Not a particularly good breakup record is The Tortured Poets Department. For us modern fools, it’s something more sophisticated and devious.

Six tracks into her new album The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift sings, “But Daddy I Love Him,” a song that finally finds some momentum. “Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all.” It’s also the one where the world’s most famous person, a 34-year-old billionaire, finally has the audacity to rebel against her parents a little. Even if it’s a little ironic and alludes to Little Mermaid.

The song “I just learned these people only raise you to cage you” by Swift, a self-described “dutiful daughter,” is even more stunning than any of the many swear words and subtle jabs at sex talk that pepper the album. Swift has always been fiercely protective of her parents, who are also members of her management team. One of the best pranks Swift tries (and occasionally strains) to lighten the mood of this collection of songs is pretending she’s pregnant by the bad boy they disapprove of, simply to see the looks on their faces.

She focuses some of the same satirical ire at parts of her own fan base in the second half of the song, which takes another unexpected turn. She has always carefully cultivated the image of her as a mutually loved older sister or best friend. Undoubtedly, many of them also momentarily gasped at the pregnant allegation. However, Swift’s criticism of the “judgmental creeps” who pretend to desire what’s best for her while harassing her online for her personal decisions gives her a sense of relief.

The fact that the former child star still can’t manage to feel good about herself without looking for opponents to accuse of treating her unfairly is what feels less mature and less healthy. 

When Swift released Reputation seven years ago, she was actually facing intense criticism, led by her detractors Kim Kardashian and Kanye West (whom she amazingly takes time out to feud with some more in the latter half of this “anthology”). Her well justified complaints against business associates four years ago served as the impetus for the ongoing and remarkably successful “Taylor’s Version” initiative, which involves re-recording her old albums in order to assert ownership of the songs. However, in 2024, at the midst of the highest-grossing “Eras” tour in history, Swift is facing less reactionary public backlash than almost any other star in her position in history—Elvis, Madonna, Michael Jackson, you name it. Swift is liked by both you and me, and those who dislike her generally admit that there’s no point in arguing about it.

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Six tracks into her new album The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift sings, “But Daddy I Love Him,” a song that finally finds some momentum. “Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all.” It’s also the one where the world’s most famous person, a 34-year-old billionaire, finally has the audacity to rebel against her parents a little. Even if it’s a little ironic and alludes to Little Mermaid.

The song “I just learned these people only raise you to cage you” by Swift, a self-described “dutiful daughter,” is even more stunning than any of the many swear words and subtle jabs at sex talk that pepper the album. Swift has always been fiercely protective of her parents, who are also members of her management team. One of the best pranks Swift tries (and occasionally strains) to lighten the mood of this collection of songs is pretending she’s pregnant by the bad boy they disapprove of, simply to see the looks on their faces.

She focuses some of the same satirical ire at parts of her own fan base in the second half of the song, which takes another unexpected turn. She has always carefully cultivated the image of her as a mutually loved older sister or best friend. Undoubtedly, many of them also momentarily gasped at the pregnant allegation. However, Swift’s criticism of the “judgmental creeps” who pretend to desire what’s best for her while harassing her online for her personal decisions gives her a sense of relief.

The fact that the former child star still can’t manage to feel good about herself without looking for opponents to accuse of treating her unfairly is what feels less mature and less healthy. When Swift released Reputation seven years ago, she was actually facing intense criticism, led by her detractors Kim Kardashian and Kanye West (whom she amazingly takes time out to feud with some more in the latter half of this “anthology”). Her well justified complaints against business associates four years ago served as the impetus for the ongoing and remarkably successful “Taylor’s Version” initiative, which involves re-recording her old albums in order to assert ownership of the songs. However, in 2024, at the midst of the highest-grossing “Eras” tour in history, Swift is facing less reactionary public backlash than almost any other star in her position in history—Elvis, Madonna, Michael Jackson, you name it. Swift is liked by both you and me, and those who dislike her generally admit that there’s no point in arguing about it.

