Another New “Era” Begins for Swift with New Album
The Tortured Poets Department is dark and haunting. It’s her first adult breakup record. Rolling Stones critic Rob Sheffield wrote, “She sounds confused, bitter, raging, vulnerable, yet more gloriously chaotic than we’ve ever heard her before.” Variety called it: “…a boldly candid breakup album, with some of her most quotable lyrics ever.”
The album features songs by Post Malone and Florence & The Machine. She used her two favorite collaborators, Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner. Antonoff wrote most of the tracks with Swift. Aaron Dessner is a musician and producer best known as a founding member of The National.
Taylor Swift announced the new album to the world at the Grammy Awards in February.
Two weeks later, at the Melbourne stop on her wildly successful Eras Tour, Swift told the crowd, “The things I was going through, the things I was writing about, it kind of reminded me why songwriting is something that like actually gets me through my life. I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it on ‘Tortured Poets.’”
Fortnight for Just Five Seconds
Taylor Swift and her team are very good at giving fans hidden hints and teases about her new projects, and this time they were thoroughly confused by the messages she was giving fans. She sent fans on a scavenger hunt this week.
She added five playlists on her Apple Music channel, each containing a piece of her own past songs that represent the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The Tortured Poets Department intentionally confronts those themes. This five-second clip (yes, just five seconds) of her duet with Post Malone was first posted on Instagram; it will be the first single.
Apple Music also added a word of the day countdown which, when unscrambled, said, “We hereby conduct this post mortem.” Also, she posted an Instagram post that read, “And so I enter into evidence / my tarnished coat of arms. / My muses, acquired like bruises / My talismans and charms …” Any guesses? One reporter wrote, “...these clues for The Toruted Poets Department are overwhelming.“
Eras Tour Goes On, No Rest for the Billionaire
Taylor Swift’s life has been an open book for the past several years. The new album comes after her new famous relationship with football star Travis Kelce. He heard the album before its release and called it “unbelievable.” With such a public relationship, Swift and Kelce have every move and comment they make analyzed. One has to wonder how such public scrutiny and surveillance will ultimately affect their relationship.
From their public displays of affection, Swift and Kelce appear to have a loving and beautiful relationship. If this relationship is to survive, the couple must continue to center their love and not allow the external metaphorical noise to sever their bond. Without question, both superstars’ fans are rooting for the couple’s long-term success.
Also, in the past few months, Taylor Swift has witnessed a noteworthy rise in her wealth. According to Forbes, Swift became a billionaire in October 2023. She is the first musician to make the Forbes Billionaire list solely based on her songs and performances.
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Bradley Tachco is a career journalist. He spent more than a decade as a writer and producer at CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
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