Taylor Swift has done it yet again. Her 11th studio album THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT was released last Friday, April 19th, at midnight. The album featured 16 tracks with collaborations with Post Malone and Florence & The Machine.
For weeks leading up to the release, Swift played some mind games with her fans hinting that the number two would be significant on the day of the release. She is sneaky, but crazy Swifties found a way to decode this Easter egg. Swifties stayed up eagerly until 2 A.M. suspecting something to be released. They were right, and the second part of TTPD was released entitled The Anthology. It holds 15 more tracks making this double album have a whopping 31 tracks in total.
This album is truly something special. It gives listeners an opportunity to sympathize with Swift as she was experiencing her breakup with her ex-boyfriend of six years, Joe Alwyn, all while hosting the highest grossing tour of all time, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Swift remarks on this experience in her playful track 13, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart. This song is catchy and has relatable lyrics making it blow up on TikTok within hours of its release. The chorus lyric, “I cry a lot, but I am so productive. It’s an art,” has become a TikTok trend, and mothers, college/high school students, and nurses have joined in on posting to the sound. Eras Tour goers may feel a slight pang of guilt from the line, “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting ‘More!’” Swift sings about faking a smile for her fans as she was experiencing some of the strongest feelings of sadness. This song is playful, catchy, and definitely a stand out track on TTPD.
Directly following I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, track 14 takes the cake for best bridge on the album in The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. This song is suspected to be about Swift’s “summer fling,” Matty Healy. The first chorus of the song features the lyric, “And I don’t even want you back, I just want to know if rusting my sparkling summer was the goal,” and Swift certainly did have a sparkling summer because of her Eras Tour. The beat drops midway through the song, and Swift’s anger is heard through her diction and the power in her voice. She concludes the song with “And I’ll forget you, but I’ll never forgive the smallest man who ever lived.” Swift has officially classified the worst insult to ever tell a man, and I know Matty Healy is not liking the heat he is getting for this song.
In my opinion, the most important track in The Anthology is track 24, thanK you aIMee. You may be wondering, why are the letters, K, I, and M capitalized? Well, that spells out Kim. Yes, as in Kim Kardashian. Swift and Kardashian have been in conflict since 2016 when Kardashian posted a private phone call between Swift and her ex-husband, Kanye West. This song is the revenge that Swift has been looking for. She tells the story about a “bully from her hometown” which is obviously a disguise for Kardashian. A standout lyric is in the chorus, “Everyone knows my mother is a saintly woman, but she used to say she wished that you were dead.” This emphasizes just how brutal their feud was and is. Kim’s daughter, North, is very active on TikTok, and Swift makes a remark about her in the line, “And one day, your kid comes home singing a song that only us two is gonna know is about you.” Swiftie TikTokers have already made parodies of what that encounter could look like. This track displays Swift’s creativity in songwriting and storytelling and can be seen as “the last laugh” in this years-long dispute.
In all, this album is truly remarkable and a personal favorite of mine. It has certainly made my Top 5 Taylor Swift albums list. Next up, fans question if she will add a TTPD set to the European leg of the Eras Tour. The tour resumes in May, and ticket holders will just have to wait and see.
