The Tortured Poets Department

Despite the popular stereotypes that Taylor Swift only writes break up songs, her newest album The Tortured Poets Department poses as the first breakup album of Taylor’s in over a decade. The 15 track album tells the story of her losing someone whom she truly thought was the love of her life, and the road to discovering what that truly means. 

Taylor has grown a reputation (no pun intended) of being a legendary storyteller, and the extent of this shows within this album. With frequent parallels to her 2019 album Lover, The Tortured Poets Departments dabbles into the idea that the love she once praised and admired was nothing but a fragment of her imagination as it was never as picture perfect as she wanted it to seem. The chorus of the track titled ‘So Long London” reads “For so long, London/ Stitched undone/ Two graves, one gun/ I’ll find someone”  which is rather jarring when compared to that of the Lover track “London Boy’ which tells the story of her deep love and admiration for said London boy.

Just 2 hours after the album’s release, Taylor surprised fans with the release of another 15 songs on The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. When listening to these additional tracks, it sounds like they were written relatively recently, like after the completion of the original album. I can assume that since they stylistically align well with The Tortured Poets Department, it was made an album addition rather than an entirely separate collection. Although it surly has its gut wrenching tracks, The Anthology sounds somewhat lighter than the first batch of songs, which I feel alludes to Taylor's healing journey.

Speaking of this lighter feeling, my favorite part about this album is the back and forth that Taylor portrays through this. One track can be filled with so much depth, and the next can be so whimsical. I love how this ties perfectly into the healing journey that everyone experiences when going through a break up. There's some day where the world feels like its going to end, where you feel like you've lost everything you once knew, and other days where you're so optimistic to what the future could hold. When Taylor translates these feelings into her work, it's like the finishing touch to the album, the cherry on top.

Since its release 2 weeks ago, I can confidently say that The Tortured Poets Department is in my top 3 favorites of Taylor's. This album showcases a new artistic side to Taylor that fans have never seen before as she experiments with new ways of storytelling.

Definitely give this album a listen if you haven't done so yet!