Taylor Swift’s most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department, has gotten an abundance of feedback from fans and critics alike. These people have a wide range of varying opinions. From believing that this new album is Swift’s best album, to others criticizing her writing and style. This article will give you some insight into both of these factors and my personal opinion of the album. 

Here is the tracklist of The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift-

First Release:

• Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)

• The Tortured Poets Department

• My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

• Down Bad

• So Long, London

• But Daddy I Love Him

• Fresh Out The Slammer

• Florida!!! (feat. Florence + The Machine)

• Guilty as Sin

• Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me

• I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

• loml

• I Can Do It With a Broken Heart

• The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

• The Alchemy

• Clara Bow

Double Release (The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology by Taylor Swift):

• The Black Dog

• imgonnagetyouback

• The Albatross

• Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

• How Did It End?

• So High School

• I Hate It Here

• thanK you aIMee

• I Look In People’s Windows

• The Prophecy

• Cassandra

• Peter

• The Bolter

• Robin
• The Manuscript

  Many people who do not consider themselves Taylor Swift fans, or “Swifties” as they’re known, have had many opinions on Taylor’s career and life. People criticize her for writing so many songs about her previous boyfriends when in reality she is not any different from other artists. 

   Taylor Alison Swift was born in 1989, and throughout her life, she has gone through many relationships, both friendly and serious. The most recent have been people including Harry Styles, Calvin Harris, Tom Hiddleston, Joe Alwyn, Matty Healy, and Travis Kelce. Many people shame Taylor Swift for having so many relationships throughout her life, calling her disgusting things. Some of her romantic relationships were healthy and friendly, while others were very unhealthy and toxic. Many critics or even fans of Taylor feel as if they can judge Swift’s character by the amount of relationships she has had, which is not only unfair but very narrow-minded. 

   With this, Taylor Swift has had a total of 12 publicly known people that she has dated. This gives people no right or reason to shame and criticize her for this, as people don’t realize that when your life is so public, it is very difficult to live the life she has. Not only this, but most of the time, she was not treated fairly in any way. So, when people argue she, “only writes songs about her boyfriends,” they hone in on the fact that she has written songs about those people and not the fact that in those songs she shares how much she has been hurt. A large amount of her songs are not about people she has dated, so the argument that she only writes her songs about them, is proven false. With that, a lot of the songs on this album include references to Matty Healy (1975 singer), Joe Alwyn (actor), and Travis Kelce (Kansas City Chiefs tight end/Swift’s current boyfriend).

   Many Swifties believe that this new release is one of her best works and that anyone who thinks differently is a hater. Many also believe that people do not know the full story, or don’t even listen to the songs in-depth enough, which in turn has less of an impact on those people. However, someone who calls themself a fan posted a TikTok honest review, saying, “I think that we, Swifties, collectively, need to be better about realizing that not every Taylor Swift album is for everyone, and it can’t be possible that every album she comes out with is better than the last and is her best ever. (@hinnyandwinny)” 

   In my opinion, the first part of this comment is true. Everyone has different tastes and opinions, so nothing should be forced upon them, however, the second part could be argued. With this same idea in mind, it can’t be “impossible” for Taylor Swift’s albums to get better every time if everyone has a different opinion. In other words, many people believe that this is possible, so they should not be invalidated in this case. 

   There is also the point regarding anticipation, and how when people are so excited about a new release, they are more or less likely to enjoy what was put out, depending on their expectations, and what they feel like was met. Another TikToker who calls themself a Taylor fan goes to the extreme, saying, “This is the most bland, artificial, soulless and just overall fake-sounding album I’ve ever heard in my life, I would genuinely be surprised if AI was not used in the making of this album. (asiawemajor)” With this idea of validation of opinion in mind, there is a point where that line is crossed, mostly from flat-out rude comments. The writer of an opinionative article by Carley May Gravely even says, “The songs on Tortured Poets certainly have a lot of words, many of them advanced enough to appear on a seventh-grade vocabulary test. Some listeners found the wordiness of the songs too clunky and disruptive.” Also, “On ‘The Alchemy,’ she uses the word alchemy as a synonym for chemistry, which it’s not.” As harsh as these comments are, I would love to point out that the fact that the album is called The Tortured Poets Department indicates that there will be a lot of expressive and complex words within those tracks, so the people sharing that the songs feel too wordy, are valid to feel that way, however, should have expected that. These people are attacking her vocabulary choices in this new album, expressing these opinions very brutally, with close to no mercy.

