Taylor Swift performs onstage during “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” at Allianz Parque on November … [+]
Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, sent ripples through the internet, sparking praise, criticism, lyrical analysis and memes.
Two hours after the 16-track album was released, Swift revealed that The Tortured Poets Department was a double album, featuring no less than 31 songs.
“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you,” Swift wrote on Instagram.
The Tortured Poets Department is already the biggest album of the year, the first album in Spotify’s history to hit a billion streams in one week.
Swifties were expecting an album filled with heartbreak songs in the wake of the singer’s breakup with longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn, but many were surprised to learn that the majority of the songs referenced her brief fling with Matty Healy, lead singer of The 1975.
A detailed lyrical analysis of the album from Vulture tallied the total number of Alwyn-inspired songs at seven, while Healy supposedly inspired no less than 13. Swift’s current boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce, seems to have inspired only two songs.
An outspoken segment of Swift’s fanbase viewed Healy as a problematic pick for Swift, due to his controversial and offensive comments — some even wrote an open letter urging Taylor to denounce Healy.
While much of Swift’s star power comes from the parasocial relationship she has cultivated with her fanbase, The Tortured Poets Department pushes back against the excesses of the Swifties.
The lyrics from “But Daddy I Love Him” explicitly condemn self-righteous Swifties for their meddling — “I’ll tell you something about my good name, it’s mine alone to disgrace,” and “God save the most judgmental creeps who say they want what’s best for me.”
In turn, Swift’s fanbase took to defending the star from what they believed to be a barrage of unfair reviews and negative comments.
Some even delved into absurd, conspiratorial commentary, framing the increased media criticism as a coordinated effort to take down Swift, despite the overwhelming commercial success of her album.
Swift, as mindbogglingly successful as she is, seems to have overplayed her hand with this release, with many commentators expressing Swift-fatigue.
Swift has long reached the point where her pop culture presence is inescapable, and to those outside the fanbase, the Swift phenomenon can feel overrated.
While many outlets gave “The Tortured Poets Department” gushing reviews (Rolling Stone gave the album a perfect score of 100), others were more critical, with some viewing the album as overstuffed and half-baked.
One brutal review from Paste Magazine was published without a byline, supposedly due to potential safety concerns from angry Swifties.
The anonymous author didn’t just criticize the content of the album, but the fact that Swift is framing herself as a “tortured poet,” arguing that her “relatable” persona contrasts with her status as a billionaire with a private jet.
The contradiction between Swift’s carefully cultivated image and the reality of her life as a megastar sparked further criticism, with some viewing Swift and her fanbase as overly defensive.
The song “thanK you aIMee” sees Swift describe triumphing over a “bully” described as “bronze” and “spray-tanned.” According to her lyrics, Swift’s bully remains anonymous — “I changed your name, and any real defining clues.”
Swifties very much enjoy searching for clues in the pop star’s releases; their dedication to uncovering hidden meaning has seen the fanbase jokingly compared to QAnon.
But Swifties didn’t need to rack their brains to figure out the identity of “Aimee,” as “KIM” is clearly spelled out in the capital letters of the title.
The feud between Swift, Kim Kardashian, and ex-husband Kanye West goes back to when West famously interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
The feud intensified in 2016, after West referenced Swift in a misogynistic line in his song, “Famous,” and claimed that he had been granted permission to use the line in a phone call with Swift.
Swift’s PR people disputed this, and Kardashian responded by leaking an edited recording of the phone call, which appeared to verify West’s claim. Swift objected to the leak, and in a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, described West as “two-faced,” emphasizing that their feud went beyond the leaked phone call.
“Basically, I got really sick of the dynamic between he and I,” Swift said. “And that wasn’t just based on what happened on that phone call and with that song — it was kind of a chain reaction of things.”
In 2020, the full phone call was finally leaked online; Swift claimed to be vindicated by the unedited recording. Three years later, Swift opened up about the psychological toll the feud took on her in an interview with Time, which named her 2023 Person of the Year.
“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,” Swift said. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before.”
Fans and critics had mixed reactions to Swift referencing the feud; some seemed satisfied by Swift expressing her anger, while others felt that it was time for the pop star to move on.
Out-of-context screenshots of clumsy lyrics from Swift’s album quickly became memes, mocked by many social media users.
While Matty Healy is believed to have inspired most of the album, one of Swift’s songs referencing Travis Kelce proved popular, with many memes referencing the line “Brand new, full throttle, Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto.”
The most baffling lyric, however, was from the song “I Hate It Here,” which sees Swift declare that she’d like to go back and live in “the 1830s” but “without all the racists.”
Social media commentators found the line amusingly tone-deaf and shallow.
Swift’s song “Who’s Afraid of Little of Little Old Me?” features the line “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me,” which sparked many jokes; the line seems a reference to growing up in the spotlight of fame, but in the context of Swift’s comfortable upbringing, many found the lyric amusing.
Many commentators used the line to poke fun at the defining events of their youth.
A viral post from Monica Lewinsky was crowned the winner of the meme medley, with Swift’s lyric’s captioning a picture of the White House.
For Swift, The Tortured Poets Department marks another resounding commercial success, one which invites harsher criticism, over-analysis and the inevitable mockery that comes from spending so much time in the spotlight.
By airing her grievances, heartbreak and pushing back against obsessive Swifties, Swift appears to be openly lamenting the price of fame; her gilded cage is her “asylum.”
The Tortured Poets Department might be too long and clunky at times, but it’s an unflinchingly honest piece of work.
