For those of you paying any attention at all, Taylor Swift dropped another album back in April. And I have THOUGHTS about it! So many thoughts!!! You might not care about this at all, and that's fine. You can skip this post if you want. But every time I listen to The Tortured Poets Department I find myself making mental notes about what I want to say about it. So it's time for me to get these thoughts onto paper (or, you know, whatever) and out of my head. So here we go!
Okay, so first of all, she released an album and then within a few hours released it again as an "Anthology" and basically doubled the playlist. I have mixed feelings about this. I'm a little tired of all the gimmicky stuff around an album release. This isn't nearly as bad as when she dropped Midnights and encouraged fans to buy four copies of it on vinyl so fans could make them into a clock to hang on their walls. That was insanity. This isn't as bad as that, but I feel like all the games are getting old. Billie Eilish just released a new album and that was all she did and that was just fine, thankyouverymuch. I also have a problem with the new album being called THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT in all caps like Taylor is yelling at us, and not having an apostrophe in "poets" like I feel it probably should. Did Taylor even really finish high school? Does she understand how punctuation works?
The first track, "Fortnight" is great. It's pretty dark, but I think she's setting the stage for the whole album here and the whole album is also pretty dark, so it all works. Post Malone is featured here, and I heard complaints that all he does is just sort of echo Taylor for the first two-thirds of the song. I feel like he's a big boy and could have demanded a bigger part if he'd wanted it, so I don't care about that. A friend thought the line "Your wife waters flowers, I wanna kill her" was pretty dark but I can appreciate dark stuff and I thought it was hilarious. What jealous ex-lover doesn't feel that way? My only real complaint about this song is that my kids think it's about the video game "Fortnite" and I'm tired of trying to explain to them that that's NOT what this is! But other than that very minor gripe, I love this song. The music video is pretty fun, too (especially since she looks like Clara Bow in the beginning, which is another song on the album!).
 |
| In the music video, there are also times when she looks a lot like Nicole Kidman, which I had never thought before. Interesting! |
"The Tortured Poets Department" is *another great song. I like that in her head (but not out loud) she's making fun of her boyfriend for using a typewriter. And I love the line, "You're in self-sabotage mode, throwing spikes down on the road but I've seen this episode and still love the show." It's a great way to explain the love she has for someone who is also kind of ridiculous.
"My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" is one of my favorite tracks on the whole album. I love the swooping "oh-oh-oh-oh" at the end of some of the lines. It's fun and fits for a pretty silly song (well-- also alarming, if you take it too seriously). It's VERY inspired by the recent Barbie movie (which I also loved) and it's all great and catchy. Two thumbs up! This song, it should be noted, also follows one of Taylor's favorite themes of justifying that things didn't work out with a boy because he loved her too much. (The actual line this time is, "He saw forever so he smashed it up.") Seriously. I don't think Taylor Swift believes there is a single boy out there who ever noticed her who isn't still pining away for her. It's a lot at times, but part of me has to just admire her confidence.
"Down Bad"... Is this... actually about being abducted by aliens? With an opening line like "Did you really beam me up" I'm pretty sure it is! She's comparing her love affair to being taking up by a flying saucer and now that she's back on earth everything feels boring and depressing. It's so weird, and yet, I have to applaud her for finding a different metaphor for love! Kudos for that. I also like the line, "How dare you think it's romantic Leaving me safe and stranded" as a nice shout out to the line from "New Romantics" when she said, "Please leave me stranded It's so romantic." I think it's hilarious when artists reference themselves in their own works! (The Beatles were the best at this!) There's also a line about "waking up in blood." Taylor actually has a lot of lines about bleeding, which makes sense given that she's usually talking about heartbreak, but eventually you do have to wonder if she has some legit medical disorder... Still, I like this song. It's not as great as any of the previous tracks, but it's a good one.