Hell, John Lennon’s remark that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus in 1966 had people burning Beatles records in the streets. Swift sings in “Guilty as Sin?” “What if I roll the stone away?/ They’re gonna crucify me anyway,” and “I would have died for your sins” in “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” thus I doubt she would face the same backlash for depicting herself as a Christlike figure. When you consider the 31 linguistically dense tracks on The Tortured Poets Department—if you count the 15 that materialized out of nowhere in the middle of the night after the album was ostensibly already released—then, what doesn’t Swift compare herself to throughout the album?

Swift is so ecstatic that she can only accuse those who do love her—her family and fans—of loving her incorrectly when she is searching for criticism and finds almost none. She sings, “I’ll tell you something about my good name, it’s mine alone to disgrace,” expressing her frustration about her positive reputation.

A similar mood can be heard in the part of the album that caused the most immediate reaction when Poets leaked on Thursday: it’s not primarily about what everyone assumed it would be about, which was the end of her six-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn last year. Although it undoubtedly must have been, Swift sings on “LOML” about both love and losing her life. Rather, it seems to focus exclusively on a brief relationship with another pop star—the previously mentioned, hated bad boy and “tattooed golden retriever,” who we all suppose to be Matty Healy from the United Kingdom. group the 1975. Swift states in the album liner notes’ versified opening, “A smirk creeps onto this poet’s face.” I write the best about the worst men, so that seems like the right reason. Although Swift’s desire and pain were undoubtedly sincere at the time, concentrating on the turbulent relationship rather than the long-term relationship allows her to go back to her normal repertoire and use the same range of voices as in the songs she spent the majority of the album’s two-year gestation period singing in stadiums. Without a villain to mock, how could she extract the muted grownup pains of a slowly disintegrating domestic partnership with that signature Taylor Swift melodramatic emotion? And how long could she bear to dwell on that heavier, harder-to-process loss long enough to sing about it in its entirety?

She has demonstrated her ability. She performed it on the melancholic track “You’re Losing Me,” which she dropped back in November. She does so on the album’s “So Long, London” (the fifth track, which Swift infamously saves for heart-stopping tunes). The song addresses the idea that losing a place—whether it be geographical or just a grounding in comfortable surroundings and rituals—often coincides with losing a person. The first bonus track, or “anthology,” “The Black Dog,” is an extension of that concept. It starts with the very modern-love conceit that you can still track a former partner’s location on your phone because he “forgot to turn it off.” Swift watches her ex-boyfriend entering the Black Dog, a bar named after Winston Churchill’s term for depression, and she starts obsessing over what he might be doing there—perhaps meeting other women, maybe hearing one of their favorite songs, maybe not missing her. How comes these thoughts won’t go away? She sings, “Old habits die screaming,” as the reason for this.

And then there’s “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” which is probably the most pop-friendly anthem on the album and, strangely, the song that makes the protagonist’s feelings the easiest to relate to despite its setting being so unique to the life of Taylor Swift. While it may not be necessary for the majority of individuals going through terrible life events to stand in front of tens of thousands of shouting people and act as though “it’s my birthday every day,” we nevertheless need to swallow our emotions, go to work, and put on a mask. It employs the technique of matching bright music to depressing lyrics, which gives the contrast greater poignancy—all the more so since the song is actually about that contradiction. Swift also knows that her fans have seen her perform the song in person, in the “Eras” tour film, and in the innumerable hours of tour footage that are available online, which gives the song its unique power.

Taken as a whole, these tracks imply a different album that never was, a breakup record more akin to the genre’s legends, a sort of mature, spiritual follow-up to Red. Rather, she must take long detours to reach her destination, with a mountain of contradictory metaphors obstructing her way out. Beyond the Folklore stage, the Tortured Poets Department doesn’t demonstrate much lyrical development. Musically, it mostly continues in the vein of her previous albums, particularly Midnights, where co-writers and producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner create the environments in which Swift’s tales can be told. However, only a few of these tracks truly take off and enthrall listeners. Verse that is vague could give way to vibrant choruses that are interrupted by run-on sentences (like “about what fingers rings go on”), or vice versa. The random fucks frequently appear to be a substitute for very intense, tangible expressions of lust and enmity. It’s not so much a satisfying stand-alone piece as it is a stream-of-consciousness assembly of elements, similar to earlier Swift albums. I am an ardent supporter of Antonoff, and he performs some great stuff here. Take, for example, the seductive lines of “I Can Fix Him” and the giddy, trashy grand guignol of “Florida!!!”Florence and the Machine together. However, it’s impossible to avoid losing Max Martin and the distinctive structure and melodies of a song like “Blank Space.”

