Album Review: In ‘THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT,’ Taylor Swift Unswiftly Explores Self-Imprisonment

In a surprise double album release, the genre-defying, economy-defining songstress returns with her eleventh studio album as Chairwoman of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Full of artistic allusions and recycled themes, Swift dwells in unreality and chooses her relationship with the media as the anthology’s most pressing matter. 

Written by Janie Bickerton

Photo courtesy of Beth Garrabrant

Tortured by his self-inflicted duty to determine the role of the poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson lamented, “Every thought is also a prison.” In the 180 years since the essayist penned this inkling, poetry has spilled into realms Emerson could never have imagined — like pop music — but it remains just as tortuous for the modern poet.

Taylor Swift’s capitalistic collectible publication method may have the poets who came before her rolling in their graves, yet her incessant soul-bearing and strong thematic grasp call to mind poetry’s purpose as a vessel of vulnerability. The American singer nestles her words in this idea of thought as a prison, taking self-sabotaging comfort in her established sound before learning to let go of the prisons she calls home. Synthy and stripped, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT brings delicately re-wrapped revelations about relationships, youth, and fame with a shaky yet assured breath.

Swift kicks off two hours of emotional turmoil with “Fortnight,” the single that smoothly bridges the Grammy-winning Midnights era to the “new aesthetic” with sonic similarity. Hot off a sultry swingin’ collaboration with Beyoncé on COWBOY CARTER, Post Malone echoes Swift’s assertion, “I love you, it’s ruining my life,” with his signature shaking voice before taking the bridge from the industry’s resident bridgemaker herself. The sleep-inducing synths on “Fortnight” set the album off on a slow start that, unfortunately, never fully picks up steam. In the cordial war over the music industry crown, Beyoncé wins for better Post Malone collaboration.

Ushering in an onslaught of mediocre allusions throughout the album, Swift sings of poets Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith and then disjointedly adds Charlie Puth to the mix in the title track. Her expected inflections, backed by signature Jack Antonoff synths, make yet another scintillating track for the creative pair, but the duo’s mundane synergy reeks throughout THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. The initial release’s slow pop production proves Antonoff’s tenure in the department of Swiftian poetics. Perhaps the Chairwoman should re-evaluate his promotion. His once-shiny touch on her shift from country to pop in 2014 has now rusted into a catchy yet forgettable lecture series that has run its course. 

Atop this production fatigue, lyrical restraints also run amuck in the department. At 34, Swift can’t seem to let go of her high school days. “Everything comes up teenage petulance,” she concedes in “Down Bad,” tying her embarrassingly broken state after a break-up to a past emotional naivete on top of celestial keys. In part two of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, the millennial takes listeners back to high school with the immersive lyrics and 2000s pop-rock sound of “So High School.” “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto,” a cringier but fittingly illuminating lyric reads. Swift overuses small-town and high-school metaphors in TTPD, as she does throughout her discography. Take the closer of the first half, “Clara Bow,” for instance. “No one in my small town thought I’d see the lights of Manhattan” feels like it could be copied and pasted from Speak Now. While she uses small towns to show her career growth, the symbolic monotony holds back her lyricism. Call it what you want, but the global phenomenon’s latest tracks are nothing new.

She often uses school and growing up to bolster the unrefined emotion she can’t hold back. Still, she takes a moment in the penultimate track of the album’s first installment to separate herself from her youth and recognize her growth in a relationship: “That child’s play back in school / Is forgiven under my rule.” This growth in “The Alchemy” doesn’t make her a pragmatist. She recognizes something greater is at play, and it’s not solely driven by her tight-end boyfriend Travis Kelce: “Honestly, who are we to fight the alchemy?” Such wonder gives her songs a shimmer of untouchable youth, which keeps her from living in the present. “The Alchemy” stumbles by meddling maturity with mysticality, leaving a half-baked song about how she’s found love again. Although torturing oneself over the past and future is a successfully portrayed theme in this song and the whole album, most of its evocations ring overdone to the listener. 

The tortured poet can harp on the past with a fresh glaze of sadness in “So Long, London.” The track promises sonic variety with a choral opening, but it then falls into a typical Swift rhythm while she leaves behind a city — a love — that rendered her beaten, bruised, and bold. “And I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free,” she scoffs before dangling the question two choruses later, “How much sad did you think I had in me?” Rather than dwelling in unreality, she bids this dead air adieu, but not without one more stab at getting the last word. Fans flock to the singer’s Track Fives for a cathartic cry session, and “So Long, London” fits right in with her somber sisters.

Photo courtesy of Taylor Swift

The TTPD production offers another rare divergence by adopting the musical tactics of her collaborator Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine in “Florida!!!.” Crashing percussion snaps listeners out of a monotonous daze, making the track a first-act standout with its strong feature from Welch and its wisecracking lyrics. Calling the Sunshine State “one hell of a drug,” Swift files a darker theme of reputation allure in her repertoire of symbols: drugs.

Introducing cursing to her music in 2020, the pop star’s only just veering away from swearing like a defiant kid, which could be a problematic omen as she explores drugs, sex, and alcohol in TTPD. Thankfully, she doesn’t appear overly corny in traversing explicit themes. In the ever-so country-tinged “Guilty as Sin?” she delicately balances sadness and sexiness by entreating, “What if he’s written ‘mine’ on my upper thigh only in my mind?” She ceases to beat around the bush in the final track, “The Manuscript,” reflecting on unreal possibilities with, “He said that if the sex was half as good as the conversations / Soon they’d be pushing strollers.” Swift keeps sadness at the forefront throughout but lets a certain untapped sensuality flow through THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT with assuredness.

