Taylor Swift – ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ review: a rare misstep

19 April, 2024

Taylor Swift

Since emerging in 2006 with a tear-stained six string, Taylor Swift has seesawed through public opinion perhaps more than any other 21st century artist. In 2024, she’s landed as a monolithic force in pop culture with an unavoidable, omnipresent force permeating every facet of daily life. There are reporters appointed solely to cover her exploits, and University modules dedicated to dissecting her lyrics, not to mention that her name is permanently etched onto the internet’s trending topics. While the rest of the music industry grapples with an accelerated pop culture landscape and tirelessly attempts to orchestrate meaningful, viral moments, Swift remains unscathed — always at the epicentre of endless discourse and somehow each day pushing the boundaries of celebrity.

So, when she announced the forthcoming release of ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ at the Grammys earlier this year – while collecting the Album Of The Year prize for 2022’s ‘Midnights’ – it seemed to be met with an audible eye roll from a room full of artists perhaps jaded by competing for scraps of attention in a media sphere wholly dominated by Swift. And, after releasing 10 records (including live albums and re-recordings) in four years, this frustration from her peers seems to join the first splinters in her public opinion, deepening with every new typo-riddled, brand-partnered Easter Egg that has dropped in the run up to release.

Perhaps Swift was tempting fate with this one. Above all else in her career, Swift has always found acclaim through her lyricism, and comparisons have gleefully been made between herself and The Bard. Speaking in February, she says that “I have never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it on [TTPD]”. It’s surprising, then, that ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ delivers some of her most cringe-inducing lines yet.

The title track alone boasts the worst on the record, even if it’s a stab at sarcasm. “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist,” precedes the clunky “I scratch your head, you fall asleep like a tattooed Golden Retriever.” Elsewhere, on ‘Down Bad’ she’s unceremoniously “crying at the gym”, and ‘Florida!!!’, an otherwise cathartic, Southern gothic-imbued collaboration with Florence Welch is marred by the line: “My friends all smell like weed or little babies”.

Most bizarre, though, is ‘But Daddy I Love Him’, which seemingly exists as her response to the backlash against her brief relationship with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy. Their fleeting romance, which seems to be the muse for much of the record, triggered an explosive reaction from her fanbase who were distraught at Swift’s public association to the singer, given his slew of controversial comments (a few of which centred around her soon-to-be collaborator Ice Spice).

Swift has historically used her lyrics to assert her narrative. On ‘Speak Now’ (2010) she took the first of many aims at Kanye West following his stage invasion at the 2009 MTV VMAs, and much of ‘Reputation’ (2017) came for the social media haters. Intriguingly, on ‘But Daddy I Love Him’, she appears to tackle the people who claim to have her best interests at heart: “These people only raise you to cage you”, she sings, adding “God save the most judgemental creeps/Who say they want what’s best for me”.

Frustrated lyrics permeate the rest of the record, which operates as a knottier, if inferior, sequel to ‘Midnights’. But while the aforementioned shone in its ecstatic embrace of freedom with the frantic, false optimism of someone freshly out of a long-term relationship, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ sees the dust settle and the misery creep in. There are inevitably parallels with 2019’s ‘Lover’, an album that seemed assured in a safe, lasting love. Here, the saccharine optimism of ‘Lover’’s ‘London Boy’ dissipates on ‘So Long London’, where she laments “I left all I knew/You left me at the house by the Heath”.

Musically, it’s an album mostly devoid of any noticeable stylistic shift or evolution. ‘Fortnight’, a Cigarettes After Sex-esque number featuring Post Malone hints at an interesting direction for Swift, and ‘I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)’ introduces intriguing elements of country and western. But it mostly descends into a monochromatic palette, existing in the same Jack Antonoff-branded synth pop as ‘Midnights’, yet struggling to capture any of its brightness.

‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’ highlights her unrelenting work ethic that doesn’t falter amid personal tragedy. But, it seems poised for internet virality than anything more substantial, given its restrained verses that plod along before catapulting into a euphoric, Carly Rae Jepsen-indebted pop chorus. Lyrics like “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday everyday” are almost too glaringly obviously written to be lip-synced into an iPhone 13 front camera.

‘The Tortured Poets Department’ ends up chasing its own tail with frenzied attempts to respond to critics despite Swift’s current stature. Closer ‘Clara Bow’ offers some respite, highlighting the inevitable lifecycle of young female stars who are raised up as shinier, improved versions of their predecessors only to be replaced by the same system years later. Though Swift herself seems immune to the machine-churn of pop stars — now maintaining a greater relevance than ever nearly two decades into her career — it’s one of the album’s most poignant and best moments.

Ultimately this record lacks the genuinely interesting shifts that have punctuated Swift’s career so far, from the lyrical excellence on her superior breakup album ‘Red’ to ‘1989’’s pivot to high-octane pop. Even ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’, perhaps her most dynamic works to date, came out of a need to prove herself as a songwriter.

It is peculiar then, that at the pinnacle of her success and acclaim, this is the record Swift chooses to make. Now acting as pop’s undeniable ruler, perhaps it’s just that she simply has nothing else to prove. After all, it’s bound to shift crate loads of slightly varied vinyl pressings, and will unlikely dampen the upcoming European leg of record-busting The Eras tour. It’s why the lyrical themes of victimhood that once aided her image come off as increasingly jarring today. On ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ she positions herself as a “simple girl” at the mercy of “too high a horse” from her naysayers, but it grates against a landscape that often declares her exempt from criticism.

Swift seems to be in tireless pursuit for superstardom, yet the negative public opinion it can come with irks her, and it’s a tired theme now plaguing her discography and leaving little room for the poignant lyrical observations she excels at. It’s why the pitfalls that mire her 11th studio album are all the more disappointing — she’s proven time and time again she can do better. To a Melbourne audience of her Eras Tour, Swift said that ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ came from a “need” to write. It’s just that maybe we didn’t need to hear it.