The Tortured Poets Department Begs You to Close the Book

You cannot outrun Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.

It feels unfair that I cannot outrun Taylor Swift’s manuscript of painful truths. I was naive to think I would emerge from The Tortured Poets Department unscathed. She gets me every time.

Every Taylor Swift album review I compose seems to echo the same realization — that Swift should be the most unrelatable person on the planet, yet every song she writes is a mirror through which we see the parts of ourselves we’ve spent years trying to bury.

Look with me for a moment past the sound and the speculation about which lyrics are aimed at whom. View with me a work of art that is, first and foremost, a collection of poetry that’s as vulnerable as it is masterful.

Stripping it down to its lyrics implies the final product as a whole is imperfect, and perhaps for some listeners this is valid. You are allowed to dislike art — by definition, art cannot win over every consumer. Criticism is a personal right.

For me, lyrical analysis is a testament to a song’s complexity. A song can sound astonishing but fall to pieces when its words don’t resonate with someone.

It’s understandable to not resonate with Tortured Poets. Especially if you find yourself trapped at the tail end of a chapter in your life, refusing to move on from the events that led you there.

The entirety of this album is retrospective — so much so that Swift isn’t just telling us to close the chapter we’re on. She’s saying it’s time to close the book.

More than anything, TTPD is a love letter to self-hatred. A final goodbye to the past tragedies that crushed your heart. There is nothing wrong with rereading the book you’ve already closed. But you cannot begin a new one, a better one, until that final page is written.

I have been struggling to put into words how desperately I needed this screamed in my face unapologetically. I’ve felt the weight of my grievances slowing me down for months