The Tortured Poets Department
by Taylor Swift

From Tamthebam 10/04/2025 08:30 | #311190 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

oops this is a tired album not even close to the quality of her last few albums. (Edited)

Shortlisted for album of the year at the 2025 Grammys. The winner was Cowboy Carter by Beyonce (Edited)

From cestuneblague 06/13/2024 00:20 | #303944

Yeah the authenticity-police argument of how one criticizes Taylor Swift's music is a mostly fruitless endeavor, though given I don't think that some of the harsher criticism is so much about the usual tall-poppiness towards the world's most famous pop musician (though surely some of that does exist) than this increasingly anti-schill stance against buttering the egos of the already mega rich and powerful just to avoid a bunch of angry Twitter mobs. No shade to the critics, I mean I'm sure none of them want to get doxxed, but for us non-public music-fan plebs- again whether you like or dislike her music- just grow some cajones and play the opinions where they lay. While I have admittedly never been wowed by Taylor, she has put out good music in the past and is a perfectly adept songwriter, and that's all I want to hear, good music, so that's all I'm really asking as the record-industry or dating drama already feels well past it's expiration date of being remotely interesting to anybody not personally involved.

And with this album, all I ended up really feeling is just a sense of... confusion. Mainly in that I'm wondering if even Taylor thought any of this was necessary to record or release to the public at all. It's not a bad album, no matter how much of the somewhat tepid "praise" or lyrics about 1830s racists (bad Taylor) would seem to indicate, Taylor's too professional to not record consistently listenable and meticulously produced songs, at the very least. But it's also just feels like a really temperate circle of nothingness under the shell. While the title was certainly snigger-worthy and had the air that she was going to finally release her Ironic Scene Kid album that always seemed to be a possibility with her specifically, despite some Panic at the Disco and Fallout Boy style song titles that isn't really the case here. Dunno, though, that would've made the record at least feel like... something. While one of the easy criticisms over her last album is that it often felt too much like her and Antonoff were often lazily reworking Melodrama or NFR demo b-sides (with half-baked songs that often just reminded you of fuller ones from better albums), here they often seem to be ripping off... Taylor's own catalog. Not only do the lyrics often feel quite naive for a thirty-something industry vet, but I can't also shake the glaring deja Vu especially when there's a four song stretch that sounds EXACTLY like a pushed-in-and-out replication of the only song people seemed to remember from her last album (Anti-Hero). Again does she really need to try that hard anymore, considering most fans are just going to take the skeletal offerings and project their own galaxy-brained theories about who or what these vague lyrics can possibly be about, but if none of that outside noise interests you... well, likely nothing on this album will either. Perhaps by design it's clearly all-meant to be esoteric hand-shake listening, but like always that makes for really limited and undefined songwriting.

So the two theories I came up of the reasonably attractive blankness of the album first lies with simple Exhaustion. When this is her, what, eigth or ninth album of new or re-recorded music in a decade that's not half-over, coming in the middle of massive worldwide stadium tour, it seems natural there's a sense of weariness to the whole affair. Also very likely that this was very much a studio-mandated release cause they sure need someone to pay the bills for the next couple of cycles, and obviously Taylor's too big to not instantly go multi-platinum even if this was just an album of her reading shipping invoices for thirty songs. Considering, though, how much it seems like the whole Taylor phenomenon has completely dwarfed the excitement over her actual music and how much even she has seemed to focus on her own myth (whatever the fuck that means) and public persona these days, I'm starting to wonder how much longer she even wants to dance with the one whot brung her. Cause if this is the best she can currently do, as a songwriter and an actual artist it's becoming a really slow and tedious tumble down the mountain. (Edited)

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@spigelwii I don’t see how there is an offensive reference to Charlie Puth. Taylor doesn’t say anything offensive at all about him.

Overall, I’d say this is a really good album. Maybe it will prove to be a great one in time. It takes a few listens, but the songs are there. My one criticism is that the production is too safe. Still, I’ve listened several times and it is on the way to becoming a favourite.

At first I was disappointed with the anthology tracks, but even these are starting to sound really good after a few listens.

This might just end up being top tier Swift once the dust has settled. To those rating this 5/100, I honestly give up. (Edited)