The Tortured Poets Department (2024), a review

More like tortured poetry – am I right, everybody?

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review was written on the first half of the double album, and will be amended at a later date upon review of the second album.

Taylor Swift is an artist defined by her ambition to succeed, and her very limited vision of what success is. Going all the way back to the critical failure of her 2017 album ‘Reputation’, she’s made it quite clear that she was to dominate both the critical and commercial. Following the even more embarrassing missteps surrounding ‘Lover’ (2019), she’s seemed determined to make the 2020’s her decade – she’s released 8 albums in half as many years.

With the release of ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ (2024), Swift is indisputably the last true commercial titan in music and an industry darling. Her Grammy shelf holds four Album of the Year awards – the most of any artist. Her current world tour (a cleverly repacked greatest hits tour that’s usually reserved for our geriatric legends) has already allegedly raked in over $1billion, with shows until the end of 2024. The theatrical film version of said tour – released while the show is ongoing – pulled in over $260million. Her last 6 singles have all charted in the top 3 of the Billboard Hot 100. 2021 is the only year of this decade where she has not had a number one hit, although she’s had five through the decade so far. That brings her grand total to ten. Her success has been insane.

With all that being said, I am lukewarm on her recent output.

Ignoring the re-recordings of her discography, which represent an artistically awkward but politically necessary foundation to her current success, ‘Midnights’ (2022) acted as a clear indicator of the limits of her powers. A return to pop following the folky (and excellent) sister albums of 2020’s ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’, we got some of the best and worst music of her career. ‘Antihero’ was maybe her strongest lead single to date, but ‘Bejewelled’ and ‘Karma’ are two of the limpest pieces of pop music that have ever made it to radio.

Her current producing partner, the ubiquitous Jack Antonoff, gets a significant chunk of the blame for her music being mediocre, but the truth is, ‘Midnights’ is just Swift’s personal worst instincts in one album. The belaboured poetry, the dorkiness, the sometimes near-rhythmless sing talking – that’s all her. The bigger she gets, the worse it becomes, because clearly the public finds it endearing.

‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is an improvement on some of this, without actually being any better. A breakup album following her half-decade relationship with actor Joe Alwyn (along with a brief fling with Matty Healy of The 1975), there’s nothing particularly uptempo here, bar one song. The record as a whole is more focused than her last outing. It’s…competent. But ultimately, there’s nothing on here that stands out for Taylor Swift.

Swift’s two greatest assets as a pop star are her narrative lyricism and her ability to project pain. She’s brilliant as writing and performing breakup songs for this very reason. But ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is…belaboured. Heavy. From the Post Malone featuring opening track ‘Fortnight’ to the closing balladry of ‘Clara Bow’, we get a lot of wordiness performed breathily.

‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’ showed that Swift’s talent for storytelling is still unmatched by any other pop songwriter, but there’s a fine line between the hushed, reverent words tumbling on something like ‘Willow’, and the clumsiness shown throughout this newest album. ‘loml’ in particular feels like it’s been packaged for her more dramatic tween audience members, while ‘Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?’ is maybe her worst instincts for leaning into melodrama. The title track of the record is basically a twee pop throwback that is almost charming in the messy lyricism.

‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’ is juvenile and boring – it’ll be a hit that haunts radio for months. In fairness, it also has one of the few catchy melodies on the album. Not one I like, but on an album defined by mopey-Swift, this breaks up the monotony.

‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ is an obvious takedown of Matty Healy that feels more embarrassing than it does…angry. It’s probably the apex of the album, where all of Swift’s powers are meant to zero in on one target. There’s no reflection, no hubris, no blame. Just one woman filled with rage. Unfortunately, the details don’t just make him look weak or sad, they make her sound pitiful. For maybe the first time in her discography, her positioning against a man makes her sound truly pathetic.

Again, that wasn’t the point of the song. The framing is explicitly about how much Healy sucks. But outside of calling her a “queen”, there’s no…appeal to the man here. She also sounds oddly bored behind the mic. It’s a failure of a song.

It isn’t all bad. ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ is a writing collaboration with Aaron Dressner that feels like early pop-country Swift and features the strongest chorus on the record. If there’s a song I think shows that she still has the juice, it’s that one. ‘Guilty As Sin’ is a pretty great song that follows her as she fantasises about cheating. There are plenty of others that are fine to listen to – the Post Malone collaboration is perfectly radio friendly in a good way.

The technical aspects to the album are all fine. The production is mostly Antonoff’s comfort zone of synth and acoustic pop. Swift isn’t hitting bum notes for the most part. Everything is audible.

It’s a competent album. Just uninspiring. It’s a Taylor Swift album made on an assembly line. None of the quirks that make her music great are here. Her wit, her charm, the goofiness that underlines both her best and worst music. It’s purely work here.

‘Midnights’ has described by some as a “divorce record”, and if it’s the build-up, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is the fall out. A woman messily justifying the breakup and her actions immediately after as ultimately fine. But there’s very little tangible passion here. The pain on this record feels performative, the wailing bored. It’s telling how much of this feels obviously tracked to the Healy fling, which seems to have provided more material than the fizzling out of a long-term relationship. It’s possible she didn’t have time to reflect on that breakup, considering her work schedule has been undeniably insane.

Ultimately, Taylor Swift sounds like she needs a break. ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is a breakup record without any grit to it. It’s very clear that unfortunately, she’s reached a point of creative burnout. Maybe in 2025 she should take a page out of Dua Lipa’s book and vacation until she drops. But she has no incentive to do so. Her work gets less interesting, and she’s rewarded for it.

But I know she’s capable of better than this.