Photo: Kevin Winter/TAS23/Getty Images
Ahem! Attention! Attention! [Taps yardstick on podium sexily.] The first official meeting of the Tortured Poets Department is officially in session. We’ve all gathered here in Donna Tartt’s storage unit to discuss Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album (not counting re-recordings). Does The Tortured Poets Department represent Swift’s Dark Academia era? Which songs are about Joe Alwyn, and which are about Matty Healy? Who uses a typewriter, anyway? These are just some of the topics that anonymous Vulture staffers touch upon in their initial reactions below, broken down by track. [Hits play on Spotify, also sexily.] Shall we begin?
“Fortnight” | “The Tortured Poets Department” | “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” | “Down Bad” | “So Long, London” | “But Daddy I Love Him” | “Fresh Out the Slammer” | “Florida!!!” | “Guilty as Sin?” | “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” | “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” | “loml” | “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” | “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” | “The Alchemy” | “Clara Bow” | “The Black Dog” | “imgonnagetyouback” | “The Albatross” | “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” | “How Did It End?” | “So High School” | “I Hate It Here” | “thanK you aIMee” | “I Look in People’s Windows” | “The Prophecy” | “Cassandra” | “Peter” | “The Bolter” | “Robin” | “The Manuscript”
➼ “I’ve heard of CHEATING in FORTNITE but this is ridiculous!”
➼ “She’s listened to a lot of Phoebe Bridgers.”
➼ “Post Malone getting the classic Taylor ‘feature’ treatment (being completely unhearable on the song).”
➼ “Taylor references being put in an asylum at least twice on this album. Is this her Joker era?”
➼ “Still unclear to me if the Tortured Poets Department is more of a faculty library slash lounge for professors of poetry or more of an unofficial place for tortured poets to gather. Is it tied to an accredited university? I thought this song would flesh out the world of this institution, but I am left with more questions than answers.”
➼ “It’s giving Bruce Hornsby.”
➼ “Who brings their typewriter to someone’s apartment?”
➼ “This is such a backhanded compliment to Charlie Puth. He didn’t ask to be a part of this narrative!”
➼ “Finally, representation for people who eat a lot of chocolate in one setting.”
➼ “Maybe by ‘tattooed golden retriever’ she just meant … this?”
➼ “I’m not ready for the ‘Who are Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith?’ explainers.”
➼ “I wasn’t prepared for this album to be this much about Matty Healy so hearing ‘smoking,’ ‘chocolate bars,’ ‘tattooed golden retriever,’ and ‘Charlie Puth’ in such rapid succession sent me into cardiac arrest.”
➼ “‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’ owes so much to ‘Boy-toy named Troy used to live in Detroit.’”
➼ “Also all of this toy talk is foreshadowing that when she sings about the ‘smallest man who ever lived,’ she is actually talking about a Lego.”
➼ “I might finally have to stop defending Jack Antonoff.”
➼ “This song would be really good if every word was replaced.”
➼ “I’m concerned about how much Taylor is bleeding in general on her albums. Here she is waking up in a pool of her own blood. Previously she has worn a blood-soaked gown. I’m wondering if she has a clotting disorder …”
➼ “Me: Taylor’s never gonna write a lyric about crying at the gym.
Taylor: Hold on.”
➼ “This song sounds like Jack trying to make a song that sounds like Aaron Dessner.”
➼ “I really like the extended metaphor here and at the same time do believe Taylor has been abducted by aliens at least once.”
➼ “Taylor says ‘fuck’ count: 18.”
➼ “America, we won!”
➼ “I like how she explains that Joe was too Britishly depressed for her. It’s too rainy there for his personality type. He should move to L.A.”
➼ “This is not a good track 5. It feels like ‘You’re Losing Me’ was track 5 for this album, but she put it out too early.”
➼ “2 graves, 1 gun? The ‘London Boy’ Cinematic Universe has taken a turn!”
➼ “Give me Taylor snarling ‘bitching and moaning’ on loop.”
➼ “She really said ‘Fuck off, wine moms of TikTok.’ Cathartic!”
➼ “This is awesome. I want her to ruin her life.”
➼ “Her new ‘Blank Space.’ It’s been ages since we’ve seen an artist release a diss track targeting their own annoying fans.”
➼ “If ‘August’ sounds like running through a field smiling, and ‘Hits Different’ sounds like running through a field sobbing, then ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ sounds like running through a field with a knife.”
➼ “This is the devastating 30-something daddy’s girl anthem I’ve been waiting for: resolutely willful while imploring your parents to see your vision, to side with your love, now that you’ve reached the age where you think you finally know what you want, and the idea of having someone’s babies hovers somewhere between a plausible threat and your deepest secret desire. On repeat until I turn 35.”
➼ “This is the nicest song anyone’s ever sung about a rebound.”
➼ “I like that deep reverb-y western guitar.”
➼ “I’m supposed to believe that Taylor Swift has been to Destin?”
➼ “This is Shrek-core (complimentary).”
➼ “It’s sort of ‘No Body No Crime’–esque, but it’s missing the wink. And why the three exclamation points? Regardless, I am obsessed with Taylor’s conception of what happens in Florida.”
