It came as a surprise to everyone when Taylor Swift announced her eleventh studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department” during the 2024 Grammys ceremony. Swift was mid-acceptance speech for Best Pop Vocal Album for “Midnights” when she dropped the news, announcing that TTPD would be released on April 19. Fans had been anxiously waiting for her Grammy appearance after rumors swarmed about whether or not Swift would announce the long-awaited “Reputation: Taylor’s Version,” but fans soon began counting down to a new album instead. 

The excitement didn’t end when April 19 arrived. Two hours after dropping the new album, Swift announced “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” a double album with 15 extra songs. 

Adding a total of 31 songs to her discography, critics and Swifties alike have been pulling apart Swift’s new album. In the newest episode of “A Scoop of Pop Culture,” listeners Sam Rosenthal ’24 and Ashlyn Brady ’25 cover and review “The Tortured Poets Department.”

As a new listener of Swift’s albums, I was very curious to see how it would differ from the rest of her discography. It seems that now more than ever, Swift has become more than just a music icon, but a figure with an incredible impact on the industry and the masses as a whole. According to the Washington Post, Swift has boosted the economy by over five billion dollars. With this kind of hook, the world’s (and my) hopes have been high. Swift is an immensely talented lyricist and there’s a plethora of new Swift news in the media, so there’s plenty to write about in the album. “How did it end?”…up.

Quite underwhelming is how “The Tortured Poets Department” ended up. A lot of her albums seem to have very standout songs, be they good or bad. “The Tortured Poets Department” never really had that. There are definitely better and worse songs, but it felt like the album had more of a voice as a whole rather than as individual songs (which didn’t particularly help in this case). The songs that did manage to make an impression, like “The Manuscript,” were really able to close out the album in a fresh way that I haven’t heard since her album “Folklore.” The writing is still as great as ever and there’s a lot of details that you can catch on re-listens.

However, the album felt like a more watered-down version of “Folklore.” For “Folklore,” Swift hadn’t done a mellow, dramatic album before, so you can tell she really took her time with it, but for TTPD, it feels less carefully constructed. There are still some good songs, and it doesn’t reach some of the lows of some of her other albums, but it feels less gutsy than some of her previous works too. This album could definitely speak to some people and it has the same great writing as ever from Swift, but for now, I’d listen to a few songs from this album and then re-listen to her older songs.

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As a lifelong Swiftie, I’m always excited for every album, but TTPD seemed to take the cake for the album I’ve been the most excited for. Swift endured leaving a six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn and being torn apart by the media as she began dating star NFL tight end Travis Kelce while writing this album. Swift has been in situations like this before, like when she was publicly shamed in 2016 and then came back swinging with her sixth studio album, “Reputation,” and has written some of the best songs in her discography as a result. Keeping those factors in mind I was extremely excited to hit play for the first time on April 19, but did TTPD live up to my expectations? Not quite.

I was underwhelmed to find out that it was another pop album, similar to her last album “Midnights,” especially after Swift branched out into the indie and alternative genres in her eighth and ninth studio albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore.” I was secretly hoping for a similar album to those two, but Jack Antonoff’s signature pop sound still seems to stay prevalent throughout. 

Although it wasn’t what I was hoping for, some of the tracks on both TTPD and “The Anthology” will likely make their way into my top 25 favorite Taylor Swift songs of all time. Swift nailed another signature track five with “So Long, London,” drew tears with “How Did It End?” and created gut-wrenching storylines in “Peter” and “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus.” Swift’s incredible storytelling abilities were on full display but there were still few misses. “The Alchemy” seemed a bit too on the nose for Swift’s normal writing, “thanK you aIMee” doesn’t fit in with the rest of the album and “But Daddy I Love Him” is clever but simply not anywhere near some of the other songs on the album. 

While TTPD wasn’t what I was hoping for, I still ultimately love the album we got, even if I don’t love it as much as some of her other albums. It encapsulates some of her best writing and, what I think is some of her worst writing. TTPD is not her best album nor my favorite album, but I’m still excited to continue to learn the lyrics of her newest 31 songs.

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Ashlyn Brady

Ashlyn's tier list of "The Tortured Poets Department"

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