It’s here. Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department is now in the hands of the public.
It’s raw, it’s real, and in my opinion it’s one of her most overt albums yet.
In her note to her fans after releasing the album at midnight on April 19, Swift wrote, “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 continued, saying, “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.”
Then two hours later, at 2 a.m., Swift had a second message for her fans.
She was releasing a second album.
“It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album. I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours,” she told her fans.
In total The Tortured Poets Department, including The Anthology consists of 31 songs. Each one of them telling a story in the way only Taylor Swift can.
What parents should know about the album before sharing it with their little Swifts:
Eleven out of the 31 songs on the album are labeled explicit. Some of those eleven songs, more explicit than the others, including The Tortured Poets Department, Down Bad, Florida!!!, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, thanK you alMee, Cassandra, and The Bolter.
But fear not, like most artists, Swift did share a clean version of both of her albums. So be sure in which one you are selecting before sharing it with younger audiences.