The Tortured Poets Department[a] is the eleventh studio album by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released on April 19, 2024, by Republic Records. Two hours after its release, it was expanded into a double album subtitled The Anthology, containing a second volume of songs. It was written and produced by Swift, Jack Antonoff, and Aaron Dessner.
Swift wrote and developed The Tortured Poets Department amidst heightened fame brought by the Eras Tour in 2023 and the media scrutiny on her public and private lives. Self-described as her "lifeline" album, its introspective songs depict emotional tumult, with self-awareness, mourning, anger, humor, and delusion as dominant themes. Musically, the album is a minimalistsynth-pop, folk-pop, and chamber pop effort with rock and country stylings. The composition is largely mid-tempo, driven by a mix of synthesizers and drum machines with piano and guitar, whereas the visual aesthetic draws mainly from dark academia.
Upon release, the critical reception to The Tortured Poets Department was polarized. The majority of reviews were positive, praising Swift's cathartic songwriting for its emotional resonance and wit, but some found the album lengthy and lacking profundity. Subsequent assessments appreciated the album's musical and lyrical nuances that emerged upon further listens, and disputed the credibility of the initial critique for allegedly focusing on Swift's public image rather than artistic merit. Swift performed songs from the album in a revamped set list of the Eras Tour since May 2024. The album received six nominations at the upcoming 67th Annual Grammy Awards, including a record seventh Album of the Year nomination for Swift.
Background and conception
Swift released her tenth studio album, Midnights, on October 21, 2022, to critical praise and commercial success.[1][2] In 2023, she released two re-recorded albums, Speak Now (Taylor's Version) and 1989 (Taylor's Version), as part of her "Taylor's Version" re-recording project after a dispute over the ownership of her first six studio albums.[3][4] Both re-recordings were released amidst Swift's sixth headlining concert tour, the Eras Tour.[5][6] At the 66th Annual Grammy Awards on February 4, 2024, Swift won Best Pop Vocal Album and Album of the Year for Midnights. During her acceptance speech for the former category, she announced The Tortured Poets Department as a new original studio album that she had worked on since 2022.[7] This announcement was met with surprise from her fans, who had anticipated her to announce the re-recording of her 2017 album, Reputation, based on her social media clues.[8][9]
Swift began conceiving the album immediately after submitting Midnights to her record label, Republic Records, and continued working on it in secret throughout the U.S. leg of the Eras Tour in 2023.[10] While she was creating the album, her dating life continued to be a widely covered topic in the press, who reported on Swift's relationships with Joe Alwyn, Matty Healy, and Travis Kelce.[11][12] At the Eras Tour concerts in Melbourne in February 2024, Swift said that The Tortured Poets Department was a "lifeline" for her and an album that she "really needed" to make,[13] reflecting on how it made her confirm that songwriting was an integral part of her life.[14] In an Instagram post, Swift described the album as "an anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time—one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure".[15]
The album is rooted in personal songwriting, exploring Swift's introspections on the events in her private and public lives.[18][19] She was inspired by her tumultuous relationships[20] and the public perception of her celebrity[21][22] to create lyrical narratives that were messy, unbridled, and unguarded,[19][23][24] containing meta-references to her personal life through allusions and name-dropping.[25][26] Heartbreak is the primary topic,[27][28][29][30] expressed via themes such as delusion, anger, mourning, and death.[31][32][33][34] While the lyrics evoke vulnerable and devastating sentiments, they also incorporate humor and hyperbole.[23][27][32] Critics found them either self-aware[32] or self-conscious.[35] Swift considered the album a cathartic exercise[36] and described the content as "fatalistic" with overarching themes of "longing, pining, lost dreams".[21]