"So Long London" I like the opening sounds to this song. And I like the whole song a lot, too. I especially like how she uses "so long" to mean "goodbye" and also "a long time"-- any time you can get two meanings out of the same phrase, I appreciate that. It appears to be the first song on the album about Joe Alwyn, which was a surprise to everyone, who thought the entire album would be about him. Instead, most of the album is about the month that Taylor was dating Matt Healy, which seems to have really been a doozy of a relationship. Joe Alwyn must have been so relieved-- it could have been so much worse for him! My only problem with "So Long London" is that it's the fifth track, which (I have learned from paying way too much attention to what Swifties say) is usually the emotional powerhouse of each album. And it's a good one for that. But! It's not nearly as good as "You're Losing Me" which was released right after their breakup as an extra song to version 5.0 (or something) of her Midnights album. "You're Losing Me" SHOULD be track five here. The two songs, both with themes of CPR and hearts stopping clearly belong together, but this one pales in comparison.
"But Daddy I Love Him" This is a tough one for me. On the surface, I like the song. It's fun and catchy and I find myself singing it. And the title's little mermaid reference is hilarious. But if I actually think about this song at all, it makes me mad. Taylor's acting as though all these annoying Christians in her life just wants her to be unhappy by keeping from her "the one thing I wanted" (as if she hasn't spent literally her whole life chasing fame and fortune! NO-- all she ever wanted was this one boy! That's it!!!). This song is about how everyone hates the boy she loves but by the end she gets the last laugh because everyone comes to see that he's actually a great guy, just like she thought; "even my daddy just loves him" she proclaims triumphantly. I mean, that's a cute story. But this is yet another song about Matt Healy, who nearly everyone agreed was a creep the second they started dating. And, in this case, based on their month-long relationship and a bunch of the other songs tearing him down on this very album, all the people saying she shouldn't date him were absolutely right!!! So, now I'm just annoyed. Taylor's acting like all those "Sarahs and Hannahs" are so uptight and judgey with their religiosity and trying to cage her and make her unhappy but they were right to tell her to stay away from him! Also, she has a line about the elders convening at city hall and deciding she needs to stay away from this boy. Where in the world is this happening? Was Taylor Swift raised by Puritans in the 1600s? Even in the most religious community, this hasn't happened in at least a hundred years. It's starting to feel like Taylor just wants to feel put upon. (This will start to turn into something of a theme in the album-- Taylor wanting to whine about how hard her life is. It's not attractive.) Now I kind of hate this catchy song that I keep singing! Curse it all!
"Fresh Out The Slammer" This is another one that I find myself singing. But it's not an amazing song. It's fine. Just fine. It's about racing to date Matt Healy after she and Joe broke up, and it's another one that, in hindsight, kind of loses its luster. Lines like "Ain't no way I'm gonna screw up now I know what's at stake" don't mean much when they're about a month-long relationship.
"Florida!!!" People were all excited because it features Florence + the Machine, and you can really hear Flo, unlike Post Malone in the first track. I kind of like the first part of this song, but then it devolves into a bunch of just yelling and it doesn't do much for me. I actually took this one off my playlist because I was sick of it. Sorry, Florence!
"Guilty as Sin" Taylor Swift's songs are frequently about love and romance, but they're not usually terribly sexy. It's one of the things I really appreciate about her music-- I can listen to it with my kids around! But this song... it's all about a romance in her head that hasn't happened yet but with lines like "my bed sheets are aflame" and "I've screamed his name Building up like waves" this... leaves me feeling icky. I don't like it. Also-- as someone else pointed out-- her line "What if I roll the stone away They're gonna crucify me anyway" bothers me as much for making herself a Christ-figure over a stupid trash romance as for the fact that she's got her biblical timeline completely wrong. This is a pass for me.
 |
| This is the sort of sexy album cover, which seems fitting to include here. I think it's weird that her prominent hand there is curled up, slightly claw-like. Like she' really not very comfortable with this, either. Stop it, Taylor, go back to being the cute girl next door! |
"Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" Here's another song I can get behind! This one is catchy. With the refrain "So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street," it's pretty dark and creepy, but I like that! And I love her repeatedly raging, in answer to the title question, "YOU SHOULD BE!" This song spawned a viral meme with a picture of Taylor's childhood home:
"I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)" This is one of those songs that's fun the first time, and then quickly loses its shine. The final line-- "Whoa-- maybe I can't..." is pretty fun. And I appreciate how it sounds like it's straight out of an old Western. But this is definitely one of the songs that undoes everything Taylor was trying to pull off with "But Daddy I Love Him." He's not that great, Taylor-- listen to all of us who love you and run away from guys like this!!!! This song is fine, but I probably skip it about as often as I listen to it.
