Taylor Swift shocked the internet with her ground-breaking double album “The Tortured Poets Department” (TTPD). Swift dropped the first 16 songs off of TTPD at midnight Eastern Time on Friday, April 19, followed two hours later by the release of “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” which features an additional 15 tracks. This now makes “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” Swift’s longest album in terms of track quantity and album length.
American rapper Post Malone sings with Swift for the album’s opening track, “Fortnight.” Malone and Swift’s soft vocals are beautifully harmonized alongside a synth-pop music production. A fortnight is two weeks, and Swift uses the title throughout the track to describe a short-lived whirlwind romance that she cannot let go of. “Fortnight” ends with Swift feeling left behind in the lyrics “another fortnight lost in America, move to Florida, buy the car you want.”
These lyrics foreshadowed track eight of TTPD, a track Swift did in collaboration with Florence Welch titled “Florida!!!” The track is a wave of emotion and power, with Welch and Swift’s voices meshing together seamlessly in the upbeat duet. Vocally riffing off each other throughout the ballad, the artists end the song with a strong and astounding belt.
One tradition that Swift has maintained throughout her albums is the fifth track she describes as her most “honest, emotional and vulnerable.” The song “So Long, London” lives up to that expectation. It starts with what sounds like church bells and Swift’s voice whimsically singing in the background of a church choir. “So Long, London” delves into the desire to make a relationship work and the need to move on to grow as an individual.
For the Swifties craving her faster-tempo tracks, they can enjoy upbeat songs like “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” and “imgonnagetyouback.” However, for the Swifties in need of a good cry session, they can stream somber tracks such as “loml,” “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and “How Did It End?”
TTPD was an opportunity for Swift to give her side of the narrative on the public’s opinions of her, and she took it. In the powerful ballad “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” Swift showcases her vocal range and sings about her experiences being criticized in the music industry and the public eye for the past 15 years. She highlights these emotions with the lyrics “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me” and “I was tame, I was gentle, ‘til the circus life made me mean.”
TTPD takes listeners through a journey of self-discovery, grief, relationship struggles, insecurities and the effects of love and heartbreak. While not every song may be for every person, with a track list of 31 songs, music lovers are almost guaranteed to find enjoyment in one of them.