The album explores various themes to the extremes that Swift had not done before: erotic desires, forbidden love, and escaping from the public eye,[37][38] with songs using melodrama as a narrative device[39] or drawing on Swift's country music roots to incorporate detail-heavy narratives.[40] While the album is rooted in autobiographical songwriting with confessional narratives and first-person perspectives, some songs are not strictly self-referential and employ fictional elements.[41] According to the literary critic Stephanie Burt, the album title evokes the European poète maudit ("cursed poet") archetype of self-destructive poets who suffered from love, such as Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, or Dylan Thomas. Burt argued that Swift both embraces and rejects this archetype by acknowledging her most intense emotions but also making fun of them with "barbed words, sharp hooks, and sarcastic replies".[42]
Critics characterized The Tortured Poets Department as a post-breakup album.[19][37][43] In her analysis for The Nation, Burt divides the album into three themes. First is the dissolution of a years-long relationship, represented by "So Long, London". Second is a short-lived yet intense romance in the immediate aftermath and its sudden fallout, anchored by the head-over-heels infatuation portrayed in "But Daddy I Love Him", the abandonment in "Down Bad", and the destructive ending in "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived". Third is the pressure of fame that obliged Swift to keep performing in the public eye, represented by "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" and "Clara Bow".[44] Concurring with this narrative arc, Ann Powers wrote in NPR that The Tortured Poets Department reads like a novel where Swift explores how "emotional violence" is imposed onto women by their male lovers and even by themselves.[38]
Production and music
The Tortured Poets Department has a minimalist production[b] that draws on elements of various styles, including synth-pop,[c]pop rock,[48]dream pop,[49]soft rock,[50] and power ballads.[51] In an analysis for The New York Times, Jon Pareles wrote that Swift employs a "choppy pre-chorus, or chorus, that arrives in two-syllable bursts", adding to a steady verse structure and bringing a "hip-hop percussiveness" to the songwriting rooted country music.[52] Josh Kurp of Uproxx argued that the album cannot be categorized into a singular genre.[18] For Slant Magazine's Jonathan Keefe, the minimalist quality puts the emphasis on the lyrical narratives, with the music being a "vibe" rather than a focus.[45]
The production styles of Antonoff and Dessner result in two distinct soundscapes.[24] Antonoff's synth–based approach[44] results in synth-pop songs[c] whose mid-tempo compositions are characterized by sustained pads and bass, electronic pulses, and sparse drum machine beats.[d] These elements were compared by critics to those on Swift's previous pop albums Midnights[e] or 1989 (2014),[f] but they create a more muted and less danceable sound.[60][61] The first four tracks are exemplary of this: "Fortnight", "The Tortured Poets Department", "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys", and "Down Bad";[22][62] the last of which feature R&B inflections in its dynamic shifts and vocal cadences.[63]
The second half, primarily produced with Dessner, features acoustic arrangements that are driven by piano and strings.[24][44] He and Swift also produced the majority of the second volume, The Anthology,[66][54] consisting of mellow piano ballads.[67] His production style evokes folk arrangements, which critics categorized as folk-pop and chamber pop[60][68] and compared to his works on Swift's 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore.[g] According to Burt, two of Dessner–produced tracks—"Clara Bow" and "So High School"—feature new textures and instrumental timbres from Swift's past songs;[44] the former has a string section performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra,[70] and the latter evokes 1990s rock styles such as indie rock and alternative rock.[22][71] Two tracks that were jointly produced by Antonoff and Dessner—"But Daddy I Love Him" and "Thank You Aimee"—both have prominent country stylings, showcased through lush, sweeping string arrangements.[71][56]
Swift mostly sings in the lower ranges of her vocal register to deliver rap-like, conversational verses;[26][35][38] the music professor Samuel Murray attributed this conversational quality to some of Swift's familiar devices including one-note melodies and recitative delivery.[39] On some songs, Swift experiments with her vocals in a wider range: "Guilty as Sin?" has a melisma chorus;[63] "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived" features an alto delivery that reaches the bottom end of her range against a 7/4time signature; and "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" has her singing in screechy soprano.[44]
Marketing
The album's official logo features its abbreviated title.
