Taylor Swift’s stark-white and murky-black “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT” (TTPD) is the artists blood-red reflection of a now-closed, tumultuous chapter of her life. Swift is expected by fans to, once again, break endless records similar to TTPD’s predecessor, “Midnights.”
In an Instagram post following TTPD’s release, Swift referred to herself as “the writer” and described the album as “an anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time.”
Swift’s 11th studio album sounds like a cultivation of her more recent releases. TTPD’s tracks tend to blend together, and while albums from artists like Faye Webster and Angelo De Augustine tend to do the same, they both have a specific sound. Swift, however, doesn’t; she has a glitter gel pen and a quill. In TTPD’s case, Swift wrote with the highest quality of quill, with the most embellished peacock feather on the end, characterized by an agonizing extravagance.
The tracks that stood out to me the most throughout the album were “But Daddy I Love Him,” “Fresh Out The Slammer,” “Guilty as Sin?,” and “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” These songs have the least monochrome sounds from the album, dancing in neons and pastels, despite the irony of a black and white album photoshoot.
When I said her quill was characterized by an agonizing extravagance, I meant it. “But Daddy I Love Him,” is “Love Story’s” sadder and nihilistic older sister. Nihilism and age is the albums common denominator, with continuous yearning, sob-jerking, pleading and tear-wiping
reflections. I expected more sonically from “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT” but what we’ve received makes so much more sense.
Tracklist
Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)
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!!!(feat. Florence + The Machine)
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