From “I dream of cracking locks” in “Guilty as Sin?” to “And you deserve prison, but you won’t get time” in the scathing “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” Swift often shares her thoughts as prisons in her latest release. This theme shines most strongly in “Fresh Out The Slammer,” a refreshing break from the 1989 (Taylor’s Version) reminiscent production that precedes it. The jail allegory opens with dreamy strums of electric guitar and fulfills the listener’s hope for something fresh. “Handcuffed to the spell [she] was under,” the poet reveals she trapped herself under her muse’s every whim, but her “first call” after her release will be to someone new — someone she’s destined not to ruin or be ruined by this time. Recognizing the prisons of her own design, Swift tortures herself with the unattainable idea of freedom from the noise.

Not only does the singer lose herself in the past, but she also lends equal concern to what she wants versus what the people want for her future. From babies and vows to a game of “kiss, marry, kill,” Swift teases her monolith of an audience for their ceaseless prying into her future. “You and I go from one kiss to getting married,” she sings in “loml.” The at first glance funny title becomes piercingly poignant with one listen. The piano ballad’s lowercase title reflects the ambivalence with which her ex-lover declared forever by calling her the love of his life. As an acronym, it shifts from her ex’s sweet nothing to her tragic resolution: “You were the loss of my life.” “loml” effectively bridges the private and public spaces of her love life, cohering to the album’s overarching confessional quality.

The most salient criticisms come not from her love losses but her overhanded jabs at what the media has created out of her. “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” seamlessly follows “loml” by juxtaposing her “glittering prime” on the record-breaking The Eras Tour with the broken promise ("He said he'd love me all my life") that forces her to plaster a smile on stage. This sparkling Antonoff production doesn’t feel monotonous like on the other plastic doll track, “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” Instead, the fresh glow of Existential Barbie-esque synths and sarcastically upbeat tone offer new insights into being the biggest name in the world who can’t hear her name come from the mouth of the person she wants most. On “But Daddy I Love Him,” Swift teases the “wine moms” who are relentless in gossiping and “clutchin’ their pearls” at her every move. “‘I’m having his baby’ / No I’m not, but you should see your faces,” she gibes, making listeners uncomfortable in their tendencies to attribute every line to her personal life. Over the past 18 years, onlookers have begged Swift to grow up and settle down, and on a countryish callback to her years in the limelight, she pens the immortal plea: “I’ll tell you something ‘bout my good name / It’s mine alone to disgrace.”

An immediate album favorite ironically calls out those listeners who might love it most. “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” sees Swift fully assume the witch character that critics desire her to be. But in doing so, she points out her resilience in putting up with their debilitating name-calling: “I wanna snarl and show you how disturbed this has made me / You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.” With screeching vocals and intense crescendos, she shatters a self-crafted doll figure in her career and her album to appease the media. In the years of reclaiming her art with Taylor’s Version of the Odyssey, the generational force also aims to redefine and reclaim her persona. Even her romantic relationship-based songs elucidate the media’s obsession with her dating history, subtly attacking those who listen only for boyfriend lore with lyrics like, “They shake their heads sayin', ‘God, help her’ / When I tell 'em he's my man” in “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can).” In this way, Swift’s relationship with the media trumps all other themes by wryly twisting itself into each track’s interpretation.

At 2:00 a.m. EST on the album’s release night, Taylor Swift shocked the world once again with her cunningly-hinted drop of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY. Swift reveals a comfortingly familiar sound as listeners rubbed their eyes, chugged a RedBull, and hit play on another hour of songs. Sure, Antonoff returns for a handful of fun tracks (take the sexier bridge on “imgonnagetyouback,” for example), but Swift’s other folklore and evermore co-creator, Aaron Dessner, dominates part two of the album with acoustic guitar pluckings and heart-wrenchingly vulnerable lyrics. On “The Prophecy,” she drowns in the exhaustion of futurity, asking the skies, “Who do I have to speak to / About if they can redo the prophecy?” She returns to youthful themes by shaping a relentlessly hateful critic (check the capital letters in the title for a guess) into a high school bully named Aimee on “thanK you aIMee.” The tortured poet turns Romantic with classical and literary allusions in “Cassandra” and “Peter,” and avian comparisons in woodsy snoozes “The Albatross” and “Robin.” One blast to the past comes off disjointed and tone-deaf in “I Hate It Here:” she romanticizes “the 1830s but without all the racists,” echoing her highest echelon of celebrity by inserting a cheap, privileged concession. As a so-called “Anthology,” individual songs on the album should stand alone, but the lyrics and sonics mesh together, especially in the second half of TTPD. Like the album’s original release, the anthology gets chained to its own rhythm despite how often Swift sings of freeing herself from her expectations.

But perhaps that’s the point of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Black, white, and gray lyrics match the album’s noir aesthetic, but the colors paint the bland similarities of Swift’s reused devices. She asserts she “Put narcotics into all of [her] songs / And that's why you're still singin' along,” in “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me,” but the analogy fails to connote listeners’ addiction to her music and instead supports that the monotony puts them to sleep. Her vocal flow throughout is predictable, even to the untrained ear. While the audience may get lost in the indistinguishable files of the department head’s desperate musings, it only proves that Taylor Swift is the tortured poet she claims to represent. She knows what sounds and symbols work for her and inserts each with confident, unbridled emotion. She has felt every kind of sadness under the sun. She knows what will have you listen over and over again, what thoughts of hers will imprison you just the same as they do her in her eleventh output. “Am I allowed to cry?” she asks in “Guilty As Sin?” But she knows the answer. With every release, Taylor Swift will always have millions waiting with bated breath to hear her tears splatter onto the page.