Only a few hours to go until the next Taylor Swift album drops.
Taylor Swift’s 11th album is almost here. The Tortured Poets Department is arriving on April 19, which means it’s time to put on our clown makeup and wonder what she’s trying to tell us, a pre-album Swiftie tradition. We know a few things for certain and we can speculate about some other parts. Let’s start with what we know and work our way up to baseless theorizing.
It’s a long one
The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) clocks in at a cool 16 tracks, with a 17th bonus track if you buy a physical copy of the album. If Taylor does what she did for Midnights, those 16 songs are just the beginning. There could be seven-song addendums and remixes and songs “from the vault” that feel suspiciously timed to what she’s going through at that very moment (looking at you, “You’re Losing Me”).
Travis has heard some of the album
In an interview with Extra ahead of the Super Bowl, Travis Kelce revealed that he’s heard at least some of the album. “I have heard some of it, yes, and it’s unbelievable,” he said. “I can’t wait for her to shake up the world when it finally drops.” What a good boyfriend.
TTPD has been in the works for years
At her first Tokyo Eras tour performance, Taylor explained the timeline of TTPD coming to life. “I’ve been working on Tortured Poets since right after I turned in Midnights,” she said. “You turn in an album months in advance so you can make vinyls … so I started working on it immediately after that, and I’ve been working on it for about two years. I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour, and when it was perfect, in my opinion, when it was good enough for you, I finished it.”
This means that TTPD was in the works from her breakup with Joe Alwyn to her meeting Travis Kelce and encompasses everything in between. What I’m saying is that if we’re lucky, we might get a Matty Healy diss track.
There are Easter eggs, of course
Would it even be a Taylor Swift album-release cycle without her planting clues and Easter eggs? There’s a QR code mural in Chicago — made entirely out of the letters TTPD and the number 13. When fans scanned the code with their phone, it led to a YouTube short on Swift’s page with the message “Error 321.” An error message on your big album-promotion mural would be a nightmare for anyone else, but with Swift it’s intentional. The same error code appeared on Swift’s website in the hours before she announced TTPD. What does it all mean … I can’t be bothered to sleuth this one out, but I’m sure all will be revealed soon.
In Los Angeles, Spotify hosted a pop-up library where fans could take photos, get a preview of some lyrics, and hunt for clues. Did they find anything? Maybe.
????| The typewriter at the #SpotifyTTPD library installation has "NO 3" on it! #TSTTPD pic.twitter.com/hvoSnpqKvH
— The Eras Tour (@tswifterastour) April 16, 2024
What could “NO 3” mean? Does she want us to skip the third track? Are we to look to her third album, Speak Now, for answers? It’s actually none of that; it’s just what’s on the typewriter when you buy it from Amazon. The hardest part about being a Swiftie is figuring out what’s a clue and what’s just there.
Meanwhile, on Apple Music, the streaming service announced it would be releasing a word a day until TTPD comes out. Fans had to find the words by looking at Swift’s lyrics on Apple Music, where different letters would be capitalized. The words so far have been hereby, conduct, this, post, and we. What is being conducted? Fans seem to think it’s a postmortem and that the album will be looking back at the death of a relationship.
TTPD has a kind Kübler-Ross vibe
Leading up to the release of TTPD, Swift released five playlists on Apple Music. Each corresponded to one of the five Kübler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These playlists sent fans into a tailspin, as it was revealed that songs previously believed to be wholly romantic, like “Lover” and “Lavender Haze,” wound up on the denial playlist. Ouch!
We know what the department looks like
In an animated Instagram reel promoting the album, we learned that the Tortured Poets Department looks a lot like the office from Being John Malkovich.
So I guess the department isn’t an academic department (as I had previously imagined), but, like, a department in an office? Do the tortured poets and the marketing girlies get margs after work and talk shit about their bosses?
Oh, this reel also announced that Swift is dropping a music video for one of the album’s tracks on Friday night.
Post Malone?
Yeah. Not only is Post Malone on the album, but he’s on “Fortnight,” the first song on the album. Is he one of the tortured poets? If you listen to “Psycho” enough times in a row, you might be able to convince yourself of that. He and Florence and the Machine are the only two featured artists on TTPD, because if Taylor is going to do one thing, it’s bring together some of the most disparate people on earth for her own amusement.
Punctuation is so hot right now
On 1989 (Taylor’s Version), there was a bonus track called “Slut!” Before that, there was the now infamous “ME!” Now, Taylor is going harder than ever on punctuation. We’re looking at not one but two question titles back-to-back — “Guilty As Sin?” and “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” — plus the song “Florida!!!,” which is the one that features Florence and the Machine. What is she hinting at? Is her literary era incoming? Hopefully, she has a good editor, one who can tell her that no one has ever been three-exclamation-points excited about the state of Florida.
Joe Alwyn might need to enter witness protection
Not only is April TTPD’s release month, it’s also the anniversary of the announcement of Taylor and Joe Alwyn’s breakup. The couple was together for six years and split because their relationship had “run its course.” Obviously, I do not wish any harm to Mr. Alwyn, but it does seem that Taylor has drawn her pen against him. Song titles like “So Long, London,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” make me think we’re getting a breakup album. If that is the case, then Joe should tap into his group chat with Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott (curiously named The Tortured Man Club) and see if he can hide out with one of them for a few weeks this spring.
Or maybe this is an album about Matty Healy
On Wednesday, TTPD reportedly leaked. I would never publicly condone listening to a leaked version of a record, but I do love to read what other people say about it. The streets are saying this is not actually a Joe Alwyn breakup record but one inspired by Swift’s brief relationship with the 1975 front man last year.
i was here minding my own business and the next thing i know there are people on my tl saying ttpd is mostly about matty healy.. like pic.twitter.com/vBZYBNM795
— thunder (@westviliage) April 18, 2024
haven’t finished yet but. new taylor album being almost entirely about matty healy who she dated for like 2 months when everyone thought it would be about her relationship of 6 years that just ended is actually SO hilarious
— carey (@brokebackstan) April 18, 2024
Taylor has definitely been hanging out with Lana Del Rey
I’m sorry, but so many of the song titles on TTPD sound like Lana discards. What does Taylor know about “But Daddy I Love Him” or “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” or “Fresh Out the Slammer”? Even “Florida!!!” makes more sense in Lana’s universe than it does in Taylor’s — that’s where the Men in Music Business Conference was. Lana has long been an inspiration for Taylor (the “I Knew You Were Trouble” music video is basically a PG version of “Ride”), but these tracks make me believe that Taylor and Lana are spending more time together than ever before. Do you think Taylor has ever taken a hit of Lana’s vape?
She loves her old-timey celebrities
The album closes with a song called “Clara Bow.” Bow was an actress whose main claim to fame was being the woman who inspired the phrase “It” girl. This will be Taylor’s second time singing about some fabulous woman from the first half of the 20th century. The first was Rebecca Harkness in “The Last Great American Dynasty.” It’s kind of shocking she doesn’t have a song called “Bogie and Bacall” yet, but there’s always the next album. At the rate she’s going, we’ll probably have that by Labor Day.
This post has been updated.
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