TTPD: Taylor Swift surprises with ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, a double album with 31 songs leaked two days before

For a month and a half, April 19 was marked on the calendars of pop fans and, above all, of the millions of followers that Taylor Swift has. The day has come. This Friday, the 34-year-old singer from Pennsylvania released The Tortured Poets Department (already known as TTPD), her 11th studio album with 16 songs, two of them collaborations with Florence + The Machine and Post Malone. In fact, the song with the latter, Fortnight (fortnight, in Spanish), has become the first single of the disk. An announcement that the artist made just a few hours before publishing all the songs. There is something that she, however, did not announce: that TTPD was going to be a double album, with 31 songs, instead of 16, and two hours and two minutes long.

Swift has tried to maintain almost total secrecy with this highly anticipated department of tortured poets (as it would be translated into Spanish): she has been giving details in dribs and drabs, she has barely revealed some lyrics of the songs and she has not even released a single previous. But there is something that he has repeated during the last few weeks and since the first day he announced the album: number two. As usual, she has released clues about it (in short videos, through QR codes placed in different cities around the planet or in an ephemeral installation that resembles a small bookstore located in a shopping center in Los Angeles where fans have queued for hours), and in all the messages the number two has been recurring. Therefore, there had been a lot of speculation about the double album. On the Grammy stage, in addition, he already made the symbol of victory, which his collaborators and friends have repeated. A two everywhere. He announced his single at two in the afternoon (Eastern time in the United States), and after releasing the album the performer started a two-hour countdown on her networks. With it he has solved the mystery: TTPD is a double album.

But a couple of days before, everything was about to blow up when the album was leaked on the Internet in its entirety. It was Wednesday afternoon (in the US; in Europe late at night). What is considered the most anticipated musical release of 2024 began to leak when there were almost two days left for its publication. Despite the American artist’s tight control of her career and narrative, the first 16 songs from TTPD began to circulate through Telegram groups, and their links were shamelessly shared on the social network X. EL PAÍS had access to them and they were complete (they were not fragments) and of the highest quality. Neither Swift nor her team commented on the matter.

The leak was initially in doubt, because, first, it could not be authentic, and could come from someone else: putting together pieces, other music, other voices, by someone interested in sabotage. Second, because it could be a product of artificial intelligence, one of the most abundant theories. And third and most twisted because it could even be a strategy of Swift herself.

The mystery could only be revealed when the songs were known, this Friday. And the result has been clear: yes, it was the album. Although, of course, only half, only the 16 initially announced from TTPD. So once released, the world has forgotten the controversy (partly thanks to the fact that Swift and her people have not gotten wet) and has focused on the songs, both the first ones and the full version, that make up the so-called The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. “Surprise at two in the morning: The Tortured Poets Department It’s a secret double album. I had written a lot of tortured poetry in the last two years and I wanted to share it all with you, so here is the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 additional songs. And now the story is no longer mine… it is all yours,” has written on his networks about this “anthology”. This is the longest work of his career.

The themes are, as always with Swift, very personal. Of the initial 16, two are written entirely by her, five with Aaron Dessner, a member of The National and with whom she also composed for Folklore, and eight with Jack Antonoff, from the group Bleachers, their usual producer. The songs are about his own life, as usual, his best material. Love and heartbreak are very present. Specifically, the breakup of her six-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn (in the fifth track she goes so far as to say, “How low did you think it would fall before it imploded? […] You swore you loved me, but where were the clues? “I died at the altar waiting for the test”]her brief romance with the musician Matty Healy, from the group The 1975, and her current courtship with the American football player Travis Kelce would be key to deciphering her lyrics (as the penultimate song seems to reveal, The Alchemywhere he talks about benches, trophies, beer, songs and touchdowns).

As a curiosity, Stevie Nicks writes a poem to start the album, but she also quotes it in the last song on the album, Clara Bow. In addition, actress Emma Stone appears in the credits of the song Florida!!! (the one who sings with Florence+The Machine), in the choirs. And among the 15 songs of the second batch there is one titled thanK you aIMee, whose capital letters are an acronym for KIM, the name of one of her great enemies, Kim Kardashian. It appears to be dedicated to her, with lyrics such as: “And maybe you’ve thought about it another way and in your mind you never hit my black and blue spirit. I don’t think you’ve changed much, and that’s why I’ve changed your name, and any real clue that defines you. And one day, your son will come home singing a song that only the two of us know is about you.”

In a published message on their social networks Two minutes (two, yes) after the release of the album, Swift finally gave more information about it: “The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works reflecting events, opinions and feelings from a fleeting, fatalistic moment in time, one that was both sensational and painful in equal measure. This period in the author’s life has already ended, the chapter is closed and walled up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once the wounds have healed. And, after some further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer firmly believes that our tears become sacred in the form of ink on a page. Once we have told our saddest story, we can free ourselves from it. And then the only thing left is tortured poetry.”

Swift is not the first to suffer a major leak. Great artists have gone through it: it happened to Radiohead, to Madonna in 2015, the same year as to Bjork, with which it was her first album in four years; or to Wilco, which in 2002 saw its album leaked eight months before the planned release, something that also happened in 2004, 2007 and 2009. However, the proliferation of music on platforms had led people to think that leaks were something of the past, until now. In a year in which big names like Beyoncé, Shakira, Dua Lipa, SZA, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry and Lana del Rey also release new music, leaks of works like these, kept under lock and key for months, further shield the industry. In her case, the reaction of her followers was important. The singer’s very loyal fans from Pennsylvania are very respectful of the singer. On social media, many were debating whether to listen to her and downplay her idol’s release but thus satisfy their desire for new music… or whether to continue worshiping her and wait until Friday at 00:01 to hit the button. play. The latter have won, vetoing even the eager first.

In any case, it is difficult for this leak to affect sales or reproductions. Those who are accessing the album are the fans, who will continue buying their CDs and vinyl in physical format (many of them have done so in advance, so that it arrives at their home on the first day, something increasingly common in the US) and who They will give you thousands, millions of views on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. In any case, what does not seem to be going to suffer is Swift’s fortune. She is immersed in her The Eras Tour, an immense tour that started in March of last year and has already been seen by millions of people and with which it will return to the stage in May – with two stops in Madrid, among others – and will end in December in Canada, at the same time that it can continue watching on Disney+. Thanks to her, the singer has already accumulated more than 1.1 billion dollars, according to the magazine Forbes. She may be angry, but she won’t lose a cent; Quite the opposite: the expectation will only continue to increase.