Taylor Swift releases her brand new double album overnight, The Tortured Poets Department after announcing it at the 2024 Grammy Awards some two months back. Two hours later, she surprise-released a 15-track expansion of the album, dubbed The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. “I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you,” she wrote on social media.
The singer-songwriter’s follow-up album to Midnights opens with the Post Malone collaboration “Fortnight” and features another star act, Florence and the Machine, on mid-album cut “Florida!!!” Swift also worked on the album with her two go-to producers: Bleachers’ Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner.
Swift wrote in a press release, ” 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. 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.”
Taylor plans to release the music video for “Fortnight” at 8 p.m. Easter Daylight Time on Friday, April19. Swift writes online that the she has been always such a huge fan of Post because he is a great writer and his musical experimentation. And the melodies created by him would just stick to your head forever in Swift’s words. She further says that she got to witness that magic come to life firsthand when we worked together on Fortnight.
Know the names of the artists apart Taylor who worked for The Tortured Poets Department
Along with Swift, recording engineers Laura Sisk and Jonathan Low, Grammy-winning mixer Serban Ghenea, Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, string player and arranger Rob Moose, violinist Galya Bisengalieva, pianist Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman), longtime Post Malone collaborator Louis Bell, the National’s Bryce Dessner, and the non-Antonoff members of Bleachers (Zem Audu, Mikey Freedom Hart, Sean Hutchinson, Michael Riddleberger, and Evan Smith) are also a part of the department.
In between Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department, Swift issued two re-recorded albums—Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version)—and began her world-conquering Eras Tour. She’s currently on a brief break from the tour, having last performed in Singapore in early March and not having a show scheduled until May 9 in France. The UK and European leg of the Eras Tour continues into August, and Swift returns to North America for more concerts in October. Meanwhile, her extremely successful concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, is available online in standard and extended editions.
Reaction of fans and critics to Swift’s double album release
Swift’s 11th studio album was released on Friday but all 16 tracks and lyrics started appearing on social media on Wednesday. Some fans who call themselves as Swifties – refused to listen to the leaked album, insisting that “true fans” would wait for the official release, while others shared false links to the leak in attempts to stop people finding it.
“Raise your hand if you’re an ACTUAL Taylor Swift fan and aren’t listening,” wrote one social media user.
“People need to understand that this isn’t just about being a fan. It’s about respecting others of their hard work!” wrote another. “She and her team planned and worked so meticulously for this album release, don’t disrespect and ruin it for others as well.”
Critics were mostly positive on Friday: Variety called it “audacious” and “transfixing” and “the Taylor Swift-est Taylor Swift record ever”, while Rolling Stone deemed it “wildly ambitious and gloriously chaotic”. But the NME said the album contained “some of her most cringe-inducing lines yet” and “lacks the genuinely interesting shifts that have punctuated Swift’s career so far”.
