★★★☆☆
“The Tortured Poets Department” is Taylor Swift’s clunkiest and most unflattering album name ever- a proper fit for how the era and album would turn out. Ever since the star-studded night of the 2024 Grammys, where Taylor Swift dropped the ubiquitous bomb that her newest original album, The Tortured Poets Department, would release in late April, the “era” was met with a mix of confusion, surprise, and criticism. As it would mark the 8th album Swift has released in the past four years, there’s an undeniably natural level of exhaustion surrounding her music that the general public has experienced as her songs have constantly topped the Spotify, Apple Music, and Billboard charts, solidifying her name as one of the most influential performers of the 21st century. As she is collectively agreed upon to be one of the most notable songwriters of this generation, I constantly hold her albums to a high standard, which has led to some disappointment throughout the past few years.
As someone who was never thoroughly impressed by Midnights, I was hoping that her newest record would provide a bit more clarity to my grievances, as I was experiencing the Jack-Antonoff-synth-pop-fatigue that has plagued her past several records, as well as desiring some more distinct artistic evolution within her sound. However, all the signs that TTPD would be somewhat of a letdown were omnipresent since the album’s verbal birth on Grammys night. For instance, when the track list dropped, the internet collectively cringed at some of the song title names, with some of the worst offenders ranging from “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “Down Bad,” or “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me.” Swift also dropped many vinyl variants, each with different bonus tracks that built a sense of urgency to buy them, making the album roll-out seem heavily inauthentic and desperate to break records with sales. Even after it was discovered that Jack Antonoff unsurprisingly manhandled the album, I still tried to maintain a shred of excitement as this would mark the first original Taylor Swift album since her breakup with long-time boyfriend Joe Alwyn and the controversial fling with singer Matty Healy. However, I was unfortunately proven correctly with my mediocre hope for the album come my first listen of it.
After listening to the album for the first time, I realized that Taylor Swift has become the Marvel universe of the music industry- I’m not too fond of Marvel movies. Swift has accumulated such specific lore and timelines throughout her albums regarding her life and relationships that you can’t exactly dive into this album with no knowledge of the melodrama of her life. Furthermore, this complex storyline of her life requires hours of expertise, streaming, and searching for the coveted “Easter eggs” that Swifties cares so deeply for. Not to mention the constant cash grab with extensive merch drops that create a pseudo-sense of urgency to buy before it’s too late. The entire experience of being a Taylor Swift fan has been forever tinged with a distinct sense of late-stage capitalism with each new merch drop, secret album release, and thousand-dollar tour ticket.
Also, the impressive rate at which Swift can miraculously churn out projects has created unsurprising exhaustion surrounding her music, especially when Jack Antonoff has exclusively made it. As a disclaimer, I do not hate Jack Antonoff. He has proved himself to be a quintessential voice of music production for this generation, creating some of the greatest songs and albums of the past decades with artists like Lorde, Lana Del Rey, St. Vincent, Fun., and many more. I also do not hate Taylor Swift in any way- she’s been one of the most influential artists of my lifetime, and I’ve followed her music ever since I was a child. However, Swift and Antonoff, collaborating since 2013, have become incredibly uninspired within the past few years. The classic synth-pop sound that the duo is so prone to using has become repetitive, to almost the point of boredom within her music. Tracks like “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” and “Down Bad” all had a significant level of similarity to her previous work that made me feel like I had already listened to the song before it had come out. Also, many familiar, unoriginal rhyme schemes, drum patterns, or story narratives within the album left me dissatisfied. Swift touches upon many topics she explicitly unravels in her other albums, leaving the listener with nothing new to add to the lyrical conversation.
Now, why exactly was it this specific project that didn’t enchant me on the first listen? After all, I’ve never been a big fan of Midnights, either, but I still listen to it. Twitter user @musicstruggles1 seemed to verbalize my annoyances by stating, “I think Jack and Taylor have pushed each other as far as they can as collaborators in regards to a whole album, and certainly in this musical direction,” in a lengthy tweet that bolstered almost 6 million views since the album’s release. It’s clear that Taylor had a lot of inspiration to craft this album, but where The Tortured Poets Department fails is to convey these heavy emotions in a way that creates an equivalent musical conversation through lyricism and production. Promising moments in the album occur when the beat begins to build up, but almost every time, it is a cop-out and never actually leads to anything. TTPD often feels like a verbose therapy session that Jack Antonoff recorded and put a synth beat behind. The lyrics are painfully self-referential to the point of almost becoming entirely unrelatable (No, Taylor, we don’t all agree that Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist). Nothing artistically driven about this project lets the listener see a side of Taylor Swift that wasn’t already showcased in Midnights or the 1989 vault tracks, leaving the listener with only the stale thought of “Haven’t I heard this melody before?”
Furthermore, for an album that prides itself on being inspired by poetry, TTPD is undeniably Swift’s weakest work with songwriting. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good moments, but the lows are career lows. I don’t need to refer to anything in particular because we’ve all seen the 1830s, the tattooed Golden Retriever, and the Grand Theft Auto lyric. Still, Swift also lacks any sense of urgency with her delivery, possibly because her lyrics are so unthreatening that it would be impossible to sing them with any level of rage or intensity. Some lyrics even have the appearance of being deep but are usually just syllable-heavy buzz words that give the impression of being found in a high schooler’s slam poetry or thesaurus-filled essay. Overall, the album provides the disappointing aftertaste of being an utterly forgettable asset to her impressive discography. Swift had enough reasons to write the album but not enough reasons to share this specific project with the world.
Despite my complaints against the album, I will never say that it is, flat out, a bad album. Even at her worst, Taylor is the biggest pop star in the world, and as her music is catered to appeal to a broad audience, there will always be at least one song that I will enjoy. Tracks like “Guilty as Sin?,” “So Long, London” and “Florida!!!” were all infectious upon my first listen, and I will return to them. However, as a collective body, The Tortured Poets Department has proven to be a rare misstep in Swift’s discography. Even if the messy reception of the album won’t make even the smallest crack in her career, hopefully, it will serve as a wake-up call to Taylor Swift that the world won’t be mad if she takes some time to evolve her sound and create a project genuinely worth the listen.
Take a listen and form your own thoughts!: