So…apparently Taylor Swift decided to say, “fuck you” to me in particular and released a full second album-length extension to ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ (2024) mere hours after the initial release. I’m furious. Not so much at the content – which is better than the first half – but more the fact I need to release a second part of the review.
I guess I could have just added a footnote to the original, but there’s no fun in that.
‘The Anthology’, as the extended variant of the album is subtitled (and not found on physical releases, to my knowledge) is a decided improvement. Let’s start with that positive. While certain songs have solidified as decent and even interesting on the first half – shout out to ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ – it’s not an album I enjoy. I can safely say these new songs are more consistently interesting.
There are obviously some strange choices on the track list. ‘imgonnagetyouback’ is shamelessly similar to Olivia Rodrigo’s 2023 single ‘Get Him Back’, for worst results. Even giving Swift the benefit of the doubt that it’s a coincidence, it’s a worse version of the same song and she should have cut it.
I stand by my assessment of Swift’s increasingly shoddy song writing. Her instincts as a writer have shifted from melody to poetry, which makes some of this feel meandering and formless. ‘I Hate It Here’ is especially poor form in this regard. To give her some credit, the line referencing the 1830s has been shamelessly pulled out of context, which isn’t really fair. The song still sucks, but mostly because it sounds like she wrote a really long sentence and started reading out directly into the mic without listening to the instrumental at all beforehand.
But for every bad song on ‘The Anthology’, there are two good ones. To give her some credit for writing a great hook, ‘So High School’ uses her voices specific talent for wistful sighs to create a truly spectacular love song. Despite Dressner’s production obviously recalling to the guitar led country-pop/pop-rock of early Swift, what it most reminds me of is her 2017 track ‘Dress’, which remains my favourite vocal performance by the pop singer. ‘thanK you aIMee’ is her bitchiest track, and while the obvious illusions to Kim Kardashian are faintly ridiculous, her disdain produces a fitting sister track to 2010’s ‘Mean’.
‘I Look in People’s Windows’ is a short and pretty number about isolation and longing that half sounds like she’s writing from the perspective of a pigeon. She’s certainly acting bird-like. But it’s also maybe the first track in her entire career I want an extended version of. Restraint and focus sound amazing on her.
The best stuff on this…addendum speak to sounds and subjects Swift has played with before. Dressner encourages her better instincts, and my bet is that most of these songs were written very recently, which clearly gave her an opportunity to massage many of the themes and concepts on the original tack list. ‘The Prophecy’ is pure melodrama, but in a way that is decidedly more interesting than pretty much anything she did upon the initial release.
It's still not a perfect album. Even if you split the album into two complete projects, I question the need to rush out 31 songs less than 2 years after your last monster release. ‘The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology’ is bloated and heavy, but there’s enough good that I can safely say it’s a worthwhile listen for anyone who has ever liked Swift.
At the end of the day, I could make a pretty strong playlist with 7-10 of these songs, and that’s on par with most Drake records. And much like the Drake ones, I’ll likely only pull maybe 2 actual hits for my casual listening purposes. Because they’re very similar people. Which is especially funny, considering it was Ariana Grande who made the grand statement she wanted to release music like a rapper, but then waited 4 years to drop a mediocre pop album of her own. But we won’t dwell on that.
Now for the wider cultural conversation!
In the follow up to the release, we’ve certainly gotten a lot of…critical takes on Miss Swift and her musical output. The album has offered a lot of people the chance to talk with increasing vehemence on Swift’s cultural output and legacy over the past few years. Which, to be fair, is significantly more interesting than the music. But the response to these reviews has been unusually defensive and often pathetic.
‘Taylor Swift’ is a brand that has been dominant significant for almost two decades, and dominant for most of the 2020s. She’s released 8-9 records in the space of less than 4 years – likely to be at least 10 by the year’s end. Her fans are as oppressively visible as Little Monsters in 2001 and Reaganites in the 1980s (all jokes – she isn’t a Republican anymore), which makes her feed unavoidable. But the truth is, the core of the complaints surrounding ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ take issue with her lack of quality control, not just her mere presence.
I think the knee-jerk defence of pop in the 2010s has become some variant of either “you hate fun” or, for blonde women, “this isn’t for you”. It’s how stans convince themselves that people like Katy Perry are victims of hate campaigns, rather than mediocre music. Poptimism has nurtured an environment where any negativity towards pop is treated as a form of oppression. It doesn’t matter that Swift is a billionaire, because her most ardent fans are online, 35, and an absolute nightmare for Human Resources. They feel attacked when you don’t bow to her greatness, real or otherwise. At least, the ones who appear on podcasts and claim she invent deluxe albums and greatest hits tours.
It's unfortunate, because the most interesting stuff on Swift’s latest albums feel like a direct response to her obsessive and controlling fans. I keep coming back to ‘But Daddy I Love Him” precisely because it’s the most blatant example of her reacting directly to their demands. This is a woman who obsessives over her persona more than any other pop star, now or ever. If ‘Anti-Hero’ was self-deprecating and meta about her pop persona, there’s a decided thread of real distaste for the entire venture on both halves of this record that is less compelling than it is concerning.
Of course, this is all speculation, and at the end of the day, if she wants to stop, marry the football star/podcaster, and start a family, I hope she’s happy. The same if she wants to continue to dominate radio and write catty little songs about Kim Kardashian.
If this is all a bit too much for you…I don’t know, stream ‘Espresso’ by Sabrina Carpenter? That song requires literally nothing from you.