➼ “Summary of my first three listens: No. No!!!!! Okay — maybe.”
➼ “This song sounds like it was made by some sort of Eastern European pop star who has never actually been to America trying to make a Florence Welch sound-alike.”
➼ “‘All my friends smell like weed or little babies’ is something a Pan’s Labyrinth monster would say.”
➼ “Here is a list of theme-park mascots that Joe could have cheated on Taylor with:
• Clarabelle Cow
• Professor Toothsome, the steampunk chocolate proprietress of City Walk
• Chip, Dale, and their girlfriend (yeah they’re in a throuple already), Clarice
• Mrs. Incredible, and can you really blame him?
• Kevin the Minion”
➼ “‘What if I roll the stone away? / They’re gonna crucify me anyway’ isn’t the correct timeline. First they crucify you, then, three days later, you roll the stone away. Go back to Sunday school!”
➼ “Upper-thigh tattoos are hot.”
➼ “This is Taylor’s best song about masturbation.”
➼ “One of the best and most freakish choruses she’s ever written. ‘Levitating down the street’ makes me laugh every time I hear it.”
➼ “I think she is ‘sweet but a psycho,’ as they say.”
➼ “Sounds like The Greatest Showman.”
➼ “The sort of chunky, Tom Waits junkyard percussion is wasted on this subject matter, alas.”
➼ “At this point in the album, I’m convinced Taylor and Matty should work it out and get back together.”
➼ “‘Loss of My Life’ is a bar.”
➼ “This is cute, but I thought it was supposed to be about Meredith.”
➼ “This is poppy excellence.”
➼ “Carly Rae–meets–Melodrama–era–Lorde mode suits Taylor.”
➼ “Love her energy here and the combination of the peppy Adderall delivery and despondent lyrics. Another reminder of what she’s been saying since Reputation: You will never see the ‘real me,’ unless I want you to.”
➼ “Don’t ruin the magic of the tour by telling us you were miserable during it.”
➼ “I wish the outro was leading to a key change and one more go-around of the chorus instead of leading to ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.’”
➼ “I do think she is saying Matty has a small dick here.”
➼ “The Jehovah’s Witness line is objectively the funniest thing she’s ever written.”
➼ “This feels more Joe than Matty, because you need years to build up this level of resentment.”
➼ “The audible sigh … She sounds so tired — at first. Then the momentous anger elevates her blood pressure. This is a Joe track through and through. He stole her time, and she will not be forgiving him for being a tiny little coward. It’s the dark inverse of the promise from ‘Peace.’ She’s not dying for him or his sins. She’s just dying inside.”
➼ “I like it, but my favorite kind of music is ‘songs I can kind of ignore while writing.’”
➼ “She is reaching Travis on his literacy level, and that’s nice.”
➼ “How would I even begin to explain to myself ten years ago that Taylor Swift would write a bridge about the Kansas City Chiefs winning the Super Bowl?”
➼ “This song makes me think the entire album is intentionally cringe. It is meant to be over-the-top earnest to the point of self-parody. That is the only explanation for some of the lyric choices. Anyway, this song sounds nice.”
➼ “‘Your location, you forgot to turn it off.’ Did Taylor watch Love Is Blind?”
➼ “Pointing out the relative youth of her ex’s new girlfriends once again proves to be one of the realest disses.”
➼ “‘Were you making fun of me with some esoteric joke?’ is devastating to those who think they’re smart and funny and are actually neither.”
➼ “I don’t know about that. Didn’t she just make a joke about her ex not being Dylan Thomas? The hypocrisy!”
➼ “She should’ve named it anything else. Putting the title in Gen-Z lowercase did not help; it implicated her further.”
➼ “Jack Antonoff is on autopilot, but it’s not like that’s a bad thing.”
➼ “Does the Department have a plagiarism policy?”
➼ “She’s wringing as much juice as possible from the titular double entendre, and it’s working. This is a juiced-up banger.”
➼ “This one is about Jessica Alba.”
➼ “The lyricism is giving, ‘He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.’”
➼ “‘Jackals’ and ‘hackles’ really are two words that rhyme.”
➼ “This song starts a run of 12 straight Dessner songs (save one), and the album starts making more sense to me. All the Antonoff songs are like, What if Emily Dickinson was in Tron?”
➼ “This is about dating a bi person.”
➼ “No, this is about a polycule.”
➼ “The inclusion of ‘Marcus’ is the modern-day ‘I’ll tell [my friends] you’re gay’ from the original ‘Picture to Burn.’”
➼ “I miss when she would write her own melodies instead of singing over Aaron’s ambient white noise.”
➼ “The Pavlovian response (complimentary) I have to anything Folklore-core — delicate arpeggios, the feathery harmonies, a lone string accompaniment.”
➼ “This is your reminder that the Dessners wrote the songs for Cyrano and they all sucked and sounded just like this.”
➼ “She’s doing some subtle banaurnais and avaurcaidors indie-girl vowels on this one.”
➼ “Taylor tapped into something so special on ‘August’ with this ’90s Liz Phair/Sixpence None the Richer sound, and she needs to release an entire album like this. ‘So High School’ fits perfectly into the echelon of amazing driving-with-the-top-down songs.”
