Review | Taylor Swift may be emotionally tortured, but she’s no poet on her album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’
“The Tortured Poets Department” is just that — torturous. Photo collage by EMI THOMAS, Staff Photographer
Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department” (TTPD), is forgettable.
On April 19, Swift released a project of 16 songs and then released “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” which tacked on an additional 15 songs to the record. 31 songs and only a handful have a semblance of replay value, but I guess it’s easy to churn out so much mediocre pop music.
Just like in her 10th studio album, “Midnights,” Swift recycles sounds from her discography to offer no evolution or freshness. TTPD is also a project of recycled themes for Swift: love lost, poor decisions, betrayal, etc.
Swift titled the album “The Tortured Poets Department,” creating the expectation of poetic and impressive lyrics. Instead, the album included a combination of unrelated references to stories and great writers with missed opportunities.
Taylor Swift proves she is no poet
In the title track, the chorus goes, “I laughed in your face and said / You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith / This ain't the Chelsea Hotel, we're modern idiots." Dylan Thomas is most often known for his poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” Patti Smith is known for her poetry and music born from the 1970s New York rock scene. I agree with Swift that she is and will never be on the same level as Patti Smith.
Then she brings up the Chelsea Hotel, known for hosting a plethora of acclaimed artists such as the ones Swift mentions in her song. Instead of saying, “You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith,” she should’ve said, “You’re not Leonard Cohen, I’m not Janis Joplin.” Poet/musician Leonard Cohen wrote the song, “Chelsea Hotel #2” about his time at Chelsea Hotel with an old lover, who is rumored to be rock legend Janis Joplin.
The rest of the album includes poorly placed references like this. Swift hides behind name-dropping famous stories, songs and figures instead of contributing something memorable herself.
Poets and writers are known for offering phrases and sayings that have never been written before. Swift proves that she is no poet from her song titles alone. They include phrases well-known in pop culture today, such as “Down Bad,” “I Hate It Here” and “I Can Fix Him.” It feels cringy, like a reach for relevancy. Other titles are cliches like “Fresh Out The Slammer,” “But Daddy I Love Him” and “Guilty as Sin?”
Where is the originality? Where is the poeticism?
Many lyrics are concerning, considering Swift is 34 years old. She even has a song titled “So High School.” Here is a fraction of the lyrics that should give listeners second-hand embarrassment:
“Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” from “So High School”
“'Cause I'm a real tough kid / I can handle my shit / They said, "Babe, you gotta fake it 'til you make it" and I did / Lights, camera, bitch, smile / Even when you wanna die” from “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”
“And my friends all smell like weed or little babies” from “Florida!!!”
“Beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours / Demanding more” from “Clara Bow”
“Sitting in a tree / D-Y-I-N-G” from “How Did It End?”
If you want to hear more laughable lyrics like this, then TTPD offers the perfect listening experience for you.
Perhaps the most questionable of them all comes from “I Hate It Here,” where Swift utters the eyebrow-raising lyrics, “We would pick a decade / We wished we could live in instead of this / I'd say the 1830s but without all the racists.”
A facepalm football mention even made its way onto the project, which is no surprise considering Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce, the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. “The Alchemy” goes, “So when I touch down / Call the amateurs and cut 'em from the team.”
Something I wasn’t expecting on the album, however, was the Kim Kardashian diss track titled, “thanK you aIMee.” Get it? The only capitalized letters in the song spell out “KIM.” Isn’t Taylor so clever?!
I’m shocked Swift had the gall to release the track because it sounds like a worse version of her song “Mean.” I’m not saying the inspiration for this song is invalid, but rather that the song itself is just not good.
Swift should leave the diss tracks to Kendrick Lamar and Drake right now.
Taylor Swift doesn’t know how to collaborate
The only features on the album are from artist Post Malone on “Fortnight” and rock band Florence + The Machine on “Florida!!!” I was excited to see that Post Malone would be on the album, especially after his performance on Beyoncé’s new album, “Cowboy Carter.”
Well, Taylor Swift Lana-Del-Reyed Post Malone. Post Malone’s vocals were kept in the background and didn’t offer anything to the song, much like Lana Del Rey on Swift’s song “Snow On The Beach.”
Then, on “Florida!!!” Florence Welch’s ethereal singing outshines Swift. It feels like two songs in one. Welch makes the song worth listening to once.
The best songs on TTPD
The best songs on this project, in no particular order, are “loml,” “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and “Peter,” but there are still issues with these tracks.
“loml” is a stripped-back piano piece with glimmers of poetic lyrics. It’s a heartfelt song.
It lost me when it alluded to “The Wizard of Oz” movie, the classic baseball movie “Field of Dreams” and the Trey Songz song “Mr. Steal Your Girl.” Were all these random references necessary to get her heartbreak across? It feels lazy for someone claiming to be a tortured poet.
“Peter” is a cute track that clearly points to the fairytale of Peter Pan. In this song, she recalls a young love that was never rekindled despite promises to come back together one day. In her reflection, she sings, “And sometimes it gets me / When crossing your jet stream.” This is incredibly distasteful considering the controversy surrounding her private jet’s alleged 138 tons of CO2 emissions produced in just three months.
Regardless of class or social status, everyone experiences intense and raw emotion, but it’s still difficult to empathize with someone who claims to be tortured as she soars over the masses in her private jet.
Final Thoughts
Poetry is a form that offers immense freedom in grammar, form, diction, subject matter, etc. And yet, Swift gave us songs that follow a signature formula we have seen throughout her career.
TTPD is also a vocally safe album. Swift offers whiny cadences without much range.
Over the years, as Swift has continued to release and re-release albums, Swifties love to decode her lyrics. They attempt to figure out song details about Swift’s falling outs, ex-lovers and life in general. I encourage every Swiftie to take a step back from this instinctual process they’ve developed and just listen to it as music — not a lyrical game of Clue — and ask themselves: is this a good album?
Despite her saying she doesn’t want money on her song, “The Prophecy,” I’m convinced Taylor Swift is addicted to album roll-outs. She’d rather release an album than take the time to evolve and experiment with her sound to write outstanding lyrics and produce better-quality music.
But, Swift is not entirely to blame.
Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff helped produce TTPD, a sonically bland project. I’m equally as disappointed in Dessner and Antonoff as I am in Swift. Dessner produced songs on one of Swift’s best albums, “folklore.” Antonoff has produced stellar songs for artists like Lorde and Lana Del Rey.
I’ll share how I felt listening to Taylor Swift’s two-hour-long album, which is also how you may be feeling after listening to my thoughts on TTPD. In the words of Swift herself, “I'd rather burn my whole life down / Than listen to one more second of all this bitchin' and moanin.”
