We need to start with numbers. Twenty-four hours after the release of Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, it became the most streamed record of all time, with 313 million streams on Spotify alone. (At the time of writing this article the full details of physical copies sold aren’t yet published.) That number – as though countries full of people have listened to it all in such a short period of time. Swift is predicted to occupy the upcoming Top 12 of the Billboard Hot 100. 

There is simply nobody else in the music business that does it like her. What is even more impressive is that The Tortured Poets Department is as far from the popular, blasted-by-the-radio, shaking-it-off version of Taylor Swift as it is possible to be. There isn’t a single outright banger on this record: the listener won’t find a new Cruel Summer here, or a new Love Story.

Instead, they’ll receive a gift of 31 songs – the original version of TTPD was made of 16 tracks; two hours after the initial release, Swift surprised her fans with a second album containing an additional 15 songs, with the complete double album titled The Tortured Poets Department – The Anthology – that are raw, deeply personal and haunting.

The Tortured Poets Department feels like a purge. It isn’t pretty, but it doesn’t want to be. Swift is finished pandering to the listener, or trying to appeal to the masses. One could observe that she’s in a perfectly safe place to attempt this: a brand new billionaire, whose Eras tourwas the biggest and best selling of all time. Yet one also needs to keep in mind that this is a position the fall from which would hurt the most. This is also a place where sticking to familiarity would be a safe bet, and nobody would be surprised or complain.

Taylor Swift takes risks here. Not much with production – she worked on TTPD with her long-time friend and producer Jack Antonoff as well as The National’s Aaron Dessner, and this trio could make a number one out of nursery rhymes if they wanted to. It’s her songwriting, her biggest talent, that Swift has managed to take to another level here. TTPD is full of poetic, sensual, sad, heartbreaking, touching, riveting, outright unhinged, powerful songwriting.

Swift’s loudest critics like to complain she’s too navel-gazing, too interested in ‘talking about her ex-boyfriends’. She does so much more than that, and all of it is on full display here, fully self-aware and unafraid of mocking herself.

On the album we have songs about the difficulties of loving someone with depression like So Long, London (“I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift / Pulled him in tighter each time he was drifting away / My spine split from carrying us up the hill”); songs about the highs and lows of rebound relationships like Down Bad (“Now I’m down bad crying at the gym / Everything comes out, teenage petulance”), songs about the toxic aspects of fandom like But Daddy I Love Him (“I’ll tell you something about my good name / It’s mine alone to disgrace / I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empath’s clothing / God save the most judgmental creeps / Who say they want what’s best for me”), songs about remaining a professional in the wake of personal tragedy like I Can Do It With A Broken Heart (“Breaking down I hit the floor / All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting MORE!”) and songs about the temperamental and elusive nature of fame, like the initial album closer Clara Bow – where Swift breaks the third wall by addressing herself in third person (“You look like Taylor Swift in this light / We’re loving it. You’ve got edge she never did / The future’s bright”).

The second album of The Anthology offers listeners even more multi-layered storytelling. This is an album that could stand on its own two feet, like a grownup version of Folklore and Evermore – so-called ‘sister albums’ both released in 2020. The Prophecy is a breathtaking story of loneliness; Casandra riffs off the Greek mythology and Salem witch trials simultaneously; I Hate It Here explores the magic of reading and Robin is a laudatory verse about childhood.

All this is tied up at the end with The Manuscript, possibly the most defining song of Taylor Swift’s career. She explains how cathartic songwriting is, how it is her way of processing life experiences, and how once it is done it becomes a thing of its own, ready to be shared with the audience and to become their thing.

The Tortured Poets Department is an intense listening experience: emotion-heavy, and overwhelming at times, but sang with confidence and impressive vocal range throughout. Some songs feel like instant classics after only one listen (how is it possible that The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived never officially existed until the April 19, 2024?).

On The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift attains the status of musical poet laureate. “Who’s afraid of a little old me?” she screeches, in the song of the same title – and we should be. If this is what her art is like now, imagine the growth and boundary-breaking in her craft in decades to come.

Taylor Swift plays the Principality Stadium, Cardiff on Tue 18 June.

Tickets: from £57.65 (sold out). Info: here

words GOSIA BUZZANCA