Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a tight end playing in the Super Bowl -- The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift, April 19

i can hear tennant singing "i can do it with a broken heart" deadpan

It does have a midtempo plod, I understand those complaints and it's one of my issues with Midnights. I don't know why it works for me here better except that Tim F is otm about it feeling "roomier." The prior stuff it most recalls for me is the latter half of 1989 -- "Wildest Dreams," "This Love." I like her gauzy sweeping synth mode I guess.

Ann Powers’ article piqued my interest far more than the album it’s about— prob won’t listen, I’m on a Swift-free listening diet these days—

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/19/1245630721/taylor-swift-tortured-poets-department-review

Interesting points, I’ve always felt as if Swift’s autofictive bent made for ugly listening, having Powers reframe it as necessarily dangerous has me reexamining my own discomfort

I joked to myself last night while reading this “has any Taylor Swift album passed the Bechdel Test”

Curious as to other people’s takes on the (as always) very good article, gonna read it again in the daylight

My main problem with the disc 1 stuff is that (much like on Midnights and Lover) most songs have parts that sound like they were cribbed from earlier Taylor songs.

i like this album a lot. could you cut 3 or 4 songs and make it better/tighter? of course. you always could. 16 songs will always be too many songs for one album. but if you make something perfect then you offend God. so, best to keep it a little lumpy.

okay, almost on to the extra stuff.

I can say that Powers' upcoming Joni book is awesome btw

as a sound lover who doesn't care what or who her songs are about - something american critics should think about (but they never do) is that a large portion of her audience around the world from south america to turkey to india to china does not speak or understand English - i have to say that the sounds she makes are really captivating and enjoyable in a full body way.

I renounced the Perfect Album as ideal a couple years ago and suddenly my outlook improved.

This is good:

Listening to Tortured Poets, I often thought of "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance," a song that Sinéad O'Connor recorded when she was in her young prime, not yet banished from the mainstream for her insistence on speaking politically. Like Swift's best work, its lyrics are very specific — allegedly about a former manager and lover — yet her directness and conviction expand their reach. In 1990, that a woman in her mid-twenties would address a belittling man in this way felt startling and new. Taylor Swift came to prominence in a culture already changing to make room for such testimonies, if not — still — fully able to honor them. She has made it more possible for them to be heard. "I talk and you won't listen to me," O'Connor wailed. "I know your answer already." Swift doesn't have to worry about whether people will listen. But she knows that this could change. That's why she is writing it all down.

Powers’ piece would be entirely literary analysis, if not for the single paragraph where she talks about music.

On Tortured Poets she's less strategic than usual. She lets the details fall the way they would in a confession session among besties, not trying to change them from painful memories into points of connection. She's just sharing. Swift bares every crack in her broken heart as a way of challenging power structures, of arguing that emotional work that men can sidestep is still expected from women who seem to own the world.

i thought this was good, aligns with my earlier post about not really being able to involve myself in her angrier songs this time around, because the room isn’t being made for me, it’s for her

oh my god lol no way

y’all..😭 there are so many wrong things about this pic.twitter.com/NW8hPDlDNP

— 𖤐 𝗖𝗛𝗥𝗜𝗦 𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗘 𖤐 (@ghostijn) April 19, 2024

yeah, these extra songs are something else entirely. i'm four songs in and i kinda forgot that i was listening to something. its mood music. i'll try and focus.

she should’ve kept that one in the vault

xp

Lmaooooo the accompanying photo

God I am going to have to listen to this. Keeping abreast of Beyoncé’s music feels like delicious food that keeps getting delivered. Keeping abreast of Taylor’s music feels like a babysitter screaming at me that I have to eat an entire banana every morning, including the black spots

The Beyoncé album has seven or eight songs I've kept but they're really fucking good songs and I haven't stopped listening to them or not gotten a thrill when they come up on my phone.

With her and Taylor Swift to pick one album as a favorite if you're already a fan is as impossible as calling Dirty Mind your favorite Prince instead of Parade or Controversy, or calling Madonna your fave Madonna over Like a Prayer or Erotica or Ray of Light. They're all such different albums, offering discrete aural and lyrical experiences. To name one means you're choosing one phase. I miss the Beyoncé of B'Day and 4 but I'm delighted with Lemonade and Renaissance. Same with Taylor Swift. Speak Now ruled for a long time, but now I revel in Red and couldn't stop blasting Evermore that COVID summer.

