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Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department (April 19, 2024) Album • Page 75

Discussion in 'Music Forum' started by iCarly Rae Jepsen, Feb 4, 2024.

  1. ComedownMachine

    Prestigious Prestigious

    She’s the biggest artist in the world, has had TONS of merch drops and yet I only ever see the same 2 eras tour shirts in real life
     
    Turkeylegz and irthesteve like this.
  2. [​IMG]

    taylor fans blink fans

    we hate your merch!
     
  3. Taylor Swift’s 11th full-length studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, shattered countless records upon release. See below for the highlights.

    The Tortured Poets Department Highlights:
    • Becomes #1 album of 2024 in less than 48 hours across both consumption and pure sales in the US
    • Biggest Billboard 200 debut of Taylor's career
    • Biggest streaming debut in Spotify history
    • Breaks all-time record for most single day streams for an artist catalog in Spotify history (380 million)
    • Biggest streaming debut in Amazon Music history
    • Fastest album to 1 billion streams in history
    • "Fortnight" f. Post Malone biggest streaming day for any song in Spotify history
    Other Highlights:
    • First artist to cross 100 million equivalent album units in US history (via Luminate)
    • 5M+ equivalent US albums in 2024; #1 artist of the year (via Luminate)
    • Breaks all-time record for most single day streams for an artist catalog in Spotify history (380 million)
    • Top 7 single debuts and top 3 album debuts in Spotify history
    • Top 4 biggest vinyl debuts in Nielsen history
     
  4. contra11mundum

    I hate spoilers. Supporter

    [​IMG]
     
    bradsonemanband likes this.
  5. SteveLikesMusic

    approx. 3rd coolest Steve on here Supporter

    I would pay a stupid amount for a 7” of So High School
     
  6. Kiana

    Goddamn, man child Prestigious

    I don't wanna dog pile on. I feel like Taylor was looking out for other artists with the spotify thing. That was great. But she def toes that line sometimes. Her feminism to me sometimes reads like she has a chip on her shoulder because she can't get away with what men do, instead of like... nobody should get away with what men do cause it sucks. She rly wants to have a capitalist empire I feel but is upset that men can get away with that more unscathed and unchallenged. Which obv she shouldn't get disproportionate flak cause she's a woman, and also men shouldn't have capitalistic empires unchallenged either. Nobody should. That doesn't mean she's not a feminist or is disingenuous, but I think she's a little more "what's best for me" than I'd like sometime. The olivia situation was really the nail in the coffin for me with that and she should've gotten way more flak for it than she did since as mentioned by others, she's had way more egregiously obvious influence and references in her own music. It feels like artists can't even discuss a songs specific influence anymore if that's what's going to be the result. And as someone who I genuinely does believe respects the craft of songwriting, she should also be outraged about the implications of that.
     
    J12, Zilla, Crisp X and 3 others like this.
  7. well I also think a lot of artists wanted to wait to release albums they could tour on and Taylor Swift (and Lady Gaga and Duo Lipa and really just pop artists) were in the advantageous situation were they could release music and still make a living from it without touring necessarily
     
    Neon Light likes this.
  8. there technically isn't too much of a backlog right now - the turnaround time is pretty consistent to what it was pre-covid
     
    imthegrimace likes this.
  9. SteveLikesMusic

    approx. 3rd coolest Steve on here Supporter

    oh that rocks ! Kinda felt like it would just be that way forever
     
  10. Michael Belt Apr 23, 2024
    (Last edited: Apr 23, 2024)
    Michael Belt

    metadata incarnate Supporter

    finally had the chance to give this whole thing a second listen, and the first time with no distractions or other commitments. my stance on its length still stands, but with the added context of the back half. musically, the only tracks from disc 2 that are sticking with me are The Black Dog, imgonnagetyouback, The Albatross, The Prophecy (the best of the bunch, tbh), and The Manuscript. everything else is mostly boring, and the other tracks whose production i somewhat like (So High School and I Look in People's Windows) just aren't that strong to me lyrically. from a production standpoint, i definitely prefer Jack's work on this album to Aaron's (even if Jack's sound is starting to get a little stale). production-wise, Fortnight, the title track, Down Bad, So Long, London, BDILH, Guilty as Sin?, ICFH, loml, TSMWEL, and Clara Bow are the highlights of disc 1 for me (and could very well be career highs, especially Guilty as Sin? which has one of her best choruses). the big difference between the two halves is that most of the the other songs on disc 1 i'm fine with as being filler-y, even if they're not my taste.

    lyrically, i'm not opposed to something a tad wordier than her most well-known work, but she really needed to parse this down to something in-between, because a good chunk of these are either too dense to enjoy as a casual listen, or are superfluous and don't really add anything that some of the other songs didn't touch on (particularly disc 2). then of course there are the lyrics that are either just plain stupid (the GTA line, "finance guy", most of MBOBHFT and thanK you, aIMee) or concerning (the 1830s line - yes, i get the whole context, it's just not a line she as a White woman needed to include given conversations and controversy surrounding her and race). if you're gonna include those songs, at least give an honest second pass or outside critique of their lyrics if you wanna avoid sounding childish or potentially insensitive.

