We live in the world of Taylor Swift, the most important artist of our era. If his admirers, swifties, formed a nation, it would be seated at the table of a new G8. And today, no one is unaware that the 34-year-old American singer-songwriter launched her eleventh album on the night of Thursday to Friday.
The Tortured Poets Department is a colossal work lasting two hours during which she takes a fresh (and sometimes caustic) look at her romantic relationships while settling a few scores.
His tour The Eras, which continues until the end of the year, is the most lucrative in the history of the music industry. CNN also reported last summer that the excitement of his admirers caused an earthquake with a magnitude of 2.3 during his stopover in Seattle. Named personality of the year by the magazine Time last year it just came, according to Forbes, to join the circle of billionaires. She brings joy to NFL leaders and causes nightmares for Republicans, who fear that her support for the Democratic candidate could cause them to lose the next presidential election.
Does his work justify such enthusiasm? With 1989, released in 2014, Swift moved away from the country songs of her first albums to make a turn towards pop, a reframing that propelled her to the greatest heights. Ten years later, it must be recognized that the author-composer has sharpened her pen. Her melodic flair seeks less the earworm than the nuanced air that discreetly embeds itself in our eardrums – a striking detail, her writing style seems to have come closer to that of her friend Lana Del Rey, another prolific and celebrated singer-songwriter of the pop landscape. Thus, Taylor Swift does not renew herself musically, but polishes her pop song successfully.
Enthusiasm
Yes, the work justifies the craze, but let’s not get carried away: the performer of successes Shake It Off, Anti-hero And Cardigan is not of the caliber of Joni Mitchell, to whom some dare to compare her — not yet, at least.
Teaming up again with directors, composers and arrangers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner (of The National), Taylor Swift offers an album that can be listened to in two parts. The first part bears the synth-pop shades displayed on the previous one Midnightsreleased in fall 2022. It contains the strongest and catchiest compositions of the project: new wave softness Fortnight in the opening (collaboration with a self-effacing Post Malone); the most rock Florida!!!, wonderful duet with Florence + the Machine (the best of the album?); the title song, more rhythmic, accompanied by this tasty self-deprecating verse (“ You’re not Dylan Thomas / I’m not Patti Smith / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel / We’re modern idiots “); or even the potential radio success My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.
Then So Long, London. The fifth in order. This would give him a special meaning, according to the “swiftologists”, who will spend hours dissecting each of his sentences to read allusions to one of his exes or to a petty celebrity towards him. The themes of her songs – love, self-confidence, how others view her – will surprise no one: her inner garden is always well demarcated. Again, Taylor Swift does not allow us to understand the world differently, she rather tries to describe her own to us, with this spirit which makes her write inspired verses (but not the one where she describes one of her exes as “ tattooed golden retriever “).
The second part of the album is more graceful, bringing us back into the orchestral folk atmosphere of his two “pandemic” albums, Folklore And Evermorereleased in 2020. Delicate piano-voice ballads (Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus, How Did it End?), the captivating acoustic guitars ofI Hate It Here And thanK you like (which would be a scathing response to a celebrity who denigrated her), a sweet art pop entitled Cassandra at the end…
Not everything among these 31 new songs is memorable, and the album suffers from these inessential songs, at least as much as from the caution with which Taylor Swift articulates her pop, from which we would only hope for a an ounce of audacity in terms of the themes covered and the sound quality.
The year 2024 will go down in history for its phenomenal collection of albums signed by the biggest pop stars of its time. Beyoncé opened the ball with Cowboy Carter, published on March 29. Dua Lipa will launch hers on May 3, followed two weeks later by Billie Eilish’s. Today, however, Taylor Swift’s name is on everyone’s lips, and The Tortured Poets Department will overheat Spotify’s servers for several more days.