Taylor Swift live: The Tortured Poets Department songs take aim at Matty Healy, mourn Joe Alwyn relationship
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Taylor Swift has released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Society.
The pop titan’s latest record, announced earlier this year when she won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album (Midnights),was released overnight on Friday 19 April.
Physical copies of the LP feature a prologue/poem written by legendary Fleetwood Mac star and solo singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks, a longtime champion of Swift, and an epilogue written by Swift herself.
In a five-star review of the album, The Independent’s critic Helen Brown praised the “playful narratives” and “hooks like anchors”.
The album seems to be a reflection on some of Swift’s most significant relationships. Sharing a “treasure hunt” for fans before the album’s release, Swift offered clues that eventually unearthed the sentence: “We hereby conduct this post-mortem.”
Follow live updates for reactions, reviews and revelations from the album so far.
RIP to “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”
I imagine for a long time, fans were expecting that The Tortured Poets Department would be, for the most part, a post-mortem on Swift’s longterm relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn.
While some songs certainly do delve into that (”So Long, London,” most devastatingly), plenty of other songs have closer ties to her brief dalliance with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy.
She heaves a weary sigh at the opening of “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, referring to a man in his “Jehovah’s Witness suit… who the f*** was that guy?”
“You tried to buy some pills from a friend of friends of mine / They just ghosted you,” she sings. “Now you know what it feels like…”
Roisin O’Connor19 April 2024 05:23
Taylor Swift shares message with fans as she releases ‘The Tortured Poets Department’
Swift has posted to Instagram as she releases her 11th album…
“The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure,” she wrote.
“This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. “And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry. “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is out now.”
Roisin O’Connor19 April 2024 05:10
Hello and welcome to The Independent’s Taylor Swift liveblog, where we’ll be bringing you all the latest updates, news, reviews and reactions to the pop titan’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.
We already have a five-star review from our critic Helen Brown, which you can read below:
Roisin O’Connor19 April 2024 05:04
Taylor Swift releases The Tortured Poets Department
Hello and welcome to The Independent’s Taylor Swift liveblog, where we’ll be bringing you all the latest updates, news, reviews and reactions to the pop titan’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.
We already have a five-star review from our critic Helen Brown, which you can read below:
Roisin O’Connor19 April 2024 05:03
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