Welcome to The Tortured Poets Department
It’s been a fortnight since Taylor Swift released The Tortured Poets Department and taken the world by storm.
As with most people, upon hearing the name of this album, it felt like we were going to get a post mortem on her relationship with Joe Alwyn. While Taylor did very little promotion aside from the original announcement, the title, the aesthetic and the tracklist provided enough information to assume that this album would be about the demise of a relationship. And it was, just not the one we all thought.
In listening to the album a few times in a row, I was surprised that the majority of the album appeared to be about her seemingly short relationship with Matty Healy. Not being familiar with him before last summer, it seemed like she and Matty had previously flirted in the past and finally had a shot at a real relationship- that ended the next month. So for the alleged majority of the songs to be about him made me pause. I learned that this was actually a decade long situationship and hearing her words, it’s like the story of Romeo and Juliet, star crossed lovers who just couldn’t be together. And similar to the end of that story, at least one person felt like they died.
The more I listen to this album, I’m convinced this album is more for Taylor than anyone else. She wrote this to express herself in the best way she knows how. I believe the words and emotions are rife with hidden meanings. This album feels like I’m suddenly privy to a conversation between two people who are speaking their own coded language. This album gives me the impression that each word used is intentional and solely intended for their recipient. It doesn’t matter if the lay person doesn’t completely get the message; the person on the other end of the inside jokes is hearing her loud and clear.
The Eras Tour should have been the highlight of her career up to this point and as this kicks off, she’s experiencing the loss of a 6 year relationship, the gain and crash of the one who got away, and the shattering of her heart from both. And then she goes on stage 3 nights a week for months on end with the most beautiful smile that was hiding the most horrifying pain. Her song “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” perfectly personifies what it’s like to privately go through something painful but still having to get up and go to work the next day. To be experiencing the worst that you can imagine and have to be productive. The song spoke to me about the demands we put on everyone around us. We paid for a concert ticket, we expect the show of a lifetime; never mind that the artist is publicly going through some deeply saddening things. We go to a coffee shop and we expect our order handed to us with a smile; never thinking about the human on the other end of that transaction and their ability to provide the service we expect 100% of the time. We expect, demand, too much from each other, especially in these professional settings. We almost demand humanity to be left at the door.
For a fortnight, I’ve had this album on repeat, watching the lyric videos to memorize the words. It’s mesmerizing and captivating and beautiful in its rawness. The best way to describe this album is manic. Taylor said she took two years to write this album and if that’s true, the development spanned the demise of her relationship with Joe, the embarkment of the biggest moment of her career, the rise and fall of her dream with Matty, crying her way through the pain of her losses, and meeting new beau Travis Kelce. I can only surmise that these songs were written in as close to real time as possible from each stage. It feels like she’s truly captured the raw emotions of the heartbreak, the whiplash between loving something and hating them, and spanned all the emotions of euphoria, depression, confusion, and grief.
In my experience, emotions like this are felt all at once, impossible to decipher except in the rearview mirror. And the human brain’s recall isn’t as perfect as we think it is. We won’t fully remember all the things we felt, or thought, or said. We think we have it perfectly committed to memory, only to later discover that the memory file is corrupted and we can only recover pieces that don’t quite reveal the full picture. This album sounds as if Taylor processed each event sonically, captured before the next emotion could wash over her. In hindsight, we hear things like “I was in such a bad place”. But we don’t often get the details of what that was or what it truly felt like. It feels like this is the closest documented account of the processing of human emotions we’re likely to get.
In releasing these albums, she released this chapter of her life. While I believe the messages contained within these songs are specific to their intended recipient(s) and are written to be such, Taylor said these stories, upon release, are no longer hers; they are ours. While her words are carefully chosen, we now are able to apply them to our own lives and emotions and make them our own. Some songs we won’t identify with and others we will catch our breath in our chests. Some songs can just be a great story and others will hit too close to home. This is not for us, but we’re invited to make it our own.
My advice? Sure, try to determine who each song is about, but don’t forget that this is about tortured poetry. It’s about releasing something that needs to be released. It’s about processing and understanding ourselves, identifying with things Taylor has gone through because she is human and so are we and that inherently brings similarity in the very human experiences of love, heartbreak, and happiness. We’ve all had our hearts broken and while I love to analyze every song she’s made and what was going on to make her write these words, we have to picture our own experiences, not just hers. Explore the songs, think about the ones that are stuck in your head. Think about which lyrics are impactful to you. And analyze your own life; get introspective and then hopefully move forward, just like Taylor’s doing.