Music review: “The Tortured Poets Department” by Taylor Swift is excellent tragic pop theater

Who foresaw what would come with Taylor Swift’s most recent phase? or even how it may sound? Would it enhance the melancholy of “Midnights” or the characters from “Evermore”? Her most recent re-records are either country or ’80s pop? or its two black-and-white predecessors, the literary Americana of “folklore” and the revenge-pop of “Reputation”?

 

The artist, at the height of her abilities, has spent the last few years re-recording her life’s work and touring it, filtered through synth-pop anthems, breakup ballads, and thought-provoking and mature considerations. “The Tortured Poets Department,” which is available this Friday, is an amalgam of all of the above.

Swift’s eleventh album has times when it seems like a bloodletting—a cathartic outflow after a significant heartbreak—delivered via an elegiac lyric, an ascending vocal run, or mobile, synthetic arrangements that highlight the narrative prowess of Swift.

There are also unexpected things. Post Malone is featured in the lead song and opener “Fortnight,” which is “1989” grown up. Though it seems like an odd combination, this has been planned for a while: Swift’s admirers have been aware of her affection for Malone’s “Better Now” at least since 2018.

A full band chorus, a bold acoustic guitar riff, fairytale lyricism, and a humorous lyrical reversal in “But Daddy I Love Him”—”No, I’m not / But you should see your faces”—are all signs of Taylor’s return to the country genre. (Babies also feature on the extra track “The Manuscript” and “Florida!!!”).

The truly lovely psychedelic guitar tone of the fake “Fresh Out The Slammer” fades away under wind-blown production; “Barbie” reappears in the new wave-adjacent “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”: “Because he took me out of my box, I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens.”

The chorus’s rapid repeat of the song title, “Florida!!!,” strikes hard even before Florence Welch begins her verse. It sounds like an alt-universe Swiftian version of Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois,” bringing back fond memories of 2010s indie music.

“So Long, London,” as another title puts it, indeed.

While it would be a mistake to interpret Swift’s songs as fully autobiographical, that song, the fifth one on this album and one that her admirers usually consider to be the most heartbreaking selection on every album, draws eerie comparisons to her romance with an English actor that she ended in 2023. Art imitates reality, so put it next to a languid love ballad like “The Alchemy,” which makes allusions to “touchdown” and “cutting someone from the team.”

The concept of revenge is still prevalent. Whereas the retaliation anthems on “Midnights” were savage, “The Tortured Poets Department” features new intricacies: “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” blends the musical aspirations of “evermore” and “folklore” with sensibilities taken straight out of the weapons-drawn, unyielding “Reputation,” adding a booming bass on the bridge. Here, however, Swift mostly exchanges victimization for confidence, faults and all.

“Who is scared of old me?” She performs a song. “You ought to be,” she answers.

However, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” could be her most scathing song to date. Over a driving piano, she screams, “You didn’t measure up in any measure of a man.” She refers to her target, who is probably the same “tattooed golden retriever,” a jejune term, as in the title track: “I’ll forget you, but I won’t ever forgive.”

There are a few missteps on the album, mostly in the form of corny lyrics and songs like “Down Bad” and “Guilty as Sin?” that fall flat when compared to the more reflective pop sections.

Swift presents a mirror to her melodrama and sadness in other places. She is sobbing at the gym; should we talk to her about being “sad” or let her cry? She feels as if you could wish her dead and that she might pass away on her own. As she sings “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart,” a song about her own performances—onstage and as a public figure—she pays attention to the voices telling her, “Lights, camera, bitch, smile / Even when you want to die.”

“It’s so bad that no one even knows!” After the song ends, she sighs and says, “Try and come for my job.”

“Clara Bow” joins the ranks of the greatest album outros on Swift. The title alludes to the silent cinema actress of the 1920s who burned bright and quickly. She was a Hollywood sex symbol and an early “It girl,” vulnerable to scathing rumors and casual, daily chauvinism that was magnified by her fame. There were rumors that Bow’s career was ruined once her strong Brooklyn accent was detected in the talkies.

Later in life, Bow made an attempt on his own life and was sent to an asylum, the same facility seen in “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” In the same way that Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks’ “Mabel Normand,” another tragic silent cinema heroine, served as a cautionary tale and metaphor for Swift, so too does “Clara Bow.”

The line “You look like Stevie Nicks in ’75 / The hair and lips / Crowd goes wild” from “Clara Bow” also features Nicks.

Swift sings, “You look like Taylor Swift in this light / We’re loving it / You’ve got edge / She never did,” as the song comes to a conclusion and the camera pans inward. That’s where the album closes, on a note that sounds more like frustrated self-awareness than self-deprecation.

Swift is a poet herself, yet she also sings about being tormented. And isn’t it wonderful that she has given herself permission to be creative?