Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is the messiest, horniest, and funniest album she’s ever made

Final Grade: 8.4/10

Here’s the thing: Swift knows that people will pore over the details of this album to dissect her romantic travails. I’m as guilty as anyone else, and I know it’s not a noble practice. It’s an obsessive storm Swift is willing to weather to do what she loves for a living.

But Swift did not become as big and beloved as she is because of that storm. In fact, I would argue she’s successful in spite of it. 

Most people are not chronically online Easter egg hunters. Most people do not play Swift’s music in the car, in the shower, or in a dark room after a bad day, over and over for years, because they crave the details of her latest breakup.

We don’t listen to Swift’s music because it necessarily is true. We listen because it feels true. She writes about characters we recognize and experiences we’ve lived, blowing everything out of proportion in the way we wish we could. The size of Swift’s platform is directly proportional to the bigness of her feelings, whatever or whoever may have provoked them.

That said, don’t let the “tattooed golden retriever” (the man or the lyric) distract you from the truth. Corny as some moments may be, this is a marvelously deranged pop album.

Despite the rough start, Swift builds incredible momentum from track four onwards, tossing out confessions and confronting hecklers with a tearaway, absurd kind of zeal.

Of course, there are still mid-tempo synths and simple earworms by the fistful. This is hardly new sonic territory — nor would I praise the album as an artistic risk — but “The Tortured Poets Department” is bolder and more berserk than Swift’s previous pop achievements. “1989” was a tricky pivot at the time, but Swift still made sure to play by the radio’s rules, sticking to traditional song structures and repetitive hooks. More recently, “Midnights” gestured toward interesting themes but ultimately felt thin.

On “Poets,” Swift doesn’t exactly break with her well-established, commercial-friendly conventions — but she does toy with her audience in interesting ways.

There’s depth and texture in these songs, even shades of the guitar-forward rock sound that many fans crave. It’s a pop album without an obvious radio hit. Swift’s lyrics are surprisingly meta, packed with fourth-wall breaks and self-aware pouts. Her vocal delivery is varied, passionate, often performative. She shrieks and snarls and deploys a whisper that’s dripping with lust, such that we’ve rarely heard. For a pop star with Swift’s relish for mass appeal, this album almost sounds bloodthirsty by comparison.

“The Tortured Poets Department” won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s chaotic, verbose, and full of words that scream “I own a thesaurus.”

It still works, because Swift is in on the joke.

At the end of the day, I’d rather have a sensitive and self-indulgent album than one that’s trying too hard to be pretty and perfect. I can’t relate to the woman looking statuesque onstage, with her polite grin and sequined silhouette. But I can relate to the woman who bares her teeth when the crowd demands, “MORE!”

Worth listening to:

“Down Bad”

“So Long, London”

“But Daddy, I Love Him”

“Fresh Out the Slammer”

“Florida!!! (featuring 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”

Background music:

“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”

Press skip:

“Fornight (featuring Post Malone)”

“The Tortured Poets Department”

*Final album score based on songs per category (1 point for “Worth listening to,” .5 for “Background music,” 0 for “Press skip”).