Taylor, it's Summer!!!

On The Tortured Poets Department and Swift fatigue

It’s a day that ends in y, so of course there’s new Taylor Swift content to consume. It’s been a whirlwind year of the Grammys, the Eras Tour, a public relationship that permeates every aspect of culture (hanging out at Coachella! Or Barney’s Beanery in West Hollywood, which is absurd), and a whopping 31-track new album. Sixteen initial tracks, fifteen bonus ones, so I’m reticent to even call this an album. This isn’t an album in the traditional sense, it’s content. She and Drake are of the same ilk. It’s more of the Swift machine designed to sell more albums (multiple versions of vinyls and CDs) and concert tickets and merch and to outstream all of the competition. I’ve been to the Eras Tour. I bought two Midnights t-shirts (an album I don’t even like). I’ve purchased vinyls. But now, I’m tired. And I’m not even an Omega Level Swiftie.

The Tortured Poets Department is the name of the latest album and she has leaned all the way into her most absurd, aspiring-Sylvia-Plath-cum-The-Riddler-taunting-Batman at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop tendencies. If you liked the lyric “my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism like some kind of congressman” on “Anti-Hero,” then this is the album for you! This is yet another album produced mostly by Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner (except for “Fortnight,” co-written with my boyfriend Post Malone, “Florida!!!” co-written with my favorite banshee Florence Welsh, and “I Look in People’s Windows",” co-produced by frequent Charli XCX collaborator Patrik Berger). This means that sonically, it sounds a lot like Folklore and Evermore and Midnights. This album is like the 17th season of Grey’s Anatomy… I still love the show! But I wish she was interested in doing anything else creatively. At least Shonda dropped Bridgerton around that time…

If you are a Taylor Swift fanatic, this is catnip to you. It’s smack, it’s crack, it’s jugie boogie, and you’re Mimi from Rent. If you want your artists to grow creatively, this is not the album for you. There is a severe lack of creative growth on display, particularly on the initial non-bonus track songs of TTPD. I found Taylor creatively at her best on Reputation. It’s my favorite Taylor album. Jack’s production didn’t feel exhausted by then and Max Martin brought out the best of pop-oriented Taylor. Many people consider the follow-up, Lover, to be one of her first missteps but I actually love the bulk of that album even if it doesn’t feel cohesive. I’d argue that her first true misstep is Midnights, a very boring album that began to show the signs that Taylor was more interested in being a cultural monopoly than she was in making an interesting album.

TTPD continues in that vein, but without the heights of swings like “Lavender Haze” or “Glitch” (a bonus track!!). It’s a dour album, which is wild considering its subject matter of breaking up with Joe Alwyn and rebounding with Matty Healy. Didn’t she get close to marrying Joe? Wasn’t her relationship with Matty seedy tabloid fodder? I have to assume the sex was good? Not a single song on this albums fucks. None of them are even in the vicinity of sexy. (Shoutout to “Better Than Revenge” and “False God,” her only true songs about fucking.) Given the immense changes in her life, Taylor’s POV should sound different than everything else we’ve gotten from her. But it doesn’t. It’s almost as if she’s created a distance from expressing actual emotions in her songs and reverts to the verbose lyrical safe haven she’s created for herself and her fans. Or maybe I’m expecting her to be an artist that she’s never aimed to be?

Taylor is incredibly funny (she’s a Sagittarius, duh). Lines like “we declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” (period, but maybe collab with him then instead of Jack for the 9,000th time?? Taylor would murder a track like “Attention”) are hilarious and I cackled at the lyrics

“Now I'm runnin' with my dress unbuttoned

Scrеamin', "But Daddy, I love him
I'm havin' his baby"
No, I'm not, but you should see your faces”

on “But Daddy I Love Him.” And the second half of the album (the bonus tracks) are infinitely better, but I also think these even more so than the bonus tracks on Midnights are benefitting from the lacklusterness of the original recipe album. And there’s just something slightly annoying about having to say, “well, the actual album is a boring rehash of the past four years, but the bonus tracks are so good!” And as good as they are, will any of these even crack my top 10 Taylor songs? Who’s to say! “II Hands II Heaven” wasn’t a standout Cowboy Carter track for me until week two and now it’s in my top five Beyoncé songs ever.

But girl, it’s summer.

And I don’t have the energy to slog through 31 maudlin tracks that could be about any relationship you’ve ever had. I need uppers in my life as Fire Island season approaches, so I will instead be listening to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” on repeat.

When I do return to TTPD, I’ll be listening to my abridged playlist that I’ve dubbed “Poetry Minor” on Spotify. It includes:

Fortnight*

Down Bad**

But Daddy I Love Him

Fresh Out the Slammer

Florida!!!***

The Black Dog

So High School

I Look in People’s Windows

The Prophecy

The Bolter

*includes my man Austin Post

**objectively awful but the chorus feels Reputation coded

***Florence sounds amaaaaazing