Top Pops: Taylor Swift's THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT

    I wanted to love this album like I love music as a whole so badly. I was so excited for it, and I was even more excited when it was revealed as a double album along with the release of The Anthology. I told all of my friends that on April 19th that my new personality will have finished proofing and I could bake it with love. I worship Swift's works so much, but I couldn't get into this one like I could Midnights. Midnights had a mixed reception in the beginning too, but I was able to immediately latch onto a couple of songs there that helped me to come to love the rest. The production was more engaging overall. The lyrics showed off Swift's more poetic side that she had accumulated in recent years, but it was more concise and cut to the bone when needed. Here? It's a bit of a different story.

    THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is like a darker side of Midnights. There's less glitz and glam. I like glitz and glam, myself. It's hard to believe the same duo that made the timeless smash that is "Cruel Summer" made over 30 tracks of ground that had already been treaded and better the first time. Not that I need an album of radio hits from Swift. We've gotten plenty of that, and we've also gotten plenty of depth/deep cuts in the form of folklore, evermore, and now, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. We need an "Anti-Hero" here though. I think my main gripe is when you start listening from the beginning you think "this next song is going to be an absolute banger" and it may start out that way but then it all fades into the same somberness we've come to know from the previous 20 tracks. On and on and on and on and on. 

    Aaron Dessner and the tracks he produced does nothing to help this either. Where he injected life into the late game Midnights with "Would've, Could've, Should've," we get... Nothing that does that here. And I think the album would have benefitted taking the absolute best from the doubles and making one 16 track album. 

    Swift has cited the amazing and incredible Lana Del Rey as an influence, and I think she chases Del Rey the most on this album. It lacks the things that make a true Lana Del Rey record a true Lana Del Rey record though. The shock, the blue-collar humor, and the blatant glamour. 

    I know it sounds like I may be crapping on this album, and I don't mean it that way. What I do like here, I really like. Once "Fortnight" grew on me, it has come to stay. Post Malone makes the song for me with his contributions. Is it lead single worthy? Ehhh it's more like second or third for me. Also... Did you see Post Malone in the video?!?! What a babe! Instant crush. Never thought a guy with face tattoos would do that to me. The video is cool overall too. I loved it within the first minute. 

    I digress. The title track is nice. It needs an extra 5% of pep though the backing piano is very nice. I'd argue we don't really get anything really new added to the Swift zeitgeist until "So Long, London." A heart crushing, soul baring ballad where the haunting, foggy production sets up the scene nicely. Then "But Daddy I Love Him" finally injects some life into the record that we are craving for. 

    I think my absolute favorite that I loved from the very first second is "Florida!!!" which features the ever incredible Florence + the Machine. Swift and Welch's vocals together are a heaven I didn't know could exist with Swift's emotional smoothness and Welch's idiosyncratic raw power. The story is nice here. The lyrics are perfection. 

    "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" is a good contribution to the Swift canon of her overall story arc of being forever the underdog and underestimated. Then you have tracks like "loml" which are so sad, depressing, and emotional that they don't really get to shine because they're shining amongst each other. It's like the brightest star in a cluster amongst other stars. Which is a problem the record has with its sheer volume. 

    An inconsistency of being concise is perhaps Swift's greatest weakness here. There's the glaring 31 tracks waiting for you to listen to all of them, digest them, and then be able to say something smart about all of them. I believe there are some killer 30+ track albums out there, but the sameness is what cripples us a bit here. 

    But then there's also the consistent Antonoff production we've come to know since the OG 1989 that leads to inconsistencies between the tracks as they're a little tough to distinguish at times. Then there's Swift's lyrical inconsistencies. There are SO many images, metaphors, and words being thrown at us it's hard to digest an image before a new one is thrown at you. This may weaken the better and stronger ones. She's too wordy at times. Where we went from "I have this dream my daughter-in-law kills me for the money/she thinks I left them in the will/the family gathers round and reads it then someone screams out/"she's laughing up at us from hell!" to "were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?/did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?/were you writing a book? were you a sleeper-cell spy?/in fifty years will all this be declassified?/and you'll confess why you did it/and I'll say good riddance/'cause it wasn't sexy once it wasn't forbidden" amongst other parts of "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. It's too wordy, and there's too much going on. You get introduced to an image and then another without exploring the first. She should have stuck with the sleeper-cell spy image and ran with that. 

    And many lyrics are clichés. Which is fine when it comes to songwriting. It's a bad thing when it comes to poetry though. Swift adds new and fresh images and metaphors every now and again, but she also relies on the old and tired at times. Some of the lyrics can give you a good cringe shower at times. But you could also see that as a charm point. 

    Also they don't completely make sense to me at times? I say "to me" because maybe they do to someone else. For instance, Swift and Malone sing "I've been calling ya/but you won't pick up/another fortnight lost in America/move to Florida, buy the car you want/but it won't start up 'til I touch, touch, touch you." Why won't the car start up? What does two people touching each other have to do with that? It sounds nice. It sounds romantic, but I don't get it. 

    Overall, I think that a majority of the tracks here will just end up being growers. There's such a familiarness here that I'm not really sure why Swift decided to keep the whole project a secret. It's her signature Antonoff sound. I used to think that I'd want a whole album of Dessner production, but after the same problems with the Antonoff production I'm not so sure.

    In all honesty, I'd like Swift to go back to Max Martin and Shellback. Or add them into the mix. I think an album with Antonoff, Martin, Shellback, and Dessner would kill audiences and critics alike. I'll tell you one thing though. I think I'm done with the Antonoff/Dessner production after this outing. I'm a big fan of their works, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. Which is what has happened here. And after 5 albums (along with the re-recordings) a shake up is nice. 

    Swift craves longevity, and she's done a hell of a job achieving it. I do as well for her. I think it's important for her going forward to have both inescapable chart smashers and treasure-find deep cuts. I look forward to where we go from here.

Rank: A Rank. the tortured poets depArtment

Recommendation: when you're going through it, and want to be sad for the sake of being sad. Like your life has become an indie film.

Standouts:

    Fortnight

    Florida!!!

    Tracks starting with the word "The"

    thanK you aIMee (the shade of it all)

    THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT

    So Long, London