Aesthetic
The lack of an apostrophe in the official title, as in The Tortured Poets' Department, was the subject of a debate over grammatical correctness. Scholars stated that Swift employed Tortured Poets as an attributive noun, as in the case with the 1989 drama film Dead Poets Society, and not as a possessive noun that warrants an apostrophe.[72] The cover artwork, photographed by Beth Garrabrant, is a black-and-white glamor photo shot of Swift lying on a bed wearing black loungewear: a see-through Yves Saint Laurent tank top and The Row boy shorts.[73][74][75] Both the artwork and title were parodied by numerous brands, organizations, sports teams, and franchises, and inspired numerous memes.[76][77][78] Media outlets described the album's visual aesthetic as gothic, especially dark academia.[79][80][81][82]
Promotion and release
After the Grammy announcement, Swift revealed the standard track listing via social media on February 6, 2024.[16] Swift announced four physical editions that were each titled after a corresponding bonus track: "The Manuscript", "The Bolter", "The Albatross", and "The Black Dog"; she announced the latter three editions during the Australian and Singaporean shows of the Eras Tour.[83] She partnered with Target for an exclusive "Phantom Clear" collector's vinyl edition.[84]
The album was promoted on digital platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads, prompting Swifties to search for Easter eggs.[85] It included five Swift-curated Apple Music playlists containing her old songs inspired by the five stages of grief;[86] a pop-up library of curated articles at The Grove, Los Angeles, hosted by Spotify;[87]QR code murals in various cities worldwide that led to unlisted YouTube shorts on Swift's channel;[88][89] a countdown to the album's release revealed upon refreshing Swift's Instagram profile; and special shimmer effects on Threads posts tagged with hashtags related to Swift and the album.[90]iHeartRadio and Sirius XM announced special programs with exclusive content from Swift to celebrate the album's release; the former temporarily rebranded as "iHeartTaylor".[91][92]
Swift changed the setlist of the Eras Tour (2024) to include a new act for the album
The Tortured Poets Department was released on April 19, 2024. A double album edition, subtitled The Anthology and containing 15 bonus tracks, was surprise-released digitally two hours later.[93] Two days earlier, the standard edition of the album was leaked,[94] which resulted in the phrase "Taylor Swift leak" being temporarily banned from searches on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter).[95]The Tortured Poets Department was available in 19 physical variants—nine CD, six vinyl, and four cassette variants, with deluxe CDs and cassettes being exclusive to Swift's official website.[96] Physical copies of the album included an original poem by the American singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks.[97] "Fortnight" was released as the lead single in conjunction with the album, accompanied by a music video.[98]Universal Music released "I Can Do It with a Broken Heart" to Italian radio on July 2.[99]The Anthology was released onto vinyl and CD formats on November 29.[100] As of October 2024, there were a total of 36 separate releases of the album across all formats.[101]
From May 2024, starting with the Paris shows, Swift revamped the set list of the Eras Tour to include songs from The Tortured Poets Department in a new act, which she informally described as "Female Rage the Musical".[102][103][h] She released live versions of certain songs as bonus tracks on the physical album via her website exclusively to US customers.[107] Other limited editions of the physical album included acoustic versions of five tracks.[108] Limited digital variants contained first draft phone demo recordings of four tracks, and the Eras Tour live recordings of some tracks from the Paris, Stockholm, Lyon and London shows.[109][110][111] The release of bonus-track versions was a way for Swift and her fans to maintain the album's number-one position on the charts, a method Swift and other artists have previously utilized to boost album sales and chart positions.[112][113][114][115]
Upon release, The Tortured Poets Department divided music critics;[122][123] secondary sources described the critical consensus as either positive[124][125] or mixed.[126] According to the review aggregator Metacritic, The Tortured Poets Department received "generally favorable reviews" based on a weighted average score of 76 out of 100 from 24 critic scores.[117] Its second part, The Anthology, scored 69 from six critic scores on the website.[118]
A number of critics regarded the album a landmark in Swift's discography. Reviews from The Independent's Helen Brown,[40]The Arts Desk's Ellie Roberts,[23]The Times' Dan Cairns,[121]PopMatters's Jeffrey Davies,[47] and Will Harris of Q praised the album as one of Swift's most solid outputs, considering the musical composition, vocal stylings and lyrical tonality as ambitious and tastefully experimental.[127] Others, including Variety's Chris Willman,[29] the i's Ed Power,[79] and The Observer'sKitty Empire, called it a quintessential Swift album containing some of the best songs of her career.[128]
