The Tortured Poets Department: Taylor Swift releases 11th studio album

On Friday morning, Taylor Swift released her newest album, The Tortured Poets Department. 

Yes, another one. 

So what? It shows every sign of being Swift’s biggest-album release yet. Whether you like her music or not, her meteoric rise is sending shockwaves far beyond her own pocket of the industry. 

The background. 

• TTPD, as Swifties call it, is Swift’s 11th studio album – her 15th including the re-recordings she made between 2021 and 2023 to re-acquire her masters after they were sold off in a $330 million deal by her previous label. 
• It’s written almost exclusively with longtime artistic collaborators Jack Antonoff (lead singer of Bleachers) and Aaron Dessner (founder member of The National).
• The name “Tortured Poets Department” allegedly comes from the name of a group chat between Joe Alwyn (Swift’s ex-boyfriend of 6 years), and Irish actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott.

But first, some reviews.

TTPD is annoyingly good. Maintaining a Tay Tay-agnostic lifestyle in this world has become increasingly untenable. I’ve only just watched The Sopranos, for Pete’s sake, yet Taylor Mania rages on whether we like it or not. Her eleventh studio album arrived at crack of dawn, with a seismic judder like the monolith from 2001. And the reality is that it’s actually, annoyingly, really good: bright, uplifting, a little long but a lot of fun. And at a time when the world’s gone back to country, she bluffed the opposite: Florida!!! is a midway delight, a synth-pop duet with Florence (of & The Machine fame). Fortnight and My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys veer towards shimmering electronica, all warm fuzzy tones offset by eyebrow-arching witticisms. Lyrically, the Swiftian pillars are all in place:  Florida!!! is about small town escape and the big city rush. Elsewhere, songs like I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) and But Daddy I Love him condemn recent ex-lovers to the same sunken place Lana Del Rey found on Norman F****ing Rockwell. TTPD sees Swift casting light and shade equally, by turns nasty and namaste. Am I become Swifty, enjoyer of her worlds? It’s not impossible. (Ben Blackmore, critic)

Breaking up is hard. From the very first note of the very first song – and in a way Taylor Swift has arguably never written one before – The Tortured Poets Department is a breakup album. “I love you,” Swift sings in Fortnight, the album’s first track , “it’s ruining my life.” And then, like she needs to hear it from someone else to truly believe it herself, Post Malone sings the same line back to her quietly, like an echo: “I love you, it’s ruining my life.” While two of her last three albums have consciously tried to remove her life from the record’s songs and stories, Tortured Poets sounds a bit like a resignation. Swift seems to be admitting she’s too raw, too hurt, too aware that this is her life to fully confront it. Per usual, we’re just along for the ride. (Katie Riley, Data Editor, a Swiftie since before they were called Swifties)

More headlines from Planet Swift: 

• She entered the Forbes World’s Billionaires List for the first time with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion (£877m). She did so alongside Sam Altman, creator of ChatGPT on $1 billion (£800m).
• The next leg of her Eras Tour starts in Paris on 9 May and features eight sold-out nights at London’s Wembley Stadium. 
• Fans’ difficulties getting tickets have prompted some US states and the Department for Justice to make plans to take Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation to court, citing Swift’s concerns about her fans losing out when the platform crashed. 
• She put her music back on TikTok, effectively crossing a picket-line in a long-running dispute between the platform and Universal Music Group. Not everyone is happy.

Swift isn’t the only female artist releasing music this year and making waves. 

Listen already: Beyonce’s ground-breaking country album, Cowboy Carter which features Dolly Parton; Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine and Shakira’s Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran. 

And to come: Dua Lipa, who will headline Glastonbury for the first time, is releasing Radical Optimism on 3 May. Billie Eilish, who just won her second Oscar for an original song, releases Hit Me Hard And Soft on 17 May. Lana Del Rey, who headlines Coachella again this weekend, is releasing Lasso in September.

What’s more… Katie Perry, Selena Gomez, Megan Thee Stallion, SZA and Lady Gaga have all teased album releases for 2024.