Swift writes that “the pendulum swings” from one extreme to the other, in matters of love, eventually making clear that one failed love gave way to another. It’s there, in the handwritten poem (which is labeled “In Summary”), that she gives full shape to the overall arc of the album narrative. But then, very few of the normal rules of critical engagement apply when we’re dealing with the biggest music star on the planet, whose affections are generally public over time - and who in this case has actually written an epic poem for the album packaging that pretty much renders her romantic history 100% clear. Who are these songs about? It’s the obvious question, and not the one most often or easily addressed in album reviews. But it’s easily among her most lyrics-forward efforts, rife with a language lover’s wordplay, tumults of sequential similes and - her best weapon - moments of sheer bluntness. It doesn’t seem designed not to produce those, either returning co-producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner aren’t exactly looking to keep her off the radio. Yes, it’s a pop album as much as a vein-opening album, although it may not produce the biggest number of Top 10 hits of anything in her catalog. Going back to it, on second, fifth and tenth listens, it’s easier to keep track of the fact that the entire album is not that emotionally intense, and that there are romantic, fun and even silly numbers strewn throughout it, if those aren’t necessarily the most striking ones on first blush. (And no, we’re not referring to the already famous Charlie Puth shout-out, though that probably counts, too.) Whatever feeling you might have had hearing “Dear John” for the first time, if you’re old enough to go back that far with her, that may be the feeling you have here listening to the eviscerating “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” or a few other tracks that don’t take much in the way of prisoners. The first time you listen to the album, you may be stricken by the “Wait, did she really just say that?” moments. Occasionally the music gets stripped down all the way to a piano, but it has the effect of feeling naked even when she goes for a bop that feels big enough to join the setlist in her stadium tour resumption, like “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” It feels bracing, and wounded, and cocky, and - not to be undervalued in this age - handmade, however many times she stacks her own vocals for an ironic or real choral effect. If you value this confessional quality most of all, she’s still peaking: As a culmination of her particular genius for marrying cleverness with catharsis, “Tortured” kind of feels like the Taylor Swift-est Taylor Swift record ever.įor where it sits in her catalog musically, it feels like the synth-pop of “Midnights,” with most of the feel-good buzz stripped out or like the less acoustic based moments of “Folklore” and “Evermore,” with her penchant for pure autobiography stripped back in. It’s not like she exactly lacked for candor as a writer at any point in the past, but “The Tortured Poets Department” feels like it comes the closest of any of her 11 original albums to just drilling a tube directly into her brain and letting listeners mainline what comes out. And the tear-stained pieces here are just a hell of a lot of fun to move around the table, as confessional clues to mysteries she actually seems interested in letting the public solve (via records, anyway, if definitely not in the interviews she doesn’t do anymore). Fans comes to her with reason to care about how the songs refer to what we know, or at least think we know, about her own life, because the world loves a puzzle. Not everyone flocks to a record like “Tortured Poets Department” because they want to relate it to their own past, present or future torment, although it doesn’t hurt.
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