On April 29, a favored American artist and songwriter Taylor Swift released her eleventh studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department.” The album introduces 16 tracks following up with, “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” with an additional 15 songs concluding the album with a total of 31 songs. Swift’s album has increasingly received attention from millions of listeners because of the sophisticated and poetic style of the album’s lyrics.
The album’s first song “Fortnight” features American singer and rapper Post Malone and is the lead single for the album. This song has received attention from many listeners as it introduces the different themes the album explores. The song conveys the feeling of losing hope with lyrics like, ‘I love you, it’s ruining my life.’ Swift uses hyperbolic symbols throughout her album which counteracts the lead song that connects the album altogether.
Throughout the album, you can find songs including “loml” and “So Long, London “ which visit the topic of losing dreams, as well as the person that someone can love so desperately. Moreover, Swift mentions a missing piece from her life, as it is now gone or was never there. She further explains different thoughts and aspects of her life where she felt she was losing them.
Swift released a double album with The Tortured Poets Department two hours after the first 16 tracks were released. The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology included 15 more songs along with the already 16. The album had added new songs such as “The Black Dog ” and “The Prophecy” which introduce a similar theme of losing hope and a specific person, but adding the aspect of great sadness and depression that she felt while losing that person.
What makes the album stand out from Swift’s previous albums is the intricate lyrics she utilizes and messages she delivers behind her 6 songs. For example, the track, “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” exhibits the meaning of being someone’s favorite toy until they break that person. Swift uses the song to elaborate that when starting out in a relationship, there is value until the relationship gets boring and they belittle their significant other.
The album introduces an introspective vision into Swift’s life as it speculates the life of her publicized relationships in her past. After her six year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn fans speculate many songs on the album correlate to him. In the song,, “loml,” she mentions wanting to get married, but it never working out. Swift uses imagery to depict the memory of her getting married to a specific person who is speculated to be Alwyn.
Popularity has risen for Swift’s eleventh studio album due to the ambition in her songwriting. Listeners have been interested in the storytelling beyond her songwriting and the stories she is singing about. Her songs have dropped many hints that leave listeners curious as to whom she was singing about and what happened, one of those theories being about Alwyn.
Amongst the songs, she introduces many icons in her album like Clara Bow, a 1920s American actress who has her own track title. Swift uses the song to explain her self-worth and knowing the worth of one’s beauty when it comes to being in Hollywood. In the song she also mentions Stevie Nicks, an American singer-songwriter who is popular for being an icon of her time in the 1980s, just like Bow. These women have been largely popular during their times, as Swift writes about what she has seen over time within the music industry.
However, with elaborate lyrics and the features of icons throughout the album has broken many records throughout history including being the highest selling album ever. According to the Washington Post, each of the album’s songs has debuted on the Billboard 100. With her album breaking records on streaming platforms, but also with physical media like vinyls it has become the largest selling album on vinyl in history.
Overall, the album has surpassed many expectations that listeners had imagined as Swift is widely popular for her pop music with her branching out into different styles and techniques. This album has exceeded any album in 2024 so far and has only continued gaining popularity. The Tortured Poets Department had allowed viewers to see an outside perspective of what it is like to be a Hollywood star while also sharing unique stories of her personal life.
