Review: THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT by Taylor Swift
6.8/10
Taylor Swift tries to find common ground between Midnights and Folklore to diminishing returns, making music that feels uninspired and in desperate need of an editor.
Taylor Swift was a genre treader long before she was arguably the biggest celebrity on the globe. During her 2012 album, RED, she tried to find a new pop sound while giving her country fans what they had become accustomed to in her previous two efforts. In the process she ended up creating one of the greatest breakup albums and arguably her career best work. The response to her pop sound was so eclectic that she decided to ditch country music in favour of pure shimmering pop on 1989, arriving two years later. In the years forward she experimented with various sub-genres of pop - electronic, bubble gum and synth. Eventually making a temporary shift to the folk inspired indie-pop sound of her lockdown albums, Folklore and Evermore. She was creating music without the pressures of producing a radio hit, which seems to have bogged down her 2019 album, Lover, and leading her to create songs like ME! and You Need To Calm Down. Taylor Swift without the expectations of a pop performer was uninhibited in both sides of her craft - production and lyrics. This new turn was so effortlessly excellent that even her return to familiar territory on Midnights felt fresh and endearing. Unfortunately, that uninhibited inspiration is missing on her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department.
Jack Antanoff and Aaron Dessner return to help Swift conceive TTPD, but they seem to play it too safe - quite literally. The melodies feel familiar, the arrangements seem unfinished. Even though both of them manage to create a sound that they found in Folklore and cover it with the sheen of Midnights, the novelty wears off by the time you play So Long, London, one of the high points of the album that puts into effortless words how the demise of a relationship can make you abandon a whole city. This is followed by a production stand-out But Daddy I Love Him which finds Swift calling out her fans and critics for having too much input in her personal life and this might be the best track on the album. It doesn’t reinvent the swift formula, instead it is classic Taylor Swift brand - pretty lyrics, progressive products and just the right amount of cheeky storytelling. It also does the same amount of harm as it does help. It shows the listener that classic Swift is good enough to make a good record and keep you engaged, but this record is overwritten, and stagnant in production. The biggest issue with this record is the sheer length of songs Swift decided to put on it. 31 tracks is too long and that is the sad truth of the streaming era. People are always looking for something new to stream, at the same time there is only enough streams you can get with a 10 song album. Just to test out this theory, I created a list of 13 (iykyk) tracks that stood out to me on the first listen and went back to play them. Turns out it felt like a solid album, not her worst but good enough for me to obsess over it enough to keep replaying it. The Tortured Poets Department would really benefit from an editor who can allow Swift to build a track list with her best work. This would allow pretty much half of this album go into the vault and allow more casual listeners to indulge in this album.
Swift is still one of the greatest songwriters of our generation. We have seen and continue to see what she can achieve when she is at the top of her game (The Black Dog, Down Bad, My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys) and she will continue to hold her stature as the most popular pop star on Earth. The Tortured Poets Departments is just a rare misstep.
