The Tortured Poets Department Is Exhausting in the Best Possible Way

I’m going to be honest: I’m still wrapping my head around The Tortured Poets Department.

Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album packs an emotional punch with its standard 16 tracks and was a lot to take in on a first listen. But in true Swift fashion, she revealed that this release had a twist: there was a second half of the album, named The Anthology, with an additional 15 songs. As a Swiftie, I’m incredibly happy for new content to digest. As an empath, it’s an experience that is almost overwhelming with how much it brims with bitter heartbreak and “female rage,” as Swift so fondly described it on a recent Eras Tour stop in Paris.

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That’s not to say I dislike Tortured Poets. It’s honestly in my top three of Swift’s albums thus far, mostly due to how personal and raw it is. It’s not an album for light listening or throwing on in the background. In order to fully appreciate it, one has to sit down and give it undivided attention, which means becoming immersed in the dark, painful thoughts and musings Swift had at the time of writing and recording. It’s not an easy feat, but it’s a satisfying one, to say the least.

The first half of Tortured Poets features tracks cowritten and produced by Swift’s longtime collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, with Antonoff’s signature synthpop taking center stage to create a bittersweet dichotomy with the dour nature of the lyrics. “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart,” for instance, is an upbeat look into just how much Swift was struggling with the end of her six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn at the start of 2023, the bubbly synthesizer at odds with her proclaiming, “Lights, camera, bitch, smile, even when you wanna die.” The song evokes how it feels to mask depression with a smile and the energy it takes just to function and get through the day, which is magnified by the fact that Swift wrote this about her experience during the US leg of her Eras Tour, working hard to appear as if things were normal for her fans.

Other standouts from Antonoff’s production include “Down Bad,” which uses alien abduction as a metaphor to describe the lingering effects of a relationship after its end; “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” where Swift explores her frustration and outrage at how the public builds artists up just to tear them down for their own enjoyment; and the album’s title song, a passive-aggressive jaunt about an emotionally exhausting romance—because really, who does use typewriters, anyway? The lead single, “Fortnight,” features rapper Post Malone and is an almost abstract look into a short-lived love affair that sees ex-lovers married to different people and living in the same neighborhood. The repeated bridge of “I love you, it’s ruining my life,” longs for the past but sounds resigned and defeated to the current state of things. “Florida!!!,” featuring Florence and the Machine, explores the idea of the titular state being a seedy escape for those who want to start over, with Florence Welch’s vocals sounding haunting and ethereal as she and Swift decide “Florida is one hell of a drug.”

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The Anthology, in contrast, is produced almost entirely by Dessner, evidenced by the somber, soulful vibe. For me, it’s very reminiscent of Swift’s sister albums Folklore and Evermore—particularly in my favorite track, “The Albatross,” in which Swift compares herself to an albatross as the public warns a potential lover not to get involved with her because “she is here to destroy you.” The lyrics allude to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in which shooting the albatross was a bad omen and brought bad luck. The “wise men,” the public in the song, see Swift as needing to be contained or brought down somehow due to her destructive nature when they’re the ones who end up being the “terrible danger” her lover needs saving from. The song unfolds almost like a fairy tale and is gorgeous in its simplicity, with Swift’s backing vocals at the end adding a folksy, calming melody that I can’t get enough of.

While The Anthology is a bit more uniform sonically, I’ve found the more I relisten that I prefer it to the original album. “How Did It End?” calls out the public’s morbid fascination with celebrity relationships, saying, “Come one, come all, it’s happening again,” as if Swift’s heartbreak is a circus act solely for the entertainment of others. While it’s normal to be curious, the “empathetic hunger” she describes is a brutal reminder of just how voyeuristic and obsessive the public becomes when there’s a major change in her love life. “I Hate It Here” brings to mind maladaptive daydreaming and wanting to escape into an idealistic version of the world, or perhaps a romanticized idea of an earlier time period when things were supposedly easier, but “nostalgia is a mind’s trick,” and Swift laments that there isn’t any place that will ever truly be perfect.

“The Black Dog,” one of the few tracks Antonoff produced for The Anthology, details several different stages of grief and shows that the process of healing from a breakup isn’t necessarily linear. Swift bounces between denial (“I just don’t understand”) to depression (“I move through the world with the heartbroken”) to anger (“I hope it’s shitty in the Black Dog”), all three stages intermingling to showcase the struggle to move on to “clean air” but still “miss[ing] the smoke.” Swift ends the album on the quiet, contemplative tune of “The Manuscript,” where she looks back at past heartbreak and realizes “what the agony had been for.” This could be speculation on my part, but I believe that she means songwriting and being so open and vulnerable are both a healing process and ways to connect to others. “The story isn’t mine anymore” could mean that this part of her life is over and she’s grown since its conclusion, but this lyric also calls back to the original 2014 liner notes of her album 1989, something she echoed during her speech before playing “Lover” one night at the Eras Tour: “These songs were once about my life. They are now about yours.”

Even with everything I’ve mentioned, I’ve barely scratched the surface of The Tortured Poets Department. I fully admit that I’m biased as a longtime Swiftie, but this is some of my favorite music of hers to date, if only because there’s something cathartic about scream-singing, “Who’s afraid of little old me? Well, you should be” right along with her. She knows how to put complicated feelings into words and simultaneously tap into her emotions in a way that makes them universal, and while I’m not a fan of every single song in Tortured Poets, each one carries that weight of being significant, whether it’s about a past relationship or self-reflection or falling in love despite the potential sting of heartbreak. All of it is somehow contained into 31 tracks, and I suggest listening for yourself and coming to your own conclusions. There’s a little something for everyone who ventures into the album, and the journey might be lengthy, but the ride is well worth it.

The Tortured Poets Department and The Anthology are both available on all music streaming platforms.