Hola Bibliofriends,

This series of posts if for all of my fellow Swifties out there! You’ve most likely heard of a recent album release called The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift, well there is just so much to unpack from this album that I felt like I needed a place to correlate and collect all of my thoughts together, so here’s my track by track musings and theories.

This will be Part One of several to cover the entire TTPD anthology, (because writing a thought-post about 31 songs is going to make it longer than War and Peace…)… In this block, I’m going to focus on the first eight tracks of the TTPD Anthology album because by the time I got to the end of Florida!!! I realised how long this first bit was! 😂 So many thoughts…!!!!!

I remember setting my alarm for 4.54am the morning TTPD dropped! As I’m not on any streaming services, I initially wasn’t going to purchase the digital album as I knew Taylor normally drops a second version with an added few songs and seeing as I’d already forked out for all 4 vinyl variants and collectors cds, I really didn’t want to screw myself over. However, in all the 4.54am feelings of buzzing excitement and non-awakedness, I ended up downloading it anyway! My first run through was so chaotic and confusing – the thoughts were basically incoherent, I think there was definitely a few tear drops and lots of shocked gasps. Then, the confusion really hit home that the context of the album was way off what I had actually been anticipating!

Fortnight ft. Post Malone – The way this song kicks off the whole album… what a statement! From the final line of the Midnights album, ‘Have they come to take me away?’ to ‘I was supposed to be sent away, but they forgot to come and get me…’ – that is really setting up the state of mind for these next 30 tracks and I am here for it. Not to mention her voice sounds so incredibly smoky and ethereal. It almost has a dirge-like quality which complements the black and white vibes from the music video. There’s some kind of bittersweet paradox about telling someone that you love them, yet they’re ruining your life. I think Post Malone’s voice harmonises really well with Taylor’s and I get totally swept up in the catchiness of it all. I’m not terribly sure what to think of the three Posts theory, whether I quite buy into that analogy but I did love the little features from former Dead Poets Society members Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles, that sneaky black dog, the Story of Us and the Style references.
Favourite Lines:
I love you, it’s ruining my life
Your wife waters flowers, I wanna kill her
I took the miracle move on drug, the effects were temporary

The Tortured Poets Department – I can’t deny that I’m a little in love with the 80s vibe of this intro. Upon first listening I was so prepared for a J track to link to The Tortured Man Club, but then the second verse made me swiftly shift my theories – and it was at this part that my brain began getting totally confused in the odyssey of who’s who during this anthology. Nevertheless, TTPD is another track that I can’t help but sing out loud. I love the Patti Smith and Dylan Thomas references too, as well as branding themselves ‘modern idiots’ – I feel like I can see Taylor actually saying it! The bridge at the end with the ring imagery… – oh my, my heart was also exploding at this part, but definitely not for the same reasons as in the song!
Favourite Lines:
You left your typewriter at my apartment, straight from the Tortured Poets Department

My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys – The ‘oh, oh’ and elongated ‘oys’ in this are insane! This track immediately grabbed me. The analogy of being a discarded toy is so sad and is written in such an exquisite detail throughout this whole song, I’m a little gutted that it wasn’t actually on the Barbie soundtrack. There’s a real sense of acceptance and determination to get her guy back, especially with the edginess at the start of the second verse and the ‘litany of reasons why’. I can’t help but think back to cardigan from folklore when she feels like ‘an old cardigan under someone’s bed’ and now here she is, being the toy that got left behind. The fact she thinks fixing herself is going to make him miss her is devastating. When Pixar wrote this title over a picture of Sid from Toy Story… absolute class!
Favourite Lines:
There was a litany of reasons why we could’ve playеd for keeps this time, I know I’m just repeating mysеlf
+ the entire outro

Down Bad – This is one of those songs that everyone was immediately buzzing about and admittedly, I wasn’t all that fussed by it on my first few run throughs of the album. As a bit of a potty-mouth, I was totally here for all of the F-bombs, but I think I was in my confused stage of realisation that she clearly had way deeper emotions for someone than those of us on the outside ever really saw or knew about. Now I’ve sat with the song for countless replays, it has massively grown on me and has become such a mood! It’s like a tragic pit of black despair in musical form with a side of passive stubbornness – what’s the point of it all?! The way she cannot bring herself to say the word ‘over’ and the way that she sings ‘Cause f*ck it I was in love’ at the end of the bridge make my heart bleed. I have to train myself not to play this too late into my car journey to school so it gets stuck in my head. It really wouldn’t go down too well with the parents if I kept singing ‘f*ck it if I can’t have him’ around the classroom with the kids…
Favourite Lines:
For a moment I knew cosmic love, now I’m down bad crying at the gym
How dare you say that it’s—-