➼ “‘Aristotle / grand theft auto’ is an absolutely bonkers rhyme and convinces me that she is going to marry Travis.”
➼ “This brings me back to 1989, in a good way.”
➼ “Taylor should only be allowed to use the word ‘precocious’ one time per album.”
➼ “There is a really good song called ‘Hate It Here’ by Pom Pom Squad where she actually sounds like she fucking hates wherever she is. Stream it here.”
➼ “All these dings on ‘towns’ and ‘mid-sized’ cities!”
➼ “‘Poet trapped inside the body of a finance guy’ is going to be such a popular line in Hinge profiles for recent college graduates in Murray Hill.”
➼ “It’s funny to picture Taylor’s mom writing death threats in the comments of Kim’s posts in 2016 from a finsta.”
➼ “This woman puts the B in subtle.”
➼ “No smoke for Kanye. You’d think he’d at least get a stray.”
➼ “A lot of songs make more sense now knowing that Taylor’s target audience was the elementary-school-aged children of her opps.”
➼ “‘I changed your name and any real defining clues’ — girl, we all know who you’re talking about.
➼ “Props for going with ‘Aimee,’ a very realistic 2000s suburban Pennsylvania name. I lived across the street from an Aimee.”
➼ “It’s so funny to do a diss track but make the actual music sound like ‘I’m on Top of the World’ by Imagine Dragons.”
➼ “Here is the actual problem: Because of internet companies’ obsession with san serif fonts, the capitalized ‘i’ looks like a lowercase ‘L.’ Kind of ruins the Kim thing and makes it read like the name of the person in the song is going to be ‘Al Mee.’”
➼ “We will all be ‘AI Me’ if Silicon Valley gets their way with us. Maybe it’s a clue.”
➼ “Thank you for writing an anthem about what it’s like to walk around brownstone Brooklyn!”
➼ “The whisper-light vocals work for me here — a shade of Billie Eilish without feeling like cosplay.”
➼ “I like the way Taylor’s vocals are filtered here, but also I give it a year before some music supervisor pitches down the lyric ‘I look in people’s windows’ and uses it in the trailer for a hokey psychological thriller.”
➼ “‘Deranged weirdo?’ Sound the Jughead alarm!”
➼ “At first, this song reminded me of Robert Pattinson’s emo Batman, but I realized I was actually thinking of ‘Hero Song’ by the Lonely Island.”
➼ “ ‘The Prophecy’ exists in the backwoods where evermore meets Midnights (3am Edition) — a.k.a. the witching hour.”
➼ “‘I don’t need money just someone who wants my company’ — please stop calling Joe poor!”
➼ “Put some respect on her rap flow.”
➼ “‘And I look unstable / Gathered with a coven ’round the sorceress table’ is her hinting that she’ll be on The Traitors season three.”
➼ “I’m still having trouble figuring out what the prophecy actually says.”
➼ “This track list reads like an attendance sheet.”
➼ “Is this a companion piece to ‘mad woman’?”
➼ “‘When it’s “Burn the bitch,” they’re shrieking / When the truth comes out, it’s quiet.’ Ahem.”
➼ “The piano on this is kind of ‘We’ve been on the run / Driving in the sun / Looking out for number one / California here we come.’”
➼ “That’s enough snake references.”
➼ “This would be so beautiful sung by Lana Del Rey nine years ago.”
➼ “It’s so smart to have so much snake imagery in a song about a person with two S’s in their name.”
➼ “Tin-foil hat: This is about Karlie Kloss. ‘You said you’d come and get me, but you were 25’ really works with this timeline. This song feels like a sibling to ‘Right Where You Left Me.’”
➼ “I cannot believe it took this long for her to write a Peter Pan and the Lost Boys song.”
➼ “‘Love’s never lost when perspective is earned …’ Trying to figure out if this is wise or means nothing.”
➼ “I immediately like this vibe.”
➼ “This is easy-breezy fun.”
➼ “Can’t wait for (sped up) (reverb) YouTubers to find this one.”
➼ “Bring back guitar-strum Taylor for good!”
➼ “This is very me going to church in middle school and learning worship songs.”
➼ “I’m going to sing this one to my cat.”
➼ “It starts out as a Coldplay song and ends as Bright Eyes …”
➼ “The 2020s version of the Taylor Swift guessing game is trying to figure out which of her friends’ kids this is about.”
➼ “This would be a good Grey’s Anatomy song.”
➼ “Finally, a song about what it was like directing the ‘All Too Well (Ten Minute Version)’ music video.”
➼ “Taylor realized M.F.A. graduates made up a disproportionate amount of her fan base and wrote this song for them.”
➼ “‘But the story isn’t mine anymore’ — yeah, it’s Tavi Gevinson’s.”
➼ “Wait, no, this would make a good Grey’s Anatomy song.”
➼ “Remember on Girls when a lot of people on the internet got mad when Hannah was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, because they felt she’d never be able to get in, despite the fact that she was, you know, a fictional character? This album reminds me of all of that.”
