The Tortured Poets Department is Bad...And That's Okay

By: Abby Paras '24

Photo Courtesy of Swifipedia

I know the title sounds bad, but bear with me. I'm writing this review not as a Taylor Swift hater (which I've called myself in the past), nor am I writing this as a fan (which I am not). I'm writing this as a person genuinely trying to understand what Taylor Swift's goal was with The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD). We know the album has been in the works for several years, and we know what she told her fans in Japan on the Eras Tour: "I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour, and when it was perfect - in my opinion when it's good enough for you - I finished it and I am so, so excited that soon you'll get to hear it."

This is where I get confused. When I first listened to TTPD I found it underwhelming. Most of the songs are sonically similar and there were several points where I was confused because there weren't distinct start and end points for each songs. Jack Antonoff's production overwhelms whatever she might be trying to do, and, as many people have pointed out online, some of the lyrics are almost painful to listen to. Rather than pick apart each song for lyrics like "touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto" or "I'd say the 1830s without all the racists" or even "You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate/We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist/I scratch your head, you fall asleep/Like a tattooed Golden Retriever," I want to get into the album as a whole.

Every artist, especially those with an output as prolific as Taylor Swift, is going to have bad songs and bad albums. Most artists who have "no bad songs" or "no bad albums" have a relatively small discography. Swift, with her eleven studio albums, several of which come with vault tracks, is bound to have some misses. While I think it's fair to suggest that her lyrics fall short on this album, I don't know if I can get on board with the idea that this defines her artistry as a whole. I do think that her post folklore and evermore writing has consisted of the idea that "big words equal good songwriting," hence why so many Midnights tracks fell flat for me, but I wouldn't say that these kind of songs define her as a songwriter. She's got some fantastic tracks, especially from her earlier days, like "Mine" and "Clean," two of my personal favorites.

For Taylor Swift to announce to a crowd of thousands and thousands of fans that she wouldn't release this album until it was "perfect" confuses me, because this album falls short of her previous standards. Swift has always established herself as a rigorous pop artist who works until songs are perfect, both in production and in the writing itself. Lately, however, she seems to have strayed from this, trying to pass herself off as an artist who simply has too much to write and will therefore dash off songs in a heartbeat for the sake of getting them out. It's been this way since folklore, and while that worked for both folklore and evermore, it hasn't worked out so well for Midnights and TTPD.

Many of the complaints about the latter two albums was that they sounded unfinished and many of the lyrics were deemed "cringe" by people all across the internet. The reason folklore and evermore were able to work so well was because they were her pandemic albums. They were made at a unique time when there was nothing else to do but sit at home, and the idea was that they only thing she could do was write. With Midnights and TTPD, she's been working on a giant world tour, fully back in the public eye, and is in the middle of re-recording all her old albums plus new tracks. Any normal person would get burned out. With everything else going on, Taylor Swift can't afford to be the kind of songwriter that dashes songs out in a minute anymore. People are agreeing that the lyrics and music just aren't up to par with what we all know she's capable of. to me, she's at her best when she's putting in the effort to truly perfect an album, writing and rewriting, working with multiple producers to get the right sound, much like the way she did with 1989.

TTPD simply feels comfortable for her, writing half-baked songs left and right and letting Jack Antonoff do his thing instead of actually trying to keep the sound fresh and make something interesting. I have no idea what TTPD wants to be, and I'm not sure Taylor Swift does either. Some parts of me think it's a satirical take on the way she paints herself in the media, but so much of what she does indicates that she is taking it seriously. Part of me thinks that she's looking to continue her folklore trnd of being seen as a great lyricist over being a great pop artist, but she's not willing to sacrifice the commercial success either. Yet another part of me thinks she just needed to get all these songs out because 2023 was a very high-profile time in the life of Taylor Swift. All of these things come out in TTPD, but not in a cohesive way.

There are moemnts where I think she's self-aware of the satire, like when she sings on the title track "You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith/This ain't the Chelsea Hotel, we're modern idiots" and then she takes it away immediately with "At dinner, you take my ring off my middle finger/And put it on the one people put wedding rings on." Is this a genunine attempt at being "deep" or is this more satire? Is this something she feels deeply within her own heart or is this a throwaway line? How seriously does she take herself as a "poet"?

I'm inclined to say that this was an album she just had to get out of her system, based on this quote, from another Eras Tour show: "The Tortured Poets Department is an album that, I think, more than any of my albums that I've ever made, I needed to make it. It was really a lifeline for me, just the things I was going through, the things I was writing aout, it kind of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life. I've never had an album where I needed to write more and I needed on The Tortoured Poets Department."

I think this album definitely isn't up to her standards. The production is stale, so many of the songs sound the same, and the lyrics often sound like no one wanted an editor in the room. To say I'm not a big fan of this would be an understatement. However, I'm not going to hold this against her. Every great artist with a catalogue as large as Taylor Swift's is bound to have some misses. She's a pop artist, so I'm not going to say she needs to do a complete 180 and start making prog music or anything like that. I do think that she may be overdue for a change in producers and maybe a different approach to writing songs. Swift and Antonoff have now collaborated on her last ten albums, including the re-recordings, and a lot of people are looking for her to try something new. She's entirely capable of being a great artist and a great storyteller. She's proven that to the world multiple times, and no one can take that away. If she wants to continue to be seen that way, however, it may be time to pivot and return to what makes her a great artist: she can tell a story, even without the superfluous wording, and she can sell it as a pop song everyone can enjoy. Though I was left unsatisfied with TTPD, I still have to have faith that she can go back to making the great albums she's capable of.