"loml" Apparently these letters originally meant "love of my life" but in this case Taylor has changed them to mean "loss of my life" which is a nifty trick. This song is gloomy and sad to the point that it barely seems to have a melody at all. Which in some ways is cool because it does portray the genuine sadness. But it also makes it hard to get very excited about. I do love the lines "Are they second-hand embarrassed That I can't get out of bed Cause something counterfeit's dead." Because, actually, I think that's EXACTLY how I feel about the relationship upon which two-thirds of this album is based!
"I Can Do It With a Broken Heart" This is a real banger of a song and makes for a nice anthem! But, also, if you give it any thought at all, it's also kind of terrible! Because all her fans are at her concerts singing along and cheering for her and in this song she's confessing that she's in a horrible place emotionally and it's awful. And our collective response is, "Yay!!! Keep singing!!!"????? That makes me feel like a monster. So then I don't know what to think about this song. It's weird.
"The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived" This is all about the same guy who, just a few songs previously, you referred to as your wild boy who brought you wild joy? Really??? I just-- to quote a different Taylor Swift song-- this is exhausting. It's still a good song, and she conveys the pain well. I just am having a hard time feeling sympathetic.
"The Alchemy" One of the few songs about Travis Kelce. This song is fine, but it opens with the lines "This happens once every few lifetimes These chemicals hit me like white wine" and I just find it too hard to swallow right now. So-- we've been listening to these songs about Joe and Matt, the love loss of your life, and now, this thing you have with Travis is so rare it only happens once every few lifetimes? Yeah, I'm not buying it. I guess the football references are kind of fun, if you're into that. I took this one off my playlist.
"Clara Bow" Here we veer away from all the (bad-- ha!) romance and get a song about the price you pay to be famous. I'm not gonna lie, it's a nice switch and a good song. I also like that she cosplayed this a bit at the Grammies when she announced this album. Well played, Taylor!
"The Black Dog" And we're back to Matt Healy again. This is another song that's fine, but I don't think it adds anything to the album. It feels too much like the other sad songs about Matt...
"imgonnagetyouback" This is just weird all around. A little background: apparently a bunch of people felt like Olivia Rodrigo's song "deja vu" was similar to Taylor Swift's "Cruel Summer." (I know both songs and I honestly couldn't tell you what's the same? Maybe I don't pay enough attention...) Taylor's legal team pressured Olivia to give her half the writing credit and royalties to Taylor. That seems a bit excessive to me, since Taylor certainly doesn't need the money and Olivia Rodrigo was just starting out, but whatever. So now here comes this song by Taylor, which plays on how the phrase "get you back" can both mean "get even with you" and "win you back to me" except Olivia Rodrigo already has a song "Get Him Back!" messing with those two meanings. And the real kicker? Olivia's song is better. This is another one I tend to skip.
"The Albatross" Okay, now this is a song I really like. I feel like it's been a while! More of this, Taylor! The song itself is fairly simple-- she compares herself to an albatross, with people shouting that she's bad luck, but then in the end, she's the one who spreads her wings like a parachute and comes to the rescue. It's a nice metaphor. And it makes me think of The Rescuers, which I also like! 😁
Okay, this post is getting so long (London!-- ha!). I'm going to break this into two posts. It's nice to end on a good note with "The Albatross"! I'll be back talking about the rest of the songs soon, I promise!
*This is the first track that's listed as explicit. I'm listening to all of these cleaned up, so make of that what you will! Eleven of the thirty-one tracks are explicit and that seems a bit much to me, at least for her usual brand. I'd expect it of any rapper, but I want better from Swift. Using the f-word so much just feels cheap and lazy. I do appreciate that at least she offers cleaned up versions, though!
No comments:
Post a Comment