Swift's songwriting was a source of compliment. The Line of Best Fit's Paul Bridgewater dubbed it her most cohesive body of work to-date, finding the music sophisticated and the lyricism symbolic.[33] To Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of the Financial Times, the album is a stylistic evolution for Swift, with writing that marks a "characteristically appealing turn" into moody melodrama.[30]Alexis Petridis of The Guardian and Alex Hopper of American Songwriter thought that the album has Swift's wittiest lyrics, featuring nuanced musical choices that show Swift is "willing to take risks in a risk-averse era for pop" and "constantly evolving and pushing her limits", respectively.[48][129] In a more measured review, Olivia Horn of Pitchfork felt the lyrics did not "distill an overarching emotional truth, tending to smother rather than sting."[56] Others, such as The New York Times' Lindsay Zoladz, Slant Magazine's Jonathan Keefe, and Exclaim!'s Alex Hudson, described some lyrics as weak and overwritten; Hudson claimed that many of its tracks "mistake verbosity for poetry".[65][45][66]
The tumultuous mood and unconstrained emotion of the lyrics were also highlighted. Multiple reviews complimented the album's heavy, unfiltered emotion;[79][19][29][130]Clash's Lauren Webb described it as "a spell-binding, toxic, chaotic illustration" of deteriorating mental sanity.[120] Powers opined that The Tortured Poets Department shows Swift's newfound freedom, with a "lack of concern about whether these songs speak to and for anyone but herself".[38] In a similar perspective, rave reviews from Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield and Variety's Chris Willman described the album as Swift's "gloriously chaotic" and "audacious, transfixing" project, respectively.[27][29] To Willman, the album combines "cleverness with catharsis".[29]Consequence's Mary Siroky, on the other hand, found this style of lyricism jarring and "outright bizarre" at times, and felt the album was an attempt at self-parody rather than a showcase of Swift's songwriting acumen.[57]
Many critics, including Zoladz,[65]NME's Laura Molloy,[53] and Stereogum's Tom Breihan, argued that Swift and Antonoff's collaboration on The Tortured Poets Department was uninventive due to a sonic similarity to their past collaborations.[26][131]The New Yorker's Amanda Petrusich rather favored Dessner's input to the album as "gentler, more tender, and more surprising".[132] Horn and the BBC's Mark Savage felt the melodies were sonically monotonous and "staid",[36][56] but others argued that the minimalistic approach complemented Swift's hyper-personal lyrics;[45][128][48] Hopper opined that "Swift's confidence as an artist is at a peak" with The Tortured Poets Department.[129] According to Mary Kate Carr of The A.V. Club, the album is "perfectly good" but arrived at a time when Swift has "nothing to prove" anymore, resulting in a stagnant point in her artistry;[133] this idea was shared by an anonymous, negative Paste review that criticized the album as rushed, hollow, and unrelatable.[25]
Post-review commentary
Various peer journalists and columnists cross-examined the album's critical reception. Publications considered The Tortured Poets Department a polarizing album;[32][124][134]The Ringer's Nathan Hubbard deemed it Swift's most controversial release since Reputation (2017).[135] Journalists from The New York Times[136] and Vox attributed this phenomenon to Swift's heightened fame and associated media "overexposure" between 2020 and 2024, including eight album releases, the influential Eras Tour, and her relationship with Travis Kelce.[12]Paste's anonymous review was singled out by other publications as "scathing";[124][137] Sumnima Kandangwa of the South China Morning Post opined that they hid their reviewer's identity because Swifties "can become quite spirited when it comes to protecting their favourite singer".[138] The album's Pitchfork score is Swift's lowest from the website. Sputnikmusic published reviews with three different ratings in a short period of time, each lower than the one before; Minh Anh of L'Officiel found this to be a confusing way to rate music.[139] Swift shared the album's positive reviews on her social media, tagging the respective authors, which some considered as a response to Paste and other unfavorable reviews.[140][141]
A number of commentators opined that the initial reviews demonstrated a flawed approach of mainstream music criticism.[12][142][143]Bloomberg News' Jessica Karl wrote that the "lengthy" duration of the album made the reviewers "[stay] up until dawn to finish listening to an album" to publish, contributing to some reviews that were hasty, criticizing both the "exclamation-pointed digs" at Swift in Paste and the "instant classic" review by Rolling Stone.[142] In The Ringer, Nora Princiotti attributed the polarized reviews to the unexpected double album release, and Nathan Hubbard argued that some "cooler-than-thou" critics from sites like The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Paste used Swift's billionaire status to downplay the personal issues she detailed in the album.[135] Karl opined that some "reputable publications" catered gossip instead of a serious artistic analysis,[142] while Anh highlighted that reviews mentioned aspects of Swift's public image instead of focusing on the music.[139]The New Yorker's Sinéad O'Sullivan asserted that Swift's albums contain multiple layers of self-referential "lore", writing that the unfavorable reviews were due to critics not taking that into account or not allotting enough listening time.[144]
