BY FRANCESCA PANETTA
The long-awaited 11th album of Taylor Swift’s career came out on Friday, April 19. When Swift announced the release of this album at the Grammy Awards, fans eagerly waited. This album raised mixed feelings of pity, disappointment, and enthusiasm amongst Swifties.
The Tortured Poets Department contains 31 SONGS, 15 of which she dropped two hours after the original release as a surprise double feature called The Anthology. “I was so excited because now there are just so many more songs to decode and ponder,” said Julia Rowan.
The album reached over 300 million streams in a single day, breaking Spotify history. The album has surpassed 1 billion listens on Spotify. Also on April 19, “Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)” became the most-streamed song in a single day in Spotify history. “Fortnight is my favorite song on the album,” said Kamila Omirzak.
Swift allegedly alludes to her relationships with ex-boyfriends Joe Alwyn and Matt Healy and how she dealt with the aftermath of those splits throughout the album. Based on the tone of most of her songs, neither of the relationships ended the way she wanted. Though some may view this as bashing, fans adore and feel for Taylor. “I love the album so much, and I have been obsessively listening to it nonstop since it came out,” said Cassidy Eng, “I genuinely think it has some of the best songs she’s ever written.”
The album truly lives up to its name with literary devices and layered themes used in many of the songs. Tijana Kasikovic said, “I did honestly think that it was going to be very poetic with lots of literary devices. She delivered well!” For example, in the song title “thanK you, aIMee,” the capitalized letters clearly spell out KIM. Speculation surrounds this song concerning Taylor’s conflicts with Kim Kardashian and her ex-husband.
Swifties dove into the new album and searched for meaning and themes in individual songs and the album as a whole “I think the overall message is that sometimes you need to feel angry and sad about unfortunate things in your life, but you need to find good and fun things that could help you get through it,” said Cassidy Eng.
Swift loaded the album with metaphors, such as in “The Alchemy” where she compares hoping a toxic relationship will magically turn happy to the medieval belief that bland boring metal can turn into gold. “I think the whole song Peter is one big metaphor and euphemism,” said Tijana, “Like when she said, ‘forgive me Peter, please know that I tried to hold on’ it alludes to Peter being mad at Wendy for growing up.”
Another literary metaphor is in “So Long, London,” when she says the line ‘’And you say I abandoned the ship, but I was going down with it; my white-knuckle dying grip.” The “ship” references her relationship, and her ex claims she gave up on their relationship, but she counters that she tried as hard as she could.
Recently in her Paris tour, Swift performed a surprise set of some of her most popular TTPD songs, complete with costume changes and even a drumline. Fans have speculated if she will go on tour for the new album because she’s performing it now. “I would absolutely love to see ‘The Black Dog’ live, and I wish she included it in her setlist,” said Kamilia Omirzak.
Posted on 6/3/24
Photos by depositphotos.com
Knight Life 