Taylor Swift has had a busy year with the Eras tour, her boyfriend Travis Kelce, and releasing a new album, “The Tortured Poets Department”.
The album, composed of 31 songs, is the second she has released since her split with Big Machine Records (besides the re-releases).
The Tortured Poets Department has strong themes of heartbreak and love, with songs such as “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” capturing the heartbreak and “The Alchemy” capturing love. The album brings a mixed vibe of Evermore and Folkmore.
There are also break up songs featured in the album, such as “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, “So Long, London”.
A few months ago, Taylor Swift started dating Kansas City Chiefs football star Travis Kelce, and “So Highschool” expresses how healthy and stable the love between the famous pair is.
This album brings a new direction with a different feeling not seen in Swift’s other albums, with songs having a more creative freedom. I didn’t like the album as much as her other albums because most of the songs blended together. They sounded very similar to each other, with it being mopey. Her other albums had songs that made them stand out compared to this album.
The Tortured Poets Department isn’t Swift’s greatest work, but it’s also not her worst compared to her last album Midnights, where the songs were mediocre at best and more funny to listen to than actually jam out to.
Songs like “The Alchemy and Clara Bow” bring a calming vibe to the album, making you get out of the same repetitive songs. Realistically, out of the 31 songs, half of them didn’t need to be on the album and could have been cut out since you can get bored listening throughout it.
Songs that you can jam out with your friends are “Fortnight”, “Florida”, “The Alchemy”, and “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart”, which make you want to scream the lyrics.
There are also songs that you listen to more by yourself. For example, “The Smallest Who Ever Lived”, “Fresh Out The Slammer”, “The Black Dog”, “imgonnagetyouback”, “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus”, and “I Hate it Here”.
Overall, the album was ok, but had the potential to be much better. If she had brought more diverse songs, I believe the album would have been better. The way this album was built up made people have too much promise for it, making disappointment spread throughout fans after listening to it. This album deserves a five out of ten from the great and awful things of this album.
