Taylor Swift’s newest album is pure poetry. Let’s take a look and analyze the standouts.
On April 19th of 2024, Taylor Swift dropped her much anticipated and highly acclaimed 11th studio album entitled The Tortured Poets Department. As a piece of artistry alone, the album is certainly a place of literary renaissance. Swift constantly contradicts herself in the highest form of flattery within the album as it consists of her poking fun at herself for not being a poet but then following up with poetry of the greatest degree.
The album shines through its lyricism the most. Through each track Swift is able to intricately detail innocence, imagination, and tragedy. It’s an album heavy with rage and heartbreak. The tone of the album is mournful and the stories throughout the album are elegiac. With odic melodies that enhance the romantic and melancholy storytelling of each track, the main area where the album seems to fall flat is with the production, specifically that of Jack Antonoff. While tracks produced by Swift’s frequent collaborator, Aaron Dessner, are able to continue a story while also exploring into uncharted territory in terms of experimenting with bittersweet music production, Antonoff’s work feels very repetitive from what we’ve heard from him on this album, Swift’s past albums, and even music he’s made with other artists. I’ve come to expect this performance from Antonoff as it seems we haven’t heard much new in terms of his production since Lana Del Rey’s 2019 album, Norman F***ing Rockwell. However, Swift’s strengths being her talent to create fresh and dramatic new melodies as well as her ability to write epodic and dactylic lyrics meshes, almost too well, with Aaron Dessner’s woeful production.
While I found myself getting uprooted by Swift’s ceaseless and shameless attempts at making as much money as possible off her “poetry,” it is quite impossible to actually put quotation marks around the word because this album is exactly that: poetry.
Standard Album Ranking
loml–10
Standout lyric: 3-way tie: “A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme” , “What we thought was for all time/Was momentary/Still alive killing time at the cemetary/Never quite buried” , “Our field of dreams, engulfed in fire/Your arson’s match, your somber eyes”
Guilty As Sin–9.17
Standout lyric: “They’re gonna crucify me anyway/What if the way you hold me/Is actually what’s holy?/If long suffering propriety/Is what they want from me”
Fortnight (feat. Post Malone) –9
Standout lyric: “I love you/It’s ruining my life”
So Long, London–8.83
Standout lyric: “And you say I abandoned the ship/But I was going down with it/My white knuckle dying grip/Holding tight to your quiet resentment”
Florida!! (feat. Florence + The Machine) –8.5
Standout lyric: “The hurricane with my name when it came/I got drunk and I dare it to wash me away/Barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine/Well me and my ghosts, we had a hell of a time”
Clara Bow–8.83
Standout lyric: “The crown is stained but you’re the real queen/Flesh and blood amongst war machines/You’re the new god we’re worshiping/Promise to be…dazzling”
But Daddy I Love Him–8.5
Standout lyric: “I’ll tell you something about my good name/It’s mine alone to disgrace”
The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived–8.5
Standout lyric: “You kicked out the stage lights/But you’re still performing”
Down Bad–8.17
Standout lyric: “Did you take all my old clothes?/ Just to leave me here naked and alone/In a field in mt same old town/That somehow seems so hollow now”
Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? –8.17
Standout lyric: “I was tame, I was gentle/Til the circus life made me mean”
I Can Do it With a Broken Heart–8
Standout lyric: “He said he’d love me for all his life/But that life was too short”
My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys–7.33
Standout lyric: “Just say when, I’d play again/He was my best friend/Down at the sandlot/I felt more when we played pretend/ Than with all the Kens”
Fresh Out the Slammer–7.5
Standout lyric: “Camera flashes, welcome bashes/Get the matches, toss the ashes off the ledge”
I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) –7.17
Standout lyric: “But your good Lord doesn’t need to/Lift a finger, I can fix him/No really, I can”
The Alchemy–7.17
Standout lyric: “That child’s play back in school/Is forgiven under my rule”
The Tortured Poets Department–7
Standout lyric: “And who’s gonna know you, if not me?”
The Anthology Ranking:
- The Bolter – 9.33
Standout lyric:“She’s been many places with/Men of many faces/First they’re off to the races/And she’s laughing drawing aces/But none of it is changing/That the chariot is waiting/Hearts are hers for the breaking/There’s escape in escaping”
- Peter – 9
Standout lyric: “The goddess of timing/Once found us beguiling/She said she was trying/Peter was she lying?/My ribs get the feeling she did/And I didn’t want to come down/I thought it was just goodbye for now”
- How Did It End? – 8.33
Standout lyric: “We hereby conduct this post mortem/He was a hothouse flower to my outdoorsman/Our maladies were such we could not cure them/And so a touch that was my birthright became foreign”
- The Black Dog – 8.5
Standout lyric: “Were you making fun of me with some esoteric joke?/Now I want to sell my house and set fire to all my clothes/And hire a priest to come and exorcize my demons/Even if I die screaming/And I hope you hear it”
- I Look in People’s Windows – 8.17
Standout lyric: “Does it feel alright to not know me?/I’m addicted to the ‘if only’”
- Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus – 8.5
Standout lyric: “If you want to tear my world apart/Just say you’ve always wondered/If the glint in my eye traced the depths of your sigh”
- Robin – 8.5
Standout lyric: “You have no room in your dreams for regrets/You have no idea/The time will arrive for the cruel and the mean”
- The Albatross – 8.17
Standout lyric: “Wise men once said/ ‘Wild winds are death to the candle’/A rose by any other name is a scandal/Cautions issued, he stood/Shooting the messengers”
- Cassandra – 7.33
Standout lyric: “You can mark my words that I said it first/In a mourning warning no one heard”
- So High School – 7.17
Standout lyric (it is not “touch me while your bros play grand theft auto”): “I’ll drink what you think and I’m high from smoking your jokes all night/The brink of a wrinkle in time/Bittersweet sixteen suddenly”
- I Hate It Here – 8.17
Standout lyric: “I hate it here so I will go to/Lunar valleys in my mind/When they found a better planet/Only the gentle survived”
- imgonnagetyouback – 7.67
Standout lyric: “Pick your poison babe/I’m poison either way”
- The Manuscript – 7.33
Standout lyric: “And the slow dance was alight with the sparks/And the tears fell in synchronicity with the score/And at last/She knew what the agony had been for./The only thing that’s left is the manuscript”
- The Prophecy – 7.5
Standout lyric: “A greater woman has faith/But even statues crumble if they’re made to wait”
- thanK you aIMee – 7
Standout lyric: “And it wasn’t a fair fight/Or a clean kill/Each time Aimee stomped across my grave”
The Axe 