Originally Published January 11, 2025
No one knows everything about someone but there are always a few defining clues, a couple indisputable pieces of lore, that define you. For me, that has always been Taylor Swift. In the 2010’s, family members would tease me about her latest breakup. In the age of the Eras tour, people would offer their favorite tidbits or fun facts that I already knew about her. Like most of us millennial white ladies, me and Taylor go waaaay back.
In Summer of 2007, I remember working at a local Vacation Bible School to find a gaggle of girls gathered around an elderly CD player in the church parking lot. “He’s the reason for the teardrops on my guitar” it sang. I thought it was the saddest conceit I had ever heard in my 13 years. “Who is this?” I asked, and the rest was history. The next iTunes gift card I received went to “that one country song” I had heard that afternoon.
Over those earlier years in her career, I was what I refer to as a “closet Swiftie.” I think in light of the global smash that was the Eras Tour, it can be easy to forget how hard it was, socially, to be a young girl who loved the art of a slightly less young girl. Taylor was “the girl in the dress,” the serial dater. I once overheard a zinger that maybe her next single should be called “I’m sorry, it’s my fault” (clearly they did not wait around for her hit single “Anti-Hero.”) As much as my heart fluttered to her lyrical rain-soaked kisses and as often as I had her choruses stuck in my head, I would never call myself a Swiftie. I wasn’t a big fan, I had only memorized the entire “Red” album both musically and lyrically, coincidentally. But then, she had an announcement. She was going pop.
Many were disappointed, but this was the nudge I needed. I, a self-professed country-hater, had found her first three albums even more shameful to love than it already had been. I eventually learned about her main collaborator on this new album and I couldn’t have been more thrilled. As early on as I discovered Taylor, there had been a prior musical love in my life: Max Martin.
We will do a deep dive on his oeuvre another time, but for now, what you need to know is that all my childhood favorites: Britney, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC and many, many more were all written for and produced by this mysterious man. As someone who sincerely believes I could lead a compelling university course on this era of boy band music, you better believe I had been waiting for this. She had collaborated with him on the aforementioned “Red” album, and I had liked those songs, but there was the promise of a whole album that could potentially have all of its songs be as hooky as those singles.
“It’s a new soundtrack” she sings on the album opener, and, boy, was it ever. “1989” topped charts and blared through my car speakers. The glistening Ryan Tedder produced “Welcome To New York” opens our ears to the new sound and primes us for her greatest pop hit to date: “Blank Space.” I still remember exactly what stretch of road I was on when I heard Taylor pivot from “you know I love the players and you! love! THE GAME!’ to the lyrical shuffle on the line “‘cuz we’re young and we’re reckless.” I could gush forever about this album, and maybe I will, but not here. This post promised tortuous poetry, and we will get there. But why all this preamble? I adore Taylor Swift, but she is not a perfect artist.
As much as I grew up with and adore the work of Taylor, I am also a critic at heart. When I hear something as mid as “Midnights” was or conceptually inconsistent as “reputation,” I need to say something. Her newest work “The Tortured Poets Department” has been the longest think I’ve had over a Taylor album in years. My opinion has vacillated drastically over the near year I’ve had to listen to it, and I believe that if we take a track-by-track journey through “Tortured Poets,” I may finally have a verdict on how I feel about it.
“But Katy,” I hear you say, “this post implies that you made TTPD your new favorite album over ‘1989’! Isn’t that clickbait?” And I say to you, dear reader, “Who’s to say I won’t be a Tortured Poet by the end of all this? All’s fair in love and bloggetry.”
Join me in “The Waterboarding Department: The Anthology” for a track-by-track analysis of the entire 31 song collection of Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department.”