By Aliah Tubbs
“The Tortured Poets Department” by Taylor Swift has been admired as one of Swift’s best works yet. A year after getting out of her six-year-long relationship, this album describes the aftermath of it while also describing some of the good things in her life.
The album has plenty of positives and negatives. The album starts with an introduction from a poem by Stevie Nicks. The lyrics read in “The Tortured Poets Department,” “You’re not Dylan Thomas. I’m not Patti Smith. This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel. We’re modern idiots.”
This was Swift’s 11th studio album produced by Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff. This gave the album two sounds starting off with a synth-pop beat, which is Antonoff’s specialty, followed by Dessner’s dampened upright piano sound.
Swift also has a way of keeping her albums relevant by releasing many different types of deluxe vinyl or songs to keep her music at the number-one spot. This has proven to work because her album has been at the number-one spot for five weeks.
Swift’s Confession is cathartic, as she realizes she does not know anything about adulthood — or adult relationships. From “Fortnight” to “Clara Bow,” to “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” these thirty-something break-up tales are new territory for her.
Swift did include some happy songs that bloomed from her relationship with NFL Player Travis Kelce. The song “The Alchemy” describes their romance perfectly and how in love they were with each other during the Superbowl. The lyrics for “The Alchemy” read, “He was trying to be the greatest in the league. Where’s the trophy? He just comes running over to me.”
If you want an album filled with happy songs, Swift is not the artist for you since she will always find a way to shatter your heart with her songs as they can be devastating.
“How Did it End?” and “loml” are perfect examples of songs that will hurt you on this album though they aren’t the only ones. There is also “So Long London” which was a sad goodbye to her ex of six years.
This album goes through many different stages of breakup grief, happiness and overcoming all of it at once, which is something that Swift is good at doing.
This album does have a “Reputation” type edge to it, which made it all too confusing for the fans to decode. In her summary, Swift explained that it was a “detailed debrief, for the sake of reminding,” which is something that anyone can hear if they listen intently to the music.
Throughout all these songs, Swift lives up to her credo of “All’s Fair in Love and Poetry.” However, if you’ve listened to “The Tortured Poets Department,” it goes to show that both things are prone to get messy and even hurtful.
