Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department (April 19, 2024) Album • Page 128

Agreed

 

@SpyKi I am genuinely curious how this could be! What is it about this album that does it for you? Asking without cynicism, because I can’t personally fathom it, but I know you’ve also been a Taylor fan for a long time.

 

I thought i clicked on the vinyi thread and was so confused why there were so many posts on just Taylor

 

I think it's genuinely her best songwriting, her most consistent and emotional, at least for my tastes. The storytelling across the album creates a more satisfying and moving narrative to me than any of her other records. I think musically it's a perfect evolution of the sounds she's been working with on her past few albums and compliment to the songs she's written. I've always been a more vocal/lyrics based listener and I think the production adds so much to the vibe of what she's singing about on any given song. Taylor's vocals are so beautifully emotive across the entire thing and it has many of my favourite melodies she's ever written. I also know a lot of people want her to be less wordy but I am so, so in love with the lyrics on this album and I live for every chorus changeup or extra long bridge/outro. I'd say more than half of the album is up there with my favourite Taylor songs at this point including "loml" finally overtaking "All Too Well" as my number 1.

My physical version of the album is the one with The Black Dog so my ranking of the album is the main 16 and that one because its my second favourite song here and feels like a perfect epilogue to the main narrative. I love the Anthology songs and a lot of them only add to my appreciation of the main album because of how they tie in to it lyrically but I do think the album is stronger without being 31 songs so I view them as bonus material like the vault tracks.

I've been a Taylor fan since Red but I've never been completely in love with anything she's put out, she's never had an AOTY contender for me until now, this album feels like it has everything I've always loved about her songwriting and hardly anything I don't like. The only thing it's really missing are the big poppy hits and I don't think that would really fit these songs.

The Tortured Poets Department - 9
Speak Now - 8.5
Folklore - 8.5
Fearless - 8
Red - 8
1989 - 8
Midnights - 8
Evermore - 8
Lover - 8
Reputation - 8
Taylor Swift - 7

Is about how I'd rank them. So most of her albums fall around a similar level for me and this one just speaks to me more. I'm honestly surprised that such big Taylor fans have this anywhere near the bottom haha.

 

I could cut loml from the album and be ok with it

 

That's like cutting "All Too Well" from Red and being ok with it, haha. Madness.

 

I could never hear so long london again and be ok with it

 

Tbh I fully contend that my reasoning to not listening to tortured poets much is silly, but double albums are so daunting to me. Even if it ends up around a similar length to a single disk long album. For example I almost never listen to xtinas back to basics even tho it's the same length of my favorite album of hers, Stripped. Psychologically the double albums just feel soooo long and like more of a commitment than just throwing on a regular album

Also a dumb reason but I feel like it's hard to divorce her persona with her music sometimes and I'm like all this fuss over a 2 week thing with Matty Healy, sis??

Okay, bad hot takes over. Will resume just my regular bad takes.

 

Ouch

 

just think of them as two separate albums and listen to one at a time.

 

So Long London (2) and loml (5) both make my personal re-organized and truncated version of the album playlist.

 

They're both in my top 15 Taylor songs.

 

I like the first disc but the second is a chore to get through and I have to buy it on vinyl still because of course I do lol

 

Just heard my first track from this ha…they added the broken heart track to whatever the playlist is in the restroom at my office.

Jesus that chorus is obnoxious.

 

The second best song on here for my opinion, too. Which says a lot about the rest, haha.

 

Didn't you just make that same comment a few days ago?

 

"I'm so depressed, I act like it's my birthdayyyy every day"

I dunno, I love that chorus haha. And it's one of the only choruses from that album that I can sing off the top of my head... haha

 

The production alone is wild, it's Jack at his finest, the tempo changes, the layers of audio, the 1, 2, 3, 4, it's so complex and detailed

 

It's also the perfect encapsulation of The Eras Tour and culminates as such in the live performance.

 

I didn't consider buying the vinyl when the album came out because I figured this was inevitable. I'm not sure I'll snag it though, I think this is pretty easily her worst album by both the as an album metric* and the how many pantheon songs metric.

*it's probably better than s/t as a beginning to end listen or 2

 

I think the songs about him prove that is was longer than a 2 week thing.

I also feel like the “call-backs” to 1989 are purposeful since that’s around them first meeting. And the wordiness on this specific album could be attributed to older 1975 being the same. I think it’s all very intentional.

 

While this is perfectly reasonable, my brain knows!!

Ah yeah I was just taking the fortnight thing literally. I have no idea but I know they've known each other for a bit. And also even if it was just a fortnight there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just not that sentimental so I have a hard time wrapping my head around catching that many feelings so quickly but I've also been described by others as an emotionless robot so maybe that's a me thing lol. I legitimately wish I had been in love as often as Taylor and had that fairytale part of my brain. Instead sometimes I hear the song and who it's probably about and I'm like

 

*note that my post above doesn't imply I'm a Taylor Swift is gay truther! I just don't know of a "him" equivalent meme!!

 

I wasn’t asked but here are my thoughts:

When I first heard TTPD it largely gave me the strong sense of same-ness that midnights gave me (with some songs like daddy feeling out of place), in part because it was so long. I thought midnights was disappointing in large part because the individual songs felt so repetitive - so many of the songs just feel like the same rhyming cadence over and over and over and over again for 4.5 minutes. Some of that is here too, and I think several songs are way too long. That said, it usually takes me 2-3 weeks to get a good feel on an album and by the time that period was up for TTPD, I wondered how I ever thought the album was same-y (I didn’t listen to anthology much until this period was over). Florida, TTPD, daddy, and smallest man feel so cohesive here to me now and yet they’re all written so differently. The latter is probably a top 5-7 taylor song for me now.

Some of those critiques are still valid, especially coming off folklore/evermore/midnights, but there’s enough diversity in song structure to counteract them and it’s easy enough to skip a 45 second outro when listening in the car. I also love how wordy the songs are - it’s such a bold move to get even more poetic and deep and to use GRE words in a song, I love it. Doesn’t always land, but I appreciate the thoughtfulness. It doesn’t feel forced or exhausting or cheap. Ive seen on Reddit that the titular song is controversial amongst the fans and that’s wild to me - the emotion and delicacy in her voice is so insanely good. Song is again too long but the first 2/3rds are just Taylor firing on all late night cylinders. Her vocal control on “you awaken with dread” is *chefs kiss.*

On the album proper, loml (boring), broken heart (cheesy and doesn’t fit sonically), and fortnight (boring) are at the bottom for me and I would’ve cut them for brevity, but fwiw album length doesn’t usually bother me. Length might influence my judgement of an album as an art piece and statement but not necessarily my enjoyment. At the end of the day the more songs you give me, the more I’ll like, and the more I’ll have to add to a pantheon playlist. Anthology feels a bit more disparate but it’s hard to extrapolate how we’d have liked it if it was released first or at the same time or in a world without Taylor fatigue. There’s only a couple stinkers there that I don’t think hold up, the rest feel incomplete but generally fun listens and I’m happy to have them.