We listened to “The Tortured Poets Department” by Taylor Swift, an intimate album with pop and folk influences

“The Tortured Poets Department” combines the intimate folk of “Folklore” and “Evermore” with the glittery synthpop of “Midnights” to create music that is both ambitious and embraces its chaotic side.

The queen of pop Taylor Swift released a new album on Friday April 19, the eleventh opus eagerly awaited by her fans. The latter were not at the end of their surprises since the singer announced, around 2 a.m. (American time), that this eleventh opus was a double album, so there will be 31 songs instead of the 16 initially planned.

For Taylor Swift, the best weapon is her pen. For an artist who has never really shed her reputation as a composer, it is through this pen that she immerses her fans in an emotional intimacy in The Tortured Poets Department. Between lyrics overflowing with details and a breakup story tinged with fiction, here are the four things to remember from this album.

Her first breakup album in over 10 years

Would you be surprised to learn (or be reminded) that Taylor Swift hasn’t actually released a breakup album since her Red in 2012 ? Just like its predecessor, The Tortured Poets Departments has as its central theme the end of a romance. The album, whose sound is inspired by the dark electronic side of Midnights, the singer’s album released in 2022 for which she won a Grammy, traces the journey of a relationship with a lover who brought “chaos” And “rejoicings” in the life of a woman who seeks to preserve her reputation. Beyond the breakup, the album reveals itself in reality more complex and intimate, as a reflection of the singer and songwriter’s doubts and about her publicized life. As Taylor Swift explains in an Instagram post, the album reflects “the events, opinions and feelings of a fleeting and fatalistic moment, both sensational and painful“. She specifies that “this period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter is closed and closed” And “there is nothing to avenge, no score to settle once the wounds are healed“.

Concise and loaded lyrics

In accordance with the title of the album (which can be translated as The Circle of Tortured Poets), Taylor Swift is here in her most impactful polysyllabic form. In a year where pop music has been criticized for a lack of lyrical sophistication, Taylor Swift will rise to the charts with words like “rivelets” And “litany“(which can be translated as “small stream” And “litany“), while she laughs at her own “teenage petulance“. Her ability to convey her text is as convincing as ever. The singer offers a concise and charged story. The songs are part of a storytelling style Folklore, her album released in 2020, but instead of fictional characters like in the latter, she pours her heart into her deeply personal exorcisms.

Autobiographical songs

In TheTortured Poets Department, the singer draws on a key characteristic of her writing: autobiography. The songs on the album could very well be interpreted as autobiographical snippets from that era. The first song, Fortnight (feat Post Malone), seems to allude to her romance with Matty Healy, singer of the American group 1975, while So Long, London (on which the singer says that she is “angry that you let me give you all this youth“) seems to recall the end of her relationship with Joe Alwyn. Many of these songs are those of an adult Taylor, single again, who revisits her love life, as she did in her first albums, but from a point of view. new view There is therefore a dialogue between her adolescent soul and her adult soul. But Daddy I Love Him is an update of his hit released in 2008, love storywith a slightly older Romeo and Juliet.

Melodies both soft and loud

The warm synthpop of Midnights is the closest point of reference, but this album was cleanly orchestrated, whereas The Tortured Poets Department wants to sink into the mud with soft, loud dissonances and a sprawling tracklist (31 songs in total). In fact, the album is in conversation with his entire musical catalog from the start of his career – a country-pop chorus here, a folk tale there – while taking the time to explore the unknown.

Versatile and carrying a new freshness, the record is not what one might expect from an artist in Taylor Swift’s position. The album was co-produced by Jack Antonoff, who has worked with Taylor Swift, among others, on 1989 And Midnights, and Aaron Dessner of the American folk group The National. The latter having started a regular collaboration with the singer since 2020, has a much more marked presence than on Midnights, where he had only left his mark on a few songs. This leaves this eleventh album with a singular taste: Antonoff’s scintillating productions are tinged with a certain melancholy specific to Dessner. The choice to make it a double album takes on its full meaning, in light of the two identities that confront it: a scintillating pop sublimated by more minimalist folk strokes, letting Swift’s voice resonate as clearly as possible.