So Long, London – As soon as the track titles were released and we saw this was the Track 5 – I think we all knew then, that this one was going to cut deep. The intro sounds like the choral music that you expect to hear at Westminster Abbey, which is one of London’s most famous landmarks. It’s probably my favourite intro of the whole album and was naturally likened to wedding bells… Even though this song has been added to the ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’ Playlist on Apple Music to signify ‘acceptance’, for me this song really reflects the entirety of the whole five stages of grief that have been associated with this album even prior to its release. There’s the denial of seeing the ‘fairy lights in the mist’ and carrying ‘the weight of the rift’, then comes the anger at being pissed off about wasted youth and being left at the house by (Hampstead) Heath. The bridge brings about bargaining as she has to explain why she ‘abandoned the ship’ and found it hard to breathe. Depression comes from the third verse where she painfully declares that she ‘died on the altar waitin’ for the proof’ and is ‘mad as hell’ because she loved the life that she’d built there. Finally we get that shattering ending of acceptance when she signs off by realising she’s not the one, it won’t out and ‘(he)’ll find someone’. I mean – what a farewell message! This song has so much to unpack and I feel like Taylor is almost saying farewell to the entirety of the past 7-8 years of her life and the link she has to London. Melancholia to the core!
Favourite Lines:
You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waitin’ for the proof, You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days, And I’m just getting color back into my face, I’m just mad as hell ’cause I loved this place

But Daddy I Love Him – OMG my love for this song is unreal!!! This is my carpool karaoke track! On first listen, I thought is was so random and couldn’t pinpoint a context for the song at all. Fastforward to the almost 24/7 listenathon this album is having in my ears and this song… It ate! I heard every single word. I dance around my kitchen to this song with a glass of wine in hand. It’s a little prairie town scandal and I am living for the drama! The way she shuts down all those ‘judgemental creeps’ who dare to think they’re allowed to impose an opinion on who she decides to fall in love with… I mean yes, come April 2023 – we all had thoughts, but there’s a difference to spilling the tea with your swiftie friends away from the public world of the internet, to writing an open letter to someone’s mother and preaching over social media… 🤯 She explained this so magnificently that I belt out the post-chorus and the bridge with beaming pride. When I finally get around to putting all the tracks off this Anthology in favourite order, expect this one to be right up there at the top!
Favourite Lines: All the lines. Every. Damn. One. 🙏

Fresh Out the Slammer – This one is definitely a grower on me. That little line, ‘fresh out the slammer, oh’ – occasionally I will sing that line randomly in other songs across the anthology, it’s too catchy! The imagery of being trapped in a dead relationship that you compare it to a prison is haunting, but then so is the forswearing of being ‘at the starting line’ (another MH link?), running to someone new and vowing not to lose them again. With each new listen of this track, I seem to pick up parallels to other songs from midnights and folklore and I love a track can give me so many layers.
Favourite Lines:
Years of labor, locks and ceilings, In the shade of how he was feelin’
All those nights you kept me going, swirled you into all of my poems

Florida!!! ft. Florence + the Machine – For the purpose of transparency, Florence and Taylor are my two GOATs. I have been clowning for this collab ever since I saw Florence Welch post a story on her insta back in 2020 saying that she loved the key change at 2:12 of exile from folklore. Then there was that sneaky post of her in the background of the pic of Taylor and Denise Welch… then she was spotted coming out of the studio in May from a Taylor event which many had rumoured to be a listening party for the Speak Now TV release. From this point, I was manifesting so hard for the collab that when Florida!!! was announced I bounced around the room like Tigger on acid. The song itself I love! Florence’s verse about the hurricane with her name that actually links to the real Hurricane Florence that hit the US in 2018… being haunted and drunk with her ghosts in the bathroom! This is the Florence that I know and ADORE. I am convinced that Emily Jean Stone and her ‘oddities’ come in the form of her singing the part of the song where “Love left me like this and I don’t want to exist, So take me to Florida” is sung… If it isn’t that, then it must be some kind of storyline contribution. What else could those damn oddities be? I’m so intrigued!
Favourite Lines:
Well, me and my ghosts, wе had a hell of a time, Yes, I’m hauntеd, but I’m feeling just fine
So I did my best to lay to rest, All of the bodies that have ever been on my body, And in my mind, they sink into the swamp, Is that a bad thing to say in a song?
At least the dolls are beautiful, fuck me up, Florida
What a crash, what a rush, fuck me up, Florida

And I’m done… for now! Stay tuned for Part 2 where we start with Guilty as Sin? 👀 👀 👀

Have you listened to TTPD yet, what thoughts do you have on the first 8 tracks? Have you got an album favourite yet? As always, drop me a comment to chat!

T xx

🤍 [Author’s note: I am a huge Taylor fan and cannot wait to be singing loudly (not screaming) along to all 3 and a half hours of songs at Wembley in August with other swifties. However, I’m well aware that Taylor is also a person just like the rest of us. Songwriting is her own way of communicating her version of events and experiences, therefore we only have the side of the story she wants us to know about. I don’t believe in hating on people over the internet and to be honest her dating life is not really anybody’s business but hers. I’ve tried to keep my personal feelings about certain individuals out of this and just stick to my thoughts of where these songs may have come from. As a former English Literature and History student, breaking down literature, language and symbolism is almost what I’ve been raised to do. Analysing lyrics to try and identify deeper meaning, especially coming from an artist who likes to leave us hidden easter eggs everywhere is seemingly natural. Yes all of these songs are about Taylor first and foremost rather than some guy, but they’re also the message that Taylor wants us to hear and know about, therefore we are going to theorise about almost every line and parallel we can draw from this mastermind’s discography – and boy what a gift we have been given in TTPD! And as we know all too well, theories are all that we can have – they regularly fall into the categories of ‘clowning‘ and ‘delulu‘ so none of this swiftie’s random musings here should be taken as anything other than just that!] 🤍