Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department (2024)

Reason for Listening:
Weeks on Chart greater than 4x the rank.
#3 on the Billboard 200 (Week of 20241228).
Last Week: 1 | Peak: 1 | Weeks on Chart: 35

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Released 20240419.
16 songs. 65:08. The Tortured Poets Department (2024)
16+15 songs. 65:08+57:13. The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology (2024)
Wikipedia

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Notes:
--20240903--
First listen.
--20240904--
Second listen.
--20241227--
Third listen.
hehe she makes a plug for Charlie Puth. that got me thinking... to be favored by Taylor Swift is huge. I wonder what the impact of her mention of him on his sales would have been... [to clarify, I'm not saying he asked for it, I'm just saying on a whim Swift likes someone and amplifies their stardom just by association or mention]
After the first listen. I found the album to be overall chill and mellow. Not as folky as some of her recent folk albums, but definitely nothing as pop as her pop albums.
Fourth listen.
I don't know what this song is about, but it has a great sound ("My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys")
I suppose the song is simply "my boy" = "ex-boyfriend" breaking "his favorite toy" = "narrator" (Taylor Swift), as-in breaking someone's heart; I think the last few lines are much more explicit [the entire song is an extended analogy]
The words and repetition of "Down Bad" sounds great, but I have no idea what it means
Ha! "Try and come for my dog." Reference to John Wick, right? ("I Can Do It With A Broken Heart")

4: "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys";
3: "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart";
2: "The Tortured Poets Department"; "Down Bad"; "But Daddy I Love Him";
1: "Fortnight" (ft. Post Malone); "Florida!!!" (ft. Florence + The Machine); "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?"; "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived"; "The Alchemy";
0: "So Long, London"; "Fresh Out of the Slammer"; "Guilty as Sin?"; "I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)"; "loml"; "Clara Bow";

Summary:
I've been more into pop music lately, so this album feels especially slow. In addition, there seems to be a lot to unwind from the lyrics. In theory I like that kind of music (lyrical), but at the moment I don't want to do the reading. As such, I'll be giving the album a lower rating than it probably deserves. In particular, the music itself is pleasant to listen to. There is both a familiarity (some songs have snippets that remind me of older songs) and newness to it (a kind of ever-evolving style).

Overall Rating: 4.4/5
Favorite Song: "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys"

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