Current:Home > MarketsMusic Review: Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is great sad pop, meditative theater-LoTradeCoin
Music Review: Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is great sad pop, meditative theater
View Date:2024-12-24 07:39:38
Who knew what Taylor Swift’s latest era would bring? Or even what it would sound like? Would it build off the moodiness of “Midnights” or the folk of “evermore”? The country or the ‘80s pop of her latest re-records? Or its two predecessors in black-and-white covers: the revenge-pop of “Reputation” and the literary Americana of “folklore”?
“The Tortured Poets Department,” here Friday, is an amalgamation of all of the above, reflecting the artist who — at the peak of her powers — has spent the last few years re-recording her life’s work and touring its material, filtered through synth-pop anthems, breakup ballads, provocative and matured considerations.
In moments, her 11th album feels like a bloodletting: A cathartic purge after a major heartbreak delivered through an ascendant vocal run, an elegiac verse, or mobile, synthesized productions that underscore the powers of Swift’s storytelling.
And there are surprises. The lead single and opener “Fortnight” is “1989” grown up — and features Post Malone. It might seem like a funny pairing, but it’s a long time coming: Since at least 2018, Swift’s fans have known of her love for Malone’s “Better Now.”
Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” is here.
- In her review, AP Music Writer Maria Sherman calls it “an amalgamation of an artist who has spent the last few years re-recording her life’s work and touring its material, filtered through synth-pop anthems, breakup ballads, provocative and matured subject matter.”
- Swift announced a surprise two hours after the album release: 15 additional tracks.
- The project is Swift’s first original album since her record-breaking Eras Tour kicked off last year.
“But Daddy I Love Him” is the return of country Taylor, in some ways — fairytale songwriting, a full band chorus, a plucky acoustic guitar riff, and a cheeky lyrical reversal: “But Daddy I love him / I’m having his baby / No, I’m not / But you should see your faces.” (Babies appear on “Florida!!!” and the bonus track “The Manuscript” as well.)
The fictitious “Fresh Out The Slammer” begins with a really pretty psych guitar tone that disappears beneath wind-blown production; the new wave-adjacent “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” brings back “Barbie”: “I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens / ‘Cause he took me out of my box.”
Even before Florence Welch kicks off her verse in “Florida!!!,” the chorus’ explosive repetition of the song title hits hard with nostalgic 2010s indie rock, perhaps an alt-universe Swiftian take on Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois.”
As another title states, “So Long, London,” indeed.
It would be a disservice to read Swift’s songs as purely diaristic, but that track — the fifth on this album, which her fans typically peg as the most devastating slot on each album — evokes striking parallels to her relationship with a certain English actor she split with in 2023. Place it next to a sleepy love ode like “The Alchemy,” with its references to “touchdown” and cutting someone “from the team” and well ... art imitates life.
Revenge is still a pervasive theme. But where the reprisal anthems on “Midnights” were vindictive, on “The Tortured Poets Department,” there are new complexities: “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” combines the musical ambitiousness of “evermore” and “folklore” — and adds a resounding bass on the bridge — with sensibilities ripped from the weapons-drawn, obstinate “Reputation.” But here, Swift mostly trades victimhood for self-assurance, warts and all.
“Who’s afraid of little old me?” she sings. “You should be,” she responds.
And yet, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” may be her most biting song to date: “You didn’t measure up in any measure of a man,” she sings atop propulsive piano. “I’ll forget you, but I won’t ever forgive,” she describes her target, likely the same “tattooed golden retriever,” a jejune description, mentioned in the title track.
Missteps are few, found in other mawkish lyrics and songs like “Down Bad” and “Guilty as Sin?” that falter when placed next to the album’s more meditative pop moments.
Elsewhere, Swift holds up a mirror to her melodrama and melancholy — she’s crying at the gym, don’t tell her about “sad,” is she allowed to cry? She died inside, she thinks you might want her dead; she thinks she might just die. She listens to the voices that tell her “Lights, camera, bitch, smile / Even when you want to die,” as she sings on “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart,” a song about her own performances — onstage and as a public figure.
“I’m miserable and nobody even knows!” she laughs at the end of the song before sighing, “Try and come for my job.”
“Clara Bow” enters the pantheon of great final tracks on a Swift album. The title refers to the 1920s silent film star who burned fast and bright — an early “It girl” and Hollywood sex symbol subject to vitriolic gossip, a victim of easy, everyday misogyny amplified by celebrity. Once Bow’s harsh Brooklyn accent was heard in the talkies, it was rumored, her career was over.
In life, Bow later attempted suicide and was sent to an asylum — the same institution that appears on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” “Clara Bow” works as an allegory and a cautionary tale for Swift, the same way Stevie Nicks’ “Mabel Normand” — another tragic silent film star — functioned for the Fleetwood Mac star.
Nicks appears in “Clara Bow,” too: “You look like Stevie Nicks in ’75 / The hair and lips / Crowd goes wild.”
Later, Swift turns the camera inward, and the song ends with her singing, “You look like Taylor Swift in this light / We’re loving it / You’ve got edge / She never did.” The album ends there, on what could be read as self-deprecation but stings more like frustrating self-awareness.
Swift sings about a tortured poet, but she is one, too. And isn’t it great that she’s allowed herself the creative license?
veryGood! (1)
Related
- Army veteran reunites with his K9 companion, who served with him in Afghanistan
- Why Lindsie Chrisley Blocked Savannah and Siblings Over Bulls--t Family Drama
- These Best-Selling, Top-Rated Amazon Bodysuits Are All $25 & Under
- 3 shot and killed in targeted attack in Atlanta, police say
- Krispy Kreme is giving free dozens to early customers on World Kindness Day
- A bombing at a checkpoint in Somalia killed at least 18 people, authorities say
- Why are people on TikTok asking men how often they think about the Roman Empire?
- Ice pops cool down monkeys in Brazil at a Rio zoo during a rare winter heat wave
- Are Dancing with the Stars’ Jenn Tran and Sasha Farber Living Together? She Says…
- 5 hospitalized in home explosion that left house 'heavily damaged'
Ranking
- Katherine Schwarzenegger Gives Birth, Welcomes Baby No. 3 With Chris Pratt
- 'We still haven't heard': Family of student body-slammed by officer says school never reached out
- Water restrictions in rainy Seattle? Dry conditions have 1.5M residents on asked to conserve
- Pakistan’s prime minister says manipulation of coming elections by military is ‘absolutely absurd’
- What that 'Disclaimer' twist says about the misogyny in all of us
- NCAA, conferences could be forced into major NIL change as lawsuit granted class-action status
- How will the Top 25 clashes shake out? Bold predictions for Week 4 in college football
- Pope Francis insists Europe doesn’t have a migrant emergency and challenges countries to open ports
Recommendation
-
Olympic champion Lindsey Vonn is ending her retirement at age 40 to make a skiing comeback
-
Teen charged with arson after fireworks started a fire that burned 28 acres
-
The threat of wildfires is rising. So is new artificial intelligence solutions to fight them
-
Croatian police detain 9 soccer fans over the violence in Greece last month that killed one person
-
Blake Shelton Announces New Singing Competition Show After Leaving The Voice
-
NCAA, conferences could be forced into major NIL change as lawsuit granted class-action status
-
Thieves may have stolen radioactive metal from Japan's tsunami-battered Fukushima nuclear power plant
-
11 Hidden Sales You Don't Want to Miss: Pottery Barn, Ulta, SKIMS & More