The queen of pop Taylor Swift has released a new album, the eleventh work of the American singer-songwriter who has become a world star, shattering records one after another. “All is fair in love and poetry… New album The Tortured Poets Department is out now,” she wrote on Instagram.
Two hours later, he made another post: “It’s a 2 a.m. surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret double album.” “I’ve written a lot of haunted poems over the last couple of years and I wanted to share them all with you, so here’s part two of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 more songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours,” she said to his fans, the “Swifties”.
He announced the release of the new album in February during the Grammy Awards ceremony, where he won the trophy for best album of the year for the fourth time. With her new Grammy win in February, Taylor Swift did better than American legends like Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon or Stevie Wonder. The album features collaborations with the British rock band Florence + The Machine and the American rapper Post Malone, who accompanies her on the first track “Fortnight”.
“I’m a huge admirer of Post for his songwriting, his musical experiments, and the melodies he makes that stick in your head forever,” Swift wrote on Instagram, “I’ve had the opportunity to see this magic take life when we worked together on Fortnight.”
At 34, Taylor Swift became the first artist to become a billionaire in early 2024 thanks only to earnings from her music.
The album
Among the theories circulating about this new album, “The Tortured Poets Department”, some concern Taylor Swift’s ex, the British actor Joe Alwyn. The name of the work is said to have been taken from a group chat called “The Tortured Man Club” that the actor had with actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott. The track listing, 16 in total, provides some clues: “So Long, London,” “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” (“I can change it, no Really I can)”) and “The Smallest Man”. Taylor Swift called the new album: “an anthology of new works that reflect the events, opinions and feelings of a fleeting and fatalistic moment that was both sensational and sad in equal measure.”
Swift’s current boyfriend and American football star Travis Kelce – a recent Super Bowl winner – called the new album “it’s incredible”. Almost 20 years after she started, nothing seems to be able to stop Taylor Swift: her world tour, “Eras Tour”, is expected to bring in a total of two billion dollars, after having already exceeded the symbolic threshold of one billion a year last. In China, fans were able to participate in offline listening sessions of the new album in more than 30 cities.
The carreer
On Weibo, China’s equivalent of X, popular pop singer Jane Zhang shared a link to the album, commenting: “It’s my cup of tea.” A native of Pennsylvania, Swift has been writing songs since she was a teenager. Starting out in the signature style of the state capital, Nashville, she gradually moved away from country. In 2018, she left the Big Machine label and joined Universal, without the rights to her previous albums, so much so that she had to re-record her first albums to regain control. With 283 million subscribers on Instagram, she is so influential among young Americans that the political world is beginning to imagine the impact she could have on November’s presidential election.
His new album landed on the platforms three weeks after that of another American icon: Beyoncé and her “Cowboy Carter”. This new work with rich country influences could be a contender for the next Grammy for another star: Billie Eilish with “Hit Me Hard and Soft” on May 17.