Taylor Swift releases new album: “The Tortured Poets Department” on April 19 and here are some thoughts.

After days of listening, I think it is time I share with you my thoughts on the reputable Taylor Swift’s new album— “The Tortured Poets Department.”

At midnight of April 19, Swift released her 11th studio album and then two hours later at 2 a.m. she surprised the world yet again with the news of a double album— “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology”— which features fifteen additional songs on top of the original sixteen songs, giving us fans a total of thirty-one new songs. 

Now to preface, I have not had a chance to listen to all thirty-one new songs enough to give a completely well-rounded review of them all, so my following thoughts are going to be referring to only the sixteen on “The Tortured Poets Department.”

Since its release, I have heard a lot of mixed feelings about the album. 

Some fans feel as though she is just releasing for quantity of work rather than taking the time to perfect and produce the quality of work that her previous albums have shown.

While I have not listened to her second new album as much, I would disagree when it comes to the first new album. I think that it demonstrates a different era of her life. 

After the breakup of her six-year private relationship with Joe Alwyn, you would expect that this album would be a completely relatable breakup album full of pain. 

However, I think the album is more than that. I think it demonstrates a mixture of emotions about more than just her private relationship’s end. 

I think she uses this album to explore not only all the feelings that have come with her breakup with Joe Alwyn but also feelings evoked from other instances in her life that she has previously kept quiet about— other past relationships, the media’s perception of her, celebrity scandals and more. 

I think that a big reason a lot of Swift’s previous albums have been such a hit is because of her ability to take her pain and her life experiences and turn them into something so metaphorically and beautifully relatable. 

Because of this, I think fans were expecting the same for this album. However, I would say that this album is more personal to her life. To me, the album feels like Swift is spilling all of her secrets to us, rather than giving us an album that we feel is strictly about our own lives.

Though I can understand some of the points that people have made about the album, I think that people are being a little too harsh with their judgements. 

While the album is not my favorite of hers that she has released, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that this is a bad album, and it is definitely not my least favorite of hers. 

I have quite a few favorite songs on the album with (at this moment in time) my top five tracks being “Guilty as Sin,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” and “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” 

Overall, in my opinion I would say that she put out a pretty great album (again I am not speaking on the Anthology). I think just solely based off the first sixteen songs that she created a good mix of sounds and themes that I thoroughly enjoy and find to be extremely catchy. 

As a Swiftie, the release of two new albums feels like a celebratory end to the semester and the perfect start to summer.