EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT TAYLOR SWIFT'S 'THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT'
It looks like Taylor Swift will be taking us to "The Lakes" after all when she releases her next new album, "The Tortured Poets Department" in April 2024. Announced at the 2024 Grammys, the 11th album in Swift's discography had been kept under wraps for two years, according to the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter.
Since she unveiled her next era, one more seemingly sepia-toned than the punchy colors of "Midnights," Swift has taken moments in the international leg of her "Eras" tour to pull back the curtain even further on "The Tortured Poets Department."
At her second show in Tokyo, Japan, Swift revealed that she planned to make the album announcement at that concert if she hadn't won any Grammys. She ended up taking home two -- winning her 13th award for Best Pop Vocal Album. "Midnights" also took the coveted Album of the Year Grammy, and Swift set a record for the only artist to win four Album of the Year Grammys -- for "Fearless," "1989," "folklore" and her latest, "Midnights."
"I've been working on 'Tortured Poets' since right after I turned in 'Midnights,'" Swift shared at Tokyo Dome, adding, "You turn in albums months in advance so that you can make vinyls, which are the best. I've been working on it for about two years," she continued. "I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour, and when it was perfect -- in my opinion when it's good enough for you -- I finished it and I am so, so excited that soon you'll get to hear it. Soon we'll get to experience that together."
Swift has churned out a tremendous amount of music since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Even before that, she had announced that she would begin re-recording all of the albums she put out before "Lover" since the rights had been sold by Scooter Braun, and she wanted to own all of her work.
First she dropped two surprise albums, "folklore" and "evermore" in July and December of 2020, respectively, before launching "Fearless (Taylor's Version)" as the first re-recorded album, followed by "Red (Taylor's Version)," surprise brand-new album "Midnights," and then two more re-recorded albums -- "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" and "1989 (Taylor's Version)" before revealing "TTPD," as Swifties have come to call it.
"I'm over the moon about the fact that you guys care about my music, it still blows my mind," she said after sharing her backup plan to announce the new album. "Everyone's like, 'Why do you make so many albums?' I'm like, 'Man, because I love it. I love it so much.' I'm having fun, leave me alone."
While "over the moon," Swift also harnessed the power of the sun to tease lyrics from the album. Ahead of April 8's solar eclipse, she posted the video of a typewriter writing the words "Crowd goes wild at her fingertips. Half moonshine, full eclipse."
Here's everything we know about Taylor Swift's next album, "The Tortured Poets' Department":
Joe Alwyn is thought to be the subject of many of the songs
Alwyn and Swift dated for over six years. Their breakup became official around Easter of 2023. As of April 8, 2024 it has been a year since the breakup was announced.
Entertainment Tonight reported that the couple had gone their separate ways, and first the narrative involved mutual feelings that "the relationship had run its course." One Swiftie pointed out that April 19 marked the night Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds unfollowed Joe Alwyn on Instagram. The next day, Swift got some of her closest girl group friends together -- the Haim sisters, Lively and Gigi Hadid -- for dinner, and the Haim sisters and Hadid joined Lively and Reynolds in unfollowing the actor.
The name of the album is also not-so-coincidentally similar to the name of a group chat that included Joe Alwyn, Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott: "The Tortured Man Club." Mescal revealed that this WhatsApp chat existed between the three actors, all of whom have played roles like the one described, with Mescal starring as Connel in the Hulu series "Normal People" based on Sally Rooney's book and Alwyn starring in the Hulu adaptation of Rooney's "Conversations with Friends."
Swift has hinted at the "Eras" shows that the album is focused on a specific period of her life.
"I needed to make it. It was really a lifeline for me," Swift, said during her Friday, Feb. 16, concert in Melbourne, Australia. "It sort of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through life and I've never had an album where I've needed songwriting more than I needed it on 'Tortured Poets'."
The tracklist for 'The Tortured Poets Department' includes 16 songs and features Post Malone and Florence + the Machine
Swift dropped the track list for the surprise album the day after she announced it at the Grammys. The only featured artists, so far, include Post Malone on the first track "Fortnight" and Florence + the Machine on the eighth song "Florida!!!." "So Long, London" is the name of the fifth track, and Swift's Track 5s are known to be devastating.