It’s akin to my old crack about how you should have hundreds of ‘best band of all time’ in your brain and they change per your whim. The Cure album I have listened to the most is Faith but my fave album by them always shifts.

i really hate that she called this "a double album" bc as a single album it is very focused and excellent and as a double album it is a terrible endless listening experience (imo)

agree. She should have released the second half under a different name a week later.

i agree. "so high school" could have been on that first disc though. wonder why she didn't put it in with that stuff.

scott, are your kids Swifties?

but you told lucy you’d kill yourself if i ever leave
and i said that to jack about you so i felt seen
then Rhoda screamed and she asked me
"Where have all the rude boys gone?"

you can just buy the actual album as 2XLP or 1CD though. so, she does actually make it one separate thing as an object. (with bonus track "the manuscript")

“so high school” is really dope, taylor’s avril lavigne album would be killer

(looks like worldwide the bonus track is different for some unknown reason.)

i think my kids like Taylor but they don't really listen to her as far as i know. they get into pretty rarified spotify zones. they listen to lots of women though. i'm glad about that. the last time Cyrus was home he was raving about Patrice Rushen!

"taylor’s avril lavigne album would be killer"

yes, this!

"who's afraid of little old me" is officially my new anthem. gonna have a quilt made with the lyrics on it. hang it on the wall. so cool.

my favorite too

The verse melody recalls Lana Del Rey’s “Blue Jeans.”

Breihan has a review up already:

https://www.stereogum.com/2260059/premature-evaluation-taylor-swift-the-tortured-poets-department/reviews/premature-evaluation/

he's completely wrong because this does the things it does so much better than her previous attempts at them, at least on the regular album

"loml" feels like a song I should actually like – it recalls the FolkMore piano pieces – but it just sits there.

very sedate for a Black Sab tribute but at least it mentioned funerals

i think breihan's review is gonna mirror the general reception of this, which makes sense, blah blah blah i'm too tired to even talk shit about tom breihan

let's just say as a taylor swift fan i feel like for the past few years i have been constantly trying to parse "taylor swift: the real, completely bugfuck insane person (compliment)" from "taylor swift: the corporation" and the sudden inflation of this into two hours feels like an impulse of the latter. now, suddenly, this album i was pleasantly surprised by is confusing and irritating to talk about. oh well i guess that's the way things are now

That last sentence should be a Taylor Swift song title.

Be great if she lurked here. In fact, which one of you IS her on here.

there are no bad taylor swift albums just bad taylor swift listeners

Seems like 90% of the Twitter talk is about "Thank You Aimee"

But songs like that are bait I guess

she should be legally barred from writing about kim kardashian

i'm just glad that i started that thread about listening to things you don't listen to and listened to a taylor album because i don't think i would have listened to this otherwise. and i'm glad i did. i dig it. "but daddy i love him" is my 2nd fave. that's a cool-ass song.

Are folks gonna say that "imgonnagetyouback" is "payback" to Olivia Rodrigo or something (as it uses the same conceit as "Get Him Back!")

Zoladz in NY Times

There is a sonic uniformity to much of “The Tortured Poets Department,” however — gauzy backdrops, gently thumping synths, drum machine rhythms that lock Swift into a clipped, chirping staccato — that suggests their partnership has become too comfortable and risks growing stale.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/arts/music/taylor-swift-album-tortured-poets-department-review.html

Seems like the relationship everyone has an opinion on is the one between Swift and Antonoff

all the complaints about the sonic uniformity are odd to me because it's pretty dynamic and there's a lot of variety in its approach. there is a bit of a midtempo plod issue but that's all

i had been saying antonoff as a collaborator was getting stale before this album but he's produced some of his best work with her this time - the title track is fantastic!

sometimes on a song like daddy i get that glimmer of pop country past. like shania or faith hill. in a good way. i like them both a bunch.

"down bad" is like the good version of something like "midnight rain," which is the closest i get to not giving a shit about a taylor swift song at all. never feel like she's singing over a loop on this album, but rather over songs that acquire more definition depending on where they are in the frame, like a camera trying to focus on a subject that won't stop moving

sometimes on a song like daddy i get that glimmer of pop country past. like shania or faith hill. in a good way. i like them both a bunch.

― scott seward, Friday, April 19, 2024 11:42 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this album could've sucked total ass and i still would've lost my mind over "but daddy i love him." speak now taylor swift lives