Taylor Swift’s album, The Tortured Poets Department, marks her 11th studio release and debuted on April 19, 2024. Swift announced her 11th album after winning her 13th Grammy, and as many Swifties know, 13 is Taylor’s favorite number.
Swifties quickly pointed out the resemblance to a group chat named “The Tortured Man Club,” which was shared between Swift’s ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn and Paul Mescal, Phoebe Bridger’s ex-boyfriend who’s a dear friend of Swift. The connection of the album title was made during a December 2022 Variety interview with the two actors.
All of Swift’s albums have significant colors that go with each; for example, Midnights is represented by a dark navy blue and Lover is represented by a light pink. The Tortured Poets Department is represented by black and white since it’s a black and white picture of herself.
Only a few days following her initial announcement of The Tortured Poets Department, Swift excited her fans by providing the track list for the new album. This list features 16 original tracks and includes a special bonus track titled “The Manuscript” if fans pre-ordered the final edition of the album.
There are also featured artists on songs such as Post Malone on track one, “Fortnight” and Florence and the Machine on track eight “Florida!!!!”
Before listening, Senior Carrie Proudfit said, ‘I think “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’ will summarize the things naive girls may go through when they’re in abusive relationships. Young women are easy to gaslight since they are so new to the world (the industry in Taylor’s case). Taylor probably thought she loved whoever it was but really he was just using her.”
On the morning of April 19, fans stayed up and got to hear the album for the first time quickly followed by a 2:00 a.m. double album release, shocking fans worldwide titled “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY”. After several days of the album’s release, Swift had four new songs from the album added to her most popular list on Spotify. “Fortnight” stands at number two, “The Tortured Poets Department” at number three, “Down Bad” taking the number three spot and finally “So Long, London” at number five.
Some of the standouts of the album are song number five, “So Long, London.” Fans speculate that this song is calling out Joe Alwyn and talking about the end of the seven-year relationship with Swift. She writes in the song “How much sad did you think I had in me?”, “My friends said it isn’t right to be scared” and “You swore you loved me but where was the proof, I died on the altar waiting for you.” All of these lines shocked fans and left them talking for days.
In total, Swift gave her fans two hours and two minutes of music on Friday morning, the perfect amount to hold Swifties over while she plans her next move.