    i also think the superfluousness of this record also limits what she's trying to do conceptually. this album is supposed to be both a reflection on a previous relationship and a critical examination of her starpower and the system that produced it/she reifies. there are too many songs that drive home that her past partnerships ultimately weren't good. and while i can believe that being in the spotlight from a young age has caused emotional distress, it feels less sincere singing about it now when you're a billionaire in your mid-30s and essentially are the face of/power behind the music industry. you want people to feel sorry for you in both situations, but that's difficult to achieve when you a) allegedly use your platform to hurt others trying to make it in the same industry (as we discussed above with the Olivia Rodrigo situation) and b) lambast fan criticism of your relationships just to turn around and say "oh wait, maybe Matty was an asshole" on other tracks. her critiques of the industry were also much better-handled on reputation when she had spent several years facing harassment leading up to her stepping out of the limelight in the mid-2010s. here, they just fall flat.

    idk. i liked it better than i expected to, but ultimately, i don't know how memorable this will be in her discography (aside from its length and any surrounding controversies). the high points were really high for me, and i don't hate the album, but there's just so much on this that doesn't need to be here and works against what she was trying to achieve on all fronts. idk what she's planning for LP12, but whatever it is, i hope she at least gets a few people in the room to make it a more concise, musically engaging, and conceptually effective body of work. my hierarchy now ranks as follows:

    folklore
    evermore
    Red
    Midnights
    reputation
    1989
    Speak Now
    TTPD
    Lover
    Fearless
    S/T
     
  11. SpyKi

    You must fix your heart Supporter

    That's why I feel like disc 2 is a bonus disc rather than the official album. A lot of those songs do feel either superfluous or out of place despite how much I like them.

    I wonder if people's perception would have been much different if she waited to put those out as vault tracks a few months later.
     
  12. Michael Belt

    metadata incarnate Supporter

    i considered the possibility that disc 2 could stand on its own, but i don't think it has the strength to stand up to her other records. it would've been a good idea to release all 31 like a year down the road, so listeners could view the songs more as B-sides and not the second half of a larger whole. it felt like she was forcing the other songs into a 15 track sequence that could stand as a second album rather than treating them as extra songs.
     
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  14. Michael Belt

    metadata incarnate Supporter

    i'm assuming this is a different author than the review(s), considering RS gave this thing 5/4 stars. also, didn't Jack only do one song on evermore?
     
  15. SamLevi11

    Prestigious Prestigious

    I fond it interesting that the producer chat is so big. I don’t think it’s that much of an issue but that might be a personal taste thing.

    A far bigger issue for me is that just like the Beyonce album, diluting your record to an almost homeopathic degree is a bad idea.

    This could be a really strong 12-14 track album, but at two hours and 31 songs, it just doesn’t have the strength and ideas. There’s some stuff on here that I really like, but you have to wade through some really mediocre songs to get there.
     
    Michael Belt likes this.
  16. irthesteve

    formerly irthesteve Prestigious

    The way track streams count for charting absolutely has created a huge album length problem with popular music at large
     
  17. irthesteve

    formerly irthesteve Prestigious

    If you listen to the new Billie eilish and Taylor Swift albums an equal number of times, Taylor gets 3x as many album sales from your streams
     
  18. Garrett

    i tore a hole in the fabric of time Moderator

    I wonder if what the UK did is a solution we should look at. Only three songs can chart from an album in any given week iirc
     
  19. irthesteve

    formerly irthesteve Prestigious

    That would really only affect specifically the Hot 100 chart, none of the other issues with album equivalents
     
  20. dorfmac

    Trusted

    is this something people actually say/think? I’m not super into the Olivia orbit because I don’t think highly of most of her work, but I’m also not in touch and wouldn’t be surprised if it’s my ignorance showing. If so, I just don’t see it.

    This headline is 100% my feeling. To me it’s so obvious when a Jack song comes on because of the same drumbeat/sound. Maybe it’s just a self-fulfilling/self-affirming bias I have going on, but I’m ready for something new like many have already said in here.
     
  21. congruence

    Got a light?

    Was listening earlier and was thinking how a lot of the Dessner stuff sounds extremely similar to his past work with her as well, so I wouldn’t say it’s Jack that’s fully the problem. I mean he didn’t exactly do anything new on his tracks here either, there’s basically a Mad Woman Pt 2 piano song
     
  22. dorfmac

    Trusted

    I’m unfamiliar with him pre-Taylor, and also we’re looking at three years of the Dessner sound compared to eight of Jack. I do agree, though, that his production has a distinct and identifiable sound too that it’s time to move on from.
     
    congruence likes this.
  23. SpyKi

    You must fix your heart Supporter

    It feels to me like just a longer version of the 3am edition of Midnights. I think she's just going to do that from now on, put the b-sides out a few hours after the main release, its just that this time she had so many.
     
    Michael Belt likes this.
  24. SpyKi

    You must fix your heart Supporter

    Also I don't think she was focused on trying trying find a new sound as she was just getting the music that fit the songs she was writing. I think the production here perfectly fits that vibe.
     
    Neon Light likes this.
  25. SpyKi

    You must fix your heart Supporter

    Speak Now has always been on the lower end of my rankings because its easily one of her most inconsistent for me. This listen has me loving more of it than ever and even though it still has a good chunk I don't fully love, I do think I can appreciate them more now.

    "Haunted" and "Long Live" are the two that really stood out as much better than I recall on this listen.