On April 19, 2024, Taylor Swift released a new album The Tortured Poets Department which is her 11th studio album. Swift would have us believe that this album is an unmatched look into her private life, an emotional cleansing of her real feelings about a relationship with recognizable broad strokes. Before the album was released, she told a Melbourne crowd, “I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed on Tortured Poets.”
“The Tortured Poets Department,” Swift’s new album, appears to be an honest peek at her life over the previous 12 months. She is expressing two realities that are completely different from one another. On the one hand, millions of people yell her name, sing her songs, and make costumes and bracelets, and she is currently on an incredibly successful global tour that is said to have helped the economy. She ended a six-year relationship with someone she thought would be the one, and now she’s dealing with heartbreak. The recurring theme on this album is the difference between being at the top of your career and experiencing the lowest point in your romantic relationship.” – Citlali Salazar
A lot of Swifties at San Dimas believe this album is “Midnights” meets “Folklore”, some of the tracks begin with a raw electric edge and develop into an indie rock-like feel. Many saints believe this album has no skips and is one of her best albums so far.
In this album, there is a lot of secret messages in her songs and writing that have stood out to fans. The song “thanK you aIMee” gives a tribute to those coded signals, with the uppercase letters spelling out KIM. It appears that Kardashian and West’s long-running feud over an edited phone call they released is still ongoing. “And maybe you’ve reframed it, and in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue,” the song’s bridge declares. “Since I don’t think you’ve changed all that much, I changed your name and any other really telling information. And one day your child returns home singing a song about you that only the two of us will know because all the while you were throwing punches, it was all in vain.” The fact that Taylor is still drawing inspiration for songs from this battle is interesting.
“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” is yet another amazing track on the album. It appears to have been composed while on the Era’s Tour. Swift was coping with the breakup of a six-year romance while delighting fans night after night with a three-hour tour of all of her albums. At the start of the tour, word of the split became public. Compared to the words, which describe instances when Taylor felt terribly sad, the lively musical tone is sarcastic. “All the pieces of me shatterеd as the crowd was chanting, ‘More’, I was grinnin’ like I’m winnin’, I was hittin’ my marks, ‘Cause I can do it with a broken heart,” she sings in part of the chorus.
No matter what fans and haters say, the album expresses her viewpoint on the fame she has amassed over the years and shows that despite the rumors swirling around her personal life particularly the romantic side of things she will always stay true to what she believes to be love and heartache.
