Taylor Swift surprised all her fans Friday morning when just two hours after the initial midnight release of her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” she released a secret second half of the album with 15 additional songs.
Swift released a total of 31 songs on Friday, naming the deluxe version of the album “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.”
Two of those songs seem to be about Kim Kardashian.
In classic Swift fashion, she got creative with her capital letters on the track “thanK you aIMee,” a song about a mean schoolgirl. Or is it? The “KIM” most often associated with Swift is Kardashian, who famously referred to Swift with a snake emoji.
Speaking of which, there are several mentions of snakes on “Cassandra.”
Swift referenced her feud with Kardashian in her Time person of the year interview.
‘Tortured Poets’ release live updates:Taylor Swift drops 15 extra songs at 2 a.m.
“You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” she said. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
In 2016, Kardashian’s then-husband Kanye West released the song “Famous,” which featured a lyric about him being the reason behind Swift’s fame. Swift denied that she approved of the lyric at the time, and Kardashian released an edited, recorded phone call between the artists on social media that led the public to believe the opposite.
This, in part, led to her “Reputation” era.
In Greek Mythology, Cassandra is the goddess granted the power of prophecy by the god Apollo. Apollo gave her the power because he was enamored by her and — after she rejected him — he sabotaged the power with a curse that no one would believe her predictions.
In “thanK you aIMee,” Swift acknowledges that conflict “made her heal.”
Another lyric in that song indicates the names on the track can’t be trusted: “I changed your name and any real defining clues. And one day, your kid comes home singin’ a song that only us two is gonna know is about you.”
The album was released during Swift’s two-month break from her massively popular and economically fruitful Eras Tour. “Tortured Poets” serves as an exclamation point to the behemoth success the billionaire has seen over the past year since the three-plus-hour show launched in Glendale, Arizona. Swift will return to the stage in Paris, France, on May 9. Fans anticipate that her newest era will be added to the show.
