When everyone thought Taylor Swift would not make any unusual moves she announced The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology
Nobody has the capacity to surprise fans the way Taylor Swift does. Everyone at midnight expected just the album. However, that is not what Taylor had in mind. Two hours later she revealed The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology as a second part of a double album. The double album consists of 31 songs and 2 hours of running time. The length has made some swifties still not have the chance to listen to the whole record.
Obviously, this is Taylor Swift, everyone is trying to be the first to find the matches between lyrics and events of her recent life. Her breakup with Joe Alwynn, her short affair with Matty Healy from The 1975 and her current relationship with Travis Kelce.
Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner take turns to join Taylor in her songwriting process for The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology
Jack Antonoff is well known by Swifties for main one of the Main co-writers through Taylor‘s career. He is credited with co-writing “Down Bad,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “Guilty as Sin,” “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” “The Alchemy,” “Fortnight” and the album’s title track. Austin Post a.k.a. Post Malone also has a credit on “Fortnight.” Post’s collaboration with Taylor Swift opens the album. The only other featured performer on TTPD is Florence and the Machine. She appears on the song “Florida!!!”. Florence Welch, the band’s primary songwriter and vocalist, is credited with helping write the track with Swift.
Besides Antonoff, Malone and Welch, 37, the only other songwriter listed in TTPD’s credits is Swift’s recent creative confidant, Aaron Dessner of The National. Dressner first worked with Swift on Folklore and Evermore. Since then, his work has appeared in the “From the Vault” songs of Fearless, Red and Speak Now. Dessner also helped produce songs on the Deluxe and 3 A.M. editions of Midnights. On TTPD, Dessner co-wrote five songs: “So Long, London,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “LOML,” “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and the album’s closer, “Clara Bow.”
Fans are analyzing lyrics and catching references everywhere
Taylor Swift writing about her past relationships and affairs makes it not appear like gossip. Fans are not interested because it’s just more celebrity news, it’s interesting because that’s the setting of her writing. It is not gossip if the audience actually uses it to further understand the art Taylor is making.
Obviously, her breakup with Joe Alwynn looked like it was going to be the main topic of discussion. However, turns out the affair with Matty Healy had a way bigger impact on her lyrics. The album features lyrics like “Cause he took me out of my box” which could be referring to how her affair with the singer from The 1975 took her out of the secrecy she held with Joe Alwynn.
In the extended version, we can clearly see a song related to Travis Kelce “So High School“. In this song, Swift makes references like “You know how to ball, I know Aristotle” speaking about how Travis is a football player and she is a songwriter.
Besides that, the lyrics bringing fandoms together again is featured in her song “imgonnagetyouback”. The rumors of Taylor Swift dating Fernando Alonso became strong after she broke up with Joe Alwynn. They were soon scrapped as she started dating Matty Healy and later Travis Kelce. The song has Swift singing she is “an Aston Martin”. This looks like a reference to those rumors as she could have said any other brand. Fernando Alonso drives for Aston Martin in Formula 1.
The setlist for the next part of the tour is completely unknown
We never know what to expect with Taylor Swift and this time is no different. The setlist for The Eras Tour could suffer some changes if she decides to add more songs from TTPD. Maybe even a new version of the movie could come out including them. The show already features 3 hours of songs. Fitting even more or even a new era just for The Tortured Poets Department looks very difficult. Even could mean some songs from the setlist have to be excluded for the new ones to be featured.
Lastly, fans are also worried they are seeing Taylor next month and not having time to memorize the new songs. A month might not be enough for fans who are not masterminds to learn and be able to sing along in their concerts. But, before any of that happens we will have to see if this era makes it to the tour even so swifties will have to wait for the first date in Paris for the French fans to confirm what they saw at the stadiums. The first concert of the European leg of the Eras Tour will take place on May 9th. Paris is the chosen city for the beginning of this part of the Eras Tour.
Guillermo Lorenzo Manzano
