Wake up with a bang this Friday morning with, at 6 a.m. sharp, the release of Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department. It is undoubtedly the musical event of the day, or even of the year, quite simply, with the release of Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé on March 29. First observation: the woman who is today the indisputable queen of world pop can do anything, such as deviating from the rule that albums are available at midnight. In the case of The Tortured Poets Departmentso we had to wait until 6 a.m., with fans being delivered all over the world at the same time.
Generous Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift once again delivers a copious album, with 16 tracks, with a bonus song for each of the four different versions of the album planned! That’s 65 minutes of music in pop format. One wonders when the 34-year-old singer sleeps. She found the time to record all of this between the re-recordings of her previous albums – to pull the rug out from under the feet of those who acquired, against her will, her catalog – and her monstrous The Eras tour which did not another stopover in Europe..
After the phenomenal success of The Midnights released less than two years ago, the anticipation was obviously enormous from fans but also from critics. Remember that when the pop star published the cover of this new album on Instagram, her publication became the fastest to count a million Likes in the history of the social network.
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A breakup album, his trademark
Taylor Swift has made her specialty of devoting songs to her love stories, the ones that end badly. Here, she dedicates an entire album to her ex. We immediately think of the British actor Joe Alwyn with whom she lived for 6 years. The titles seem to indicate it: “So Long, London”, “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) or the very sarcastic “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” By the way, the name of the album comes from. a discussion group, The Tortured Man Club, in which Joe Alwyn participated.
But the singer is second to none when it comes to sometimes leading us down paths that lead to other realities. Her fleeting romance last year with Matty Healy, from the group 1975, for example. Unquestionably, it appears several times in the songs on the record.
Confirmation when listening to the whole thing: this is indeed a break-up album. Even if Taylor Swift has since found the flame in the arms of American football player Travis Kelce, winner of the Super Bowl this year, we are far from “Shake It Off” and other unstoppable pop songs with which she has already graced us. This time, the wound in the heart is expressed through mid-tempo and melancholy songs.
There is no meteorite on this eleventh studio album from the Pennsylvania native like “Flowers” released by Miley Cyrus last year, also on the theme of breakups. You have to wait until the end of the disc to have a higher rhythm with the song “Iomi” on which you can hear the singer laughing. But from the next track, we return to this ambient melancholy with “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” and this cry which closes the song: “I’m so unhappy and no one knows it”.
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Post Malone and Florence + The Machine
The Tortured Poets Department offers two collaborations. The first opens the album with the presence of Post Malone (“Fornight”), of whom Taylor Swift says she is a big fan. The second gives rise to one of the great moments of this record with an impressive orchestration on the chorus, namely the song “Florida!!!”, on which she is accompanied by Florence + The Machine. In both cases, these guests appear to be serving Taylor Swift, none of whom pulls the cover.
A break-up record therefore, without an unstoppable hit, but a remarkable album throughout which the singer shows that she also perfectly masters the melancholic register. However, do not believe that The Tortured Poets Department is sad from start to finish. Listening to certain lyrics, we delight in the humor, sometimes self-deprecation – like on “But Daddy I Love Him” – and the arrows that Taylor Swift shoots at those who hurt her. This is also the mark of the great.
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The album of maturity
It is no exaggeration to say that The Tortured Poets Department is the coming-of-age album for Taylor Swift. While she shatters record after record – at the time of writing this Friday morning, Spotify’s servers held up, unlike what happened for the release of The Midnights…but for how much longer? – and triumphs on a global scale with her The Eras tour, the American pop star dares a deep record. A bold but winning bet. It can be listened to as a whole, something that has become increasingly rare in this era of king singles crowned by streaming platforms.
When you listen, you never get bored. We dive happily into the singer’s stories, into the twists and turns of her love stories which end… badly but from which she emerges stronger each time. We begin to think that we would write the same thing when we have gone through states of mind identical to our own. More than ever, Taylor Swift, despite the gigantism she has become as an artist, seems to remain this girl next door, this next door neighbor as accessible as the first day. This too is no small feat.
