Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

Like all things Taylor Swift, this new album has gotten a lot of press. Typically, the critical consensus is positive for a new Taylor Swift album. The reviews for The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology (TTPD for short) are not overly negative but are not the usual fawning praise. So, for Taylor, this is a flop. The biggest complaints are the length of TTPD (31 songs and a little over 2 hours), the firehose of recordings that have been released over the last few years (new albums, re-recordings, bonus material, etc.), and overexposure (The Eras Tour, Travis, etc.). Some people are suffering from Taylor fatigue, but I am not. I was looking forward to this new album, following all things Taylor on social media, and was stoked when TTPD turned out to be double the length of what was initially marketed.

There is a difference between a Swifty and a Taylor Swift fan. A Swifty knows every word to her every song and is a collector of every nuance of her life (boyfriends, exes, slights, etc.); that is, they are obsessed with Taylor Swift. A fan likes her music and performances but falls short of obsession. Although I consider myself a musichead, there are no artists I am obsessed with in the same way as a typical Swifty. Bob Dylan comes the closest for me, but I have learned over the years that I am a mere piker compared to how obsessed one can become with Dylan (he has Swifty-like obsessives). I don’t look down on Swifties; I am jealous of that level of enthusiasm for an artist or band. I am merely a Taylor Swift fan.

As a mere fan, I am not in a position to fully excavate this album. I cannot speculate which songs are about Joe, Matty, or Travis, and I don’t care. My approach to a musician who writes in an autobiographical (autofiction) style like Taylor is to assume the narrator of the songs is a character and not concern myself whether the narrator is the artist or the subject of the song is a famous person. I am minimally interested in the gossip of decoding fact from fiction in a song. I am here to enjoy the story, the sonics, and the performance.

My first reaction to TTPD was that there is a sonic sameness that would get tedious over 31 songs and two hours. In addition, it was a sonic rehashing of the folklore, evermore, and Midnight’s eras: Antonoff’s atmospheric synth noodling and Aaron Dressner’s pop-folk and piano ballads. None of the songs stuck out as bangers. Lyrically, it is a breakup album. I don’t have an issue with the breakup songs/albums as the breakup trope is often effective (as in the best of an artist’s catalog – see Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks), and Swift is the master of the breakup trope. My first reaction was: “Don’t hate it; it is just meh.” Taylor Swift has enough goodwill with me that I felt obligated to give it more time to breathe.

I have had more time with the album, which is a grower (an album that gets better with each listen). The sameness of the sonics has faded, and I hear the uniqueness of each track. Granted, there are no new sounds here, but I have yet to tire of Jack Antsnoff and Aaron Dessner’s sonics. I find their collaboration with Swift to be the perfect cocktail. I now hear bangers. The main album (tracks 1 – 16 released first and are on the physical editions) sounds like finished tracks, whereas some of the second album (tracks 17-31) have a demo feel.

The songs have clever lyrics and exciting stories. Swift shares various moods and attitudes: resignation, sadness, anger, vengeance, wistfulness, etc. There are several targets: exes, fans, a new boyfriend, skeptics, and critics – most intriguingly, the artist herself. Unlike the third-person narratives of folklore and evermore, TTPS is first-person autofiction. I know enough Taylor gossip to guess which songs are about Joe vs. Matty, but I am trying to avoid the gossip and take the narratives at face value. I find the storytelling engaging.

I don’t have a problem with the length. It is a bit of a brain dump, and I am sure that if Taylor had constrained herself to ten songs and had more crisp editing within songs, this would be considered a more substantial album in the Taylor canon. I prefer to hear TTPD as a raw and meandering album. I would rather hear the “bonus material” now, in real-time, vs. how most artists do it via an anniversary edition a decade or two into the future.

I am enjoying TTPS even though I don’t find it a masterpiece. It’s an exciting and entertaining work by Swift, one of my lifetime’s most successful pop musicians. Like all greats, like my beloved Bob Dylan, even the flops are intriguing. TTPS is, at the very least, fascinating.