“All’s fair in love and poetry.” On April 19, Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album: The Tortured Poets Department. Just a couple hours after this initial release, she dropped a surprise second installment titled The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.
“It truly is a love letter to Taylor’s younger self as well as her fans also going through the same sort of heartbreak and melancholy,” said English teacher Meghan Williams.
“Each song represents a new emotion and feeling as though Taylor is trying to reach through time to her younger self and tell her everything is going to be okay.”
The Tortured Poets Department, consisting of 16 songs, and the Anthology which consisted of 15 songs, totaled a grand 31 songs.
AJ Datoc ’27 shared, “Swift’s newest album is beautiful, but sometimes I can get tired after a few songs because it’s all about the lyrics. […] the album is a little too long for my liking.”
The self-proclaimed Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department first announced her new album at the Grammy’s during her acceptance speech for Best Pop Vocal Album for her previous album, Midnight’s. This was her 13th Grammy.
TTPD made a monumental debut, having already broken various records.
In its first six days on the market, it became the most streamed album in a single week with 799 million streams across all platforms. Starting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated May 4), it also seized the record for largest streaming week ever for an album totaling 2.61 million in its first week – album sales accounting for 1.914 million of that number.
In addition Swift, with her last album Midnights, had previously become the first artist ever to simultaneously occupy all 10 of the top 10 spots of the Billboard Hot 100. With Tortured Poets, she topped herself by becoming the first to claim every slot in the top 14 at once.
“Ultimately shows her talent in writing as well as vocals, […]. To call her a poet is an understatement! She effectively mixes these synth beats with these gut wrenching words that tug on the heart strings of anyone listening. It’s relatable but shows also how extraordinary she is,” Williams added.
“It is raw, emotional and her true feelings spilled out on paper. That is rare to find in this day and age.”
