Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poet's Department - album discussion thread

[OldHabitsDieScreaming]

Hello Swifties! Thought I would start a thread to chat about TS11 or TTPD or whatever we're calling it 😁Don't know about you but the excitement is building for this old-enough-to-know-better Swiftie and I'll be taking the long way into work tomorrow so I can listen to it in Peace...(see what I did there?)

So this thread is for anyone who loves TS and wants to talk/think/muse/swoon over the newest output from the hardest-working woman in music!

Personally I'm intrigued and delighted that Aaron Dessner seems to have co-writing credits on several tracks - I'm a committed Folklore/Evermore fan and more in a similar vein will be very welcome!

(Oh, and while hopefully this doesn't need saying, please don't bother posting to say how shit/overrated/talentless you think TS is. This is a fan / appreciation thread about a specific piece of work and it would be lovely to keep it that way.)

I name change a lot because I have a tendency to over share 😆

I didn't get the sarcasm at first but I was thinking about when she says, "I drink what you think and I'm high on smoking your jokes all damn night..." like, she's giddy in response to everything he's saying and hanging off his every word. And I thought, there's no way she thinks that's cool?

But then I do wonder. She left school at 16 and became a global pop phenomenon. I think in many ways she's psychologically stuck in that period of time, and maybe part of the attraction with Travis is that she can play at being a high school senior dating the guy on the team?

Or is she just trolling?

The prophecy is the best song on the album in my opinion. Mainly because I'm feeling a lot like right now that after my marriage ended last year! But still she is a beautiful, young woman who is literally at the pinnacle of her career and has the world at her feet. She can write a song like that and it feels authentic.

So Long London and Smallest Man who Ever Lived are also great and really speaking to me right now.

I saw someone say about TS that she makes a lot of women feel heard. I totally agree, I only think that I have ever resonated with TS and Marina (and the Diamonds when she had them!) lyrically so much.

I get that @taylorswift1989 I think it's almost like she is cosplaying 'girlfriend of the high school football captain' in the way she dresses at games. Maybe it's her ultimate redemption in her mind!

Long time Taylor Swift fan, but does anyone feel a type of way about her singing 'Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman..but she used to say she wished that you were dead' about Kim? Made me a bit uncomfortable. What her and Kanye west did was awful and obviously really affected Taylor but I felt it was a bit unnecessary.

However, loving The Black Dog, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, But Daddy I Love Him and The Prophecy. Love her song writing, but also kinda feel her and Jack Antonoff is a bit done now (I felt this after Midnights) and would like to see a new direction after this (which seems implied anyway)

There's a great podcast I love 'Every Single Album: Taylor Swift' which does great analysis on all her albums and the one for this album is great -
https://open.spotify.com/episode/13gf0T2Erkv8mk0wKacdBL?si=qwq7gcp5QE2HbUu8mq8cqw

I think she is really aware of the 'perpetual adolescence' issue (cf So High School). She mentions it in But Daddy I Love Him and in (I think?) stuff like Miss Americana. She says something about being stuck at the point at which she became famous, in terms of emotional growth.

I don't think she is really 'stuck', obviously, but the high school thing / dating the star quarterback has been a recurring theme for her. Then again, it's been a cultural meme in the US long before TS started writing about touchdowns and football helmets, I guess!

@ThirtyTwoGoingUnder when I first listened to the first half of the album I thought it sounded a bit like Taylor Swift trying to be Lana Del Ray. Especially compared to LDR's Ocean Boulevard album from last year. Antonoff is her producer as well, so he's obviously a fan of that style. I don't think it suits Taylor's voice as much though.

Agree The Prophecy is just stunning. I found myself crying to it today (gawd) and I'm a happily married middle-aged woman 😂

I'm finding it hard to get Guilty As Sin? out of my head, too, but for (ahem) different reasons. 'What if he's written 'mine' on my upper thigh only in my miiiiiind?'

Also isn't the first release about Allwyn and Matty Healy and the second lot more of a load of stuff she wrote when she was 18-20 she wants to air so that she can move forward? I'm just going on things I've seen she posted on Insta and what seems to be the general fan idea. I do think she's had a bit of a Spring clean - poss had some therapy too for these issues from the sound of some of the tracks.

