The most obvious factor here is the letters that Swift chose to capitalize in the song title spell out “KIM.”
More hints: “I don’t think you’ve changed much / I’ve changed your name and all defining hints / And one day, your boy comes home and sings a song that only we both know is about you.”
25. ‘I look in people’s windows’
It’s not as scary as it sounds, we promise. It’s more of a metaphor for being outside, looking in.
26. ‘The Prophecy’
Maybe keep the tissue box close during this tragic song too.
27. ‘Cassandra’
Some Swifts think this song might also be about Kardashian, since it references snakes (Kardashian played famous to enter the #taylorswiftisasnake meme in the past). Others connected the Cassandra that Swift sang about to a character in Greek mythology, a priestess whose accurate prophecies were not believed.
28. ‘Peter’
The surface references here are to Disney’s animated classic “Peter Pan,” which she previously referenced in 2020’s “Cardigan.” “Peter” could very well be a continuation of the lore from that track, but the jury’s still out on who Peter is really based on — if anyone
29. ‘The Bolter’
“When she left it felt like a breath,” sang Swift. The playing and guitar part is reminiscent of the sounds on “Folklore”, a 2020 album on which Swift worked with Dessner, who is also considered to have co-written “The Bolter”.
30. ‘Robin’
Maybe It Is that the name of Lively and Reynolds’ baby?!
31. ‘The Manuscript’
This is a devastatingly sad song that will leave you breathless when you reach the end of this poetic “tortured” journey. With just a piano and Swift’s voice, she seems to reflect on the experiences described in the previous 30 songs, singing, “Looking back may be the only way forward.”
The powerful lyrics suggest that Swift is coming to terms with the realization that “she finally knew what the agony was all about,” and though she looks back on those memories, “the story is no longer mine” now that she’s shared it with the world.