Some early critics of the album recanted and declared they were "hasty" in reviewing it, as per Slate's Chris Molanphy, who opined it has become a "widely agreed point" in later critical commentary that The Tortured Poets Department "grows on you" after more listens; Molanphy stated he liked the album better than he did a week before.[145] CNN's Oliver Darcy said he had judged The Tortured Poets Department quickly, stating that he reviewed it keeping in the mind its mixed critical reception, and found the album overlong and unimpressive in agreement with other critics, but a week later, "after spending more time with the two-hour sonic feast, more methodically touring through its subtleties and nuances, I am ready to declare that it is one of Swift's best works yet." Darcy opined that the album cannot be fully digested at "the speed of TikTok", and criticized reviewers who do not let music albums "marinate" and instead expect "instant satisfaction".[143]
Year-end lists
Select year-end rankings for The Tortured Poets Department
The Tortured Poets Department broke numerous consumption records, leading The Guardian to comment that it "cemented Swift as the biggest pop star this century by many metrics".[156] On Spotify, it became the most pre-saved album of all time; the most streamed album in a single day, surpassing 200 million and then 300 million streams and breaking the all-time record previously held by Swift's Midnights; and the first album to accumulate one billion streams in a single week, doing so in five days.[157][158] The album also became the most streamed album in a single day on Amazon Music[159] and the most streamed pop album in a single day on Apple Music.[157] It amassed 1.76 billion streams globally within its first week of availability, an all-time record.[160] Republic Records reported global first-week consumption of four million units.[125]
In the United States, the album accumulated 1.6 million album-equivalent units in four days,[161] selling 700,000 vinyl LPs to break the record for the highest single-week vinyl sales previously held by Swift's 1989 (Taylor's Version) (2023).[157] It broke the single-week streaming record previously held by Drake's Scorpion (2018), amassing 799million on-demand streams in six days.[157] After a full week of availability, The Tortured Poets Department debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 2.61 million units, including 1.914 million pure copies and 891.34 million on-demand streams. It became Swift's 14th number-one album, tying her with Jay-Z for the most chart toppers among soloists. The album also registered the second-largest week by overall units and the third-largest week by pure sales in Billboard history.[96] The album continued to chart at number one on the Billboard 200 for 17 total non-consecutive weeks, becoming the longest-leading chart topper in Swift's career,[162] and contributed to the number-two peaks of albums such as Billie Eilish's Hit Me Hard and Soft,[163][164]¥$'s Vultures 2,[165][166] and Chappell Roan's The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.[167][168] It is also the third album in history and first by a female artist to spend its first 12 weeks atop the chart.[169][m]
All 31 songs from The Anthology debuted on the Billboard Hot 100, occupying the entire top 14 simultaneously for the first time in chart history. Swift set the record for most simultaneous entries by a female artist (32) and became the first woman to surpass 50 career top-10 songs.[170] The album was certified six-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in November 2024, for surpassing six million album-equivalent units.[171] It topped the Billboard 200 Year-End chart of 2024, selling 3.491 million pure copies and amassing 6.955 million units to become the year's best-selling and most-consumed album in the United States.[172] Sales were boosted by multiple variants of the album, with double-digit variants in digital and CD mediums.[173]
The Tortured Poets Department broke chart records in other countries. In Germany, it recorded the largest streaming day for an album and debuted atop the chart with the highest sales week for an international solo artist in seven years.[174] In the United Kingdom, it became the fastest-selling album by any artist in seven years and by a non-British artist in 18 years, and it tied Swift with Madonna for the most female number-one albums on the UK Albums Chart (12).[175] It became the fastest-selling vinyl album since 1994 and Swift's album with the most weeks at number one (10),[176][177] and was the most-streamed and best-selling album of the year.[178] It was the best-selling album of 2024 in Spain, marking the first album by a non-Spanish-speaking artist to top the national year-end chart since the Spice Girls' Spice in 1997.[179] On the Australian ARIA Charts, The Tortured Poets Department became Swift's 13th number-one album, a record among female artists; its songs set records for the most simultaneous entries by a single artist in the top 10 (10), top 50 (29), and top 100 (31) of the singles chart.[180] Debuting atop the Canadian Albums Chart as Swift's 14th consecutive chart topper, the album registered the highest single-week vinyl sales and streaming figures in chart history.[181] Ten tracks from the album debuted on the BillboardBrasil Hot 100.[182]
Accolades
Awards and nominations for The Tortured Poets Department
^Aswad, Jem; Garcia, Thania; Horowitz, Steven J.; Willman, Chris (December 13, 2024). "The Best Albums of 2024". Variety. Archived from the original on December 13, 2024. Retrieved December 13, 2024.
^"Czech Albums – Top 100". ČNS IFPI. Note: On the chart page, select 17.Týden 2024 on the field besides the words "CZ – ALBUMS – TOP 100" to retrieve the correct chart. Retrieved April 29, 2024.
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