I keep on hearing KT Tunstell @Kindleonfire !

I wonder if So High School is her taking the piss out of what people think her relationship with Travis is like? Kind of like Blank Space, where she plays into the character that others have constructed for her?

I too am loving The Prophecy and finding it incredibly moving.

I love this one, I'm getting my husband to write 'mine' and I'm gonna get it tattooed on my thigh!

Cassandra sounds like it could be an Aldous Harling song. It's lovely.

I think the second half is way more mature than anything she was writing at 18-20. But it could be! She is incredibly prolific, though, so it doesn't surprise me that she can put out so many songs.

She's said before that she would never have therapy because she can't trust anyone enough. Which makes sense. It would be a massive temptation for anyone to know all TS's secrets and keep them to yourself!

Some songs sound like they could be about previous relationships. The one with all the names - I can only remember Marcus - makes me think of Harry Styles. Peter is obviously about someone when she was younger too. And is so sad 😫

I do wonder if she might have a break after this album and the Eras tour. I get the impression she'd like kids.

I thought Peter was about Harry Styles, too. But clues also point to MH.

@Kindleonfire yes, I get that feeling too and not sure why. She sounds like she has been wanting to marry and have kids for a while and now has found a decent man who will so isn't going to hang around.

@taylorswift1989 I think it was the line about someone told me actions matter more than thoughts in Sin and then the mentionings of hospital in a few songs and how they were meant to come and get her in Fortnite. Maybe she did online therapy

@KitKatChunki yes, lots of lyrics about babies etc. The line about being pissed off about giving all that youth away for free is like something I could imagine someone on MN posting!!

@Kindleonfire I agree with I saw someone say about TS that she makes a lot of women feel heard.

I'm a new Swiftie and I think my DH / DS are a bit gobsmacked at how deeply I've fallen for her (musically speaking, of course...) As, in all honesty, am I. It wasn't that I disliked her music, it just wasn't on my radar at all 18 months ago - I haven't listened to 'mainstream' music since the 80s really. But a friend prompted me to listen 'properly', and I was quite simply blown away.

I tried to explain it to DH the other day (without sounding like a nutcase) and the best I could come up with was that Taylor Swift has written a perfect song for every feeling I've ever had and every mood I've ever been in. Regardless of whether I feel like laughing, dancing, crying, whether I feel anger or loathing or love or lust or confusion or hurt or happiness, there's something that fits.

It doesn't matter that I'm 50 and have never dated the football star or been to prom - she still speaks to me and, sometimes, for me. And no one is more surprised than me to discover that!

Some people upthread said that Cardigan was maybe about Matty Healy, and that has the line "Peter losing Wendy" in it. So maybe that was a line/idea she came up with for Cardigan and then went further with.
Also could be that she just took an idea and went with it without it being about a specific person of course!

I think a bit of that, a bit of laughing at the fifteen lyrics and just playing about with it, possibly also playing at the whole she makes music for children thing.

musically it sounds really like late 90’s early 2000s pop rock, the lyrics have dirty jokes - it’s literally so high school

@OldHabitsDieScreaming my kids find the fact that I am a 'swiftie' hilarious. They're late primary/early high school age so loads of girls in their class are swifties too.

Yes @OldHabitsDieScreaming that is exactly it. I had a break up about 3 years ago and could have sworn she had almost the same experience with a man who was ultimately a coward who couldn't commit or fight for you when something became real, said you were the one for life and wanted marriage and babies etc...it all must be such a cliche! Makes you really realise how men do pull the same stunts all over the world.

I also agree women are a bit fed up with men and that is why it's got such a following. We're fed up of having to look after them, be abused by them, having to mother them and train them then get paid less and treated as somehow inferior when they can't even get their emotional shit together.

Mild ranting there but, yes.

My DS is 20 and he's horrified! He is used to me recommending obscure indie or alt-rock to him. I was cool once 😂

DH is just bemused.

@KitKatChunki its not even just the breakup songs though. She is the only artist who has ever been able to articulate that crippling sense of self doubt. Songs like The Archer, You're on Your Own Kid, Anti-Hero, Nothing New feel like she can see into my brain!

That line in the archer about I see right though me and can you see right through me.