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I may put this down to the unnecessary productivity of her workers. Nobody was pressuring Swift to put out a new album so soon—her fourth in four years if you exclude the retakes and all of its supplementary material—let alone thirty-one tracks. However, the prevailing attitude is that the more the better due to her workaholism and the financial benefits of the streaming era. However, that might be a far too traditional and conservative approach to take TTPD. Given her position in the music industry food chain, there’s no one to say no, no one to act as an editor, and nobody even to express the dreaded old label complaint, “We don’t hear a hit.” More than any one song, the album’s whole narrative (extra tracks excepted) is what makes it so fulfilling. Unruly journeys through the phases of mourning are what it delivers in place of hits, as Swift alluded to earlier this month when she created themed playlists for her followers. The protagonist finds solace and fulfillment in the creative labor itself while the all-consuming rebound affair (which some songs imply was already waiting lustily in the wings) absorbs the first effect of the separation and eventually falls apart. Even then, Swift gives herself advice to remember that this too shall pass; her star must fade, like those of every generation, in the coda “Clara Bow,” in which she draws comparisons between herself and Stevie Nicks in the 1970s and that “it” girl from the 1920s. (I’ve omitted the section about a redemptive new love because the football-metaphor-heavy song “The Alchemy” and its bonus track counterpart “So High School” feel so cheesy and unimportant that they are only included as a favor to the relevant party.)

Novelistic is how my friend and coworker Ann Powers describes TTPD. However, I feel that, even with the album’s capital-R Romantic literary airs, which are a mix of serious and humorous, it is also too much of a throwback. It’s a lot like a role-playing game where you and Taylor embark on an adventure together and engage in convoluted, rambling conversation at the same time. “You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith/ This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots,” Swift quips to her lover in the song’s title.

Since Reputation, I have resisted analyzing artists’ work in light of celebrity rumors, but on this album, it is practically integrated into the song, much as on rap beef tracks. The listener is almost forced to read the songs through the narratives we’ve heard from the news and social media because of all the “Easter egg” elements and name-dropping (“you told Lucy… and I had said that to Jack…”). Even though she reserves the right to be prickly about it, Swift knows that fans will do this regardless, and she long ago made the decision to feed the fandom rather than resist it. Regarding “Who’s Fearful of Older Me?reminds us that while feminism in the vein of Taylor Swift may not mean having it all, it does require learning to be both the threat and the danger, or, as she puts it on “Cassandra,” both Eve and the serpent.

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The Tortured Poets Department may be Swift’s album’s most complete multimedia realization to date. Put aside visual albums. Every image, movie still, newspaper story, rumor, and random internet remark is, in this case, a part of the text, and we are all both participants and viewers. A deeper look into the contemporary celebrity in a state of crisis, heartbreak acting as a CAT scan to reveal more about the inner workings of our global image.

Swift aims to free herself through this rendering process. Even though I find a lot of the “anthology” tracks boring, the last one, “The Manuscript,” had me in tears as she reflects on a previous relationship with an older guy, which is perhaps one of the topics of her iconic kiss-off songs from the 2010s. These feelings are now securely far behind her, just a part of the narrative she has included into her musical composition. She sings, “The manuscript is all that’s left.” “Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it,” Taylor Alison Swift posted on Instagram lately. However, as “thanK you aIMee” indicates (decode the capital letters), she has, to our knowledge, never in her life let anything go. However, it’s a really mature ambition to have