If there has even been an argument that Taylor Swift’s development was arrested, this new album is the proof. “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY” is a 31 track, double LP that dropped on April 19th.
As Swift’s 11th studio album, the main problem for it was incredibly predictable. That is a lack of creativity. Swift has spent the last 17 years making songs about self-worth, overcoming struggle and most importantly, relationships. With “TTPDTA” she is still beating these themes to death. What makes this one different is the absolute tone deafness of the lyrics.
With this album being a double album, there are 31 tracks. The first 16 are “The Tortured Poets Department” and the next 15 are “The Anthology.” “The Anthology is leagues better than “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Production wise, Swift needs to stop working with Jack Antonoff. He is a talented producer but his best work is with Lana Del Rey. This leads to either forgettable tracks which most of this album is or, songs that sound like a bad Lana Del Rey impression. They are overly melodramatic and almost full of themselves. The perfect example of this is “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” which has these wild, layered, orchestral strings that bring an energy that this song clearly does not have. It is time for Swift to take a page from her own book and break up with Antonoff.
Both of the album’s features are on the front half. The better of the two is the feature from Florence Welch on track eight, “Florida!!!” The other feature is barely a feature at all. Post Malone has four lines to himself on the first track “Fortnight.”
“Fortnight” is also Swift’s worst opening of all time. The boring verses make this song a slog along with the basic synthpop production. A music video for this song was released at the same time as the album. It seems to take inspiration from Yorgo Lantimos’s Oscar winning film “Poor Things,” starring Emma Stone.
This is ironic for two reasons. One, Emma Stone is credited on the track “Florida!!!”. Two, “Poor Things” is a cohesive story of a new way of experiencing life. Both the novel and movie are challenging, edgy, and exciting. The complete opposite of what this album is. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Now, only one track in, you can start to see the trend of brain-dead songwriting that this album consists of. Just so this review doesn’t become five pages long, these are the worst of the worst. Off of “Florida!!! (feat. Florence + The Machine)”, “And my friends all smell like weed or little babies.” On “Clara Bow”, “You look like Taylor Swift, In this light, we’re lovin’ it.”
Those are just a few examples of bad songwriting that this album is plagued with but there are three I’d like to focus on. The first comes from “So High School”, one of the tracks about her current relationship with Chief’s tight end and reality show star, Travis Kelce. The line goes “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto.”
This is a line that would not be out of place on a Big Sean or Yung Gravy track but on a Taylor Swift album, It’s just sad. It’s childish. This isn’t the only move she makes that would be comparable to a high schooler going through their first heartbreak. Track 24 is titled “thanK you aIMee” and is “rumored” to be about Kim Kardashian. Look, it doesn’t have to take a genius to figure this out. Even the lyrics of the song are so clearly about the reality star that the song is more petty than it is clever.
The next lyric comes from the song “I Hate It Here.” The line goes “We would pick a decade, we wished we could live in instead of this, I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists, and getting married off for the highest bid.”
Two things about this line. The less serious part of this is the bride line. A one minute Google search would have told her that, in the U.S., dowries were most common during the colonial era but then became less popular during the 1800s.
Now the more serious part, 1830 without the racists. This is an absolutely tone-deaf and poorly-written line. I just wonder if she even thought for a second about what she was saying. This line just adds even more to her arrested development.
The final line comes from what might be the worst song on the album, “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” This track is intended as a response to all of the rumors surrounding Swift’s life. From relationships to feuds, it was meant to convey, “What, little old me?”
In execution, it does not work. If it was from a newer, up-and-coming artist that had made some waves in the industry, then sure, it could work, but for 51 times platinum artist Taylor Swift, it does not. This is shown off perfectly in the line “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.”
Taylor Alison Swift was born Dec. 13, 1989 in West Reading, Pennsylvania. Her childhood home in Wyomissing was sold last year for $800,000. Swift’s dad, Scott, was a shareholder in Big Machine Records, the label that Taylor Swift released her first six albums on.
Her life was not traumatic in any way, apart from a few bad relationships that she made millions off of songs about them. She is dead wrong when she says that we wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum because that asylum doesn’t exist. This absolute atrocity of a line downright proves Swift’s arrested development.
Taylor Swift has made an empire off of bad breakups and emotionally-charged songs. She is a fantastic songwriter and has made breakup anthems that will be sung for generations. But after 17 years, she has hit the bottom of the barrel. Although she has plenty to write about with a new relationship with a Super Bowl winning NFL player and one of the highest grossing tours of all time, she is still resorting to the childish cliché that her worst albums are built on, which is playing the victim.
Overall, there are some decent tracks on this album but, with 20+ boring, badly-written tracks, this feels more like the Tortured Listeners Department. 3/10.
Featured Image: This is the album cover for “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.” Both albums were released on April 19, 2024.
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