By Denise Petski
Senior Managing Editor
Taylor Swift is opening up about the inspiration behind several of her tracks on her 11th studio album Tortured Poets Department.
In an Amazon Music commentary, Swift said the album’s opening song “Fortnight”, a team-up with Post Malone, “exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout this album, one of which being fatalism, longing, pining away, lost dreams.”
“I think it’s a very fatalistic album in that there are lots of very dramatic lines about life or death and I love you, it’s ruining my life. These are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say,” she noted. “But it’s that kind of album – it’s about a dramatic, artistic, tragic kind of take on love and loss.”
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She said she “always imagined” that “Fortnight” occurred in an “American town where the American Dream you thought would happen to you didn’t.”
“You ended up not with the person you loved and now you have to just live with that every day, wondering what would’ve been, maybe seeing them out,” she explained. “And that’s a pretty tragic concept, really. So I was just writing from that perspective.”
She also talked about the song “Clara Bow”. Named after the silent film actress, Swift said “Clara Bow” is “a commentary on what I’ve seen in the industry that I’ve been in over time.”
“I used to sit in record labels trying to get a record deal when I was a little kid. And they’d say, ‘you know, you remind us of’ and then they’d name an artist, and then they’d kind of say something disparaging about her, ‘but you’re this, you’re so much better in this way or that way.’ And that’s how we teach women to see themselves, as like you could be the new replacement for this woman who’s done something great before you. I picked women who have done great things in the past and have been these architypes of greatness in the entertainment industry. Clara Bow was the first ‘it girl.’ Stevie Nicks is an icon and an incredible example for anyone who wants to write songs and make music.”
In “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” Swift said she used a metaphor “from the perspective of a child’s toy being somebody’s favorite toy until they break you, and then don’t want to play with you anymore.”
“A lot of us are in relationships where we are so valued by a person in the beginning and then all of a sudden they break us, or they devalue us in their mind, and we’re still clinging on to, ‘No, no, no, you should’ve seen them the first time they saw me. They’ll come back to that. They’ll get back to that,’” she said. “So it’s kind of a song about denial, really, so that you can live in this world where there’s still hope for a toxic, broken relationship.”
“Florida!!!”, featuring Florence + the Machine, is not inspired by a former relationship, but rather her experiences from “always watching Dateline.” Swift said she pondered the question of ” What happens when your life doesn’t fit, or your choices you’ve made catch up to you, and you’re surrounded by these harsh consequences and judgment, and circumstances did not lead you to where you thought you’d be and you just want to escape from everything you’ve ever known? Is there a place you could go?”
“I’m always watching Dateline,” she continued. “People have these crimes that they commit, where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida. They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in. And I think when you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks: ‘I want a new name. I want a new life. I don’t want anyone to know where I’ve been or know me at all.’”
The Tortured Poets Department broke streaming records when it was released on April 19. It became the first album in Spotify history to reach more than 300 million streams in a single day, according to the platform.
A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)
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