   Adding to the end of her comment, alchemy translates to “a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.” This leads me to believe that the way Taylor Swift uses this word was meant to explain how two people can have that sort of “chemistry” with each other. However, Swift also expands to share how that chemistry can be transformed, created, or combined. At the beginning of the song she writes, “These chemicals hit me like a white wine” and I believe this is where this person gathered the idea of chemistry, however throughout the song, it is clear that Swift is not only singing about chemistry in itself but the combining of two people to a relationship, creating or finding their connection (referred to as chemistry) and transforming their lives by that connection. 

   What is most clear to me, is that she is writing about how (in terms of the relationship she wrote about) they have chemistry, therefore shouldn’t fight it. We see this in the line,  “Cause the sign on your heart, said it’s still reserved for me, honestly who are we to fight the alchemy?” In my opinion, this song is great for anyone who just wants a vibe but also wants to enjoy a song that is not terribly depressing. One more thing for The Alchemy, most people have speculated (and I agree) that this is one of the songs on this album about Travis Kelce, whom Swift is currently dating.

   There have also been several critiques on the line in the track The Tortured Poets Department, “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” as people say there are so many other people who should be bigger artists. This goes back to the idea that everyone has a different opinion, therefore to invalidate Swift’s opinion is just disrespectful. It is also not reasonable for Taylor Swift to add every single lesser-known artist into the same song, so with any other artist in that place of the song, they could have still had that same reaction, because there are really so many artists out there that should be more recognized. Along with this, people should realize that Taylor Swift tells a story through her songs, they have been carefully thought/written out, so holding that standard of every song being perfect is unreasonable. It is her way of expression, and should not be looked down upon for that!

   More on the upside of things, many fans of Taylor Swift (including myself) believe that this album is one of if not her top album(s). Billboard even states that The Tortured Poets Department wasn’t just good, it was “historic.” This is from not only the way these songs are written but also the melodies and feel that Swift brings out throughout the album. The fact that the very last song on the tracklist is “The Manuscript” indicates that the whole album is a story, one that had not previously been shared, but through this album, she did. There is so much to this story that she shares and there is a ton of backstory that I won’t get into. But, I believe that this story, and the way she shares and expresses it, is super powerful and purposeful, not just to her fans, but to the world. 

   This album not only hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (which ranks a week’s most popular albums in the U.S.) which marks Swift’s 14 chart-topping album, but according to Billboard she also hit “the largest streaming week for an album ever,” with 891.34 million official streams of the album’s 31 songs. She even had  “the largest sales week for an album on vinyl in the modern era,” as Billboard explains.

   Parts of Taylor Swift’s new album are also on the sillier side, like the line from But Daddy I Love Him, “I’m having his baby, not I’m not, but you should see your faces” which many Taylor Swift fans have showed/posted their reactions too. This line/song helps to show the depth and variety of songs that Taylor Swift is capable of writing and singing, proving she really can write any style she chooses.

   I truthfully cannot choose my favorite songs off the album because I love all of them so much. The challenge I have for you whether you are or aren’t a Taylor Swift fan, or have listened to the album and did not enjoy it, to listen to it for the first time, or again, reading the lyrics while you do, because I believe that at least one song on this album will resonate with you. I share all of this to explain that I believe that The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift is a bop. Do you agree? Is this new controversial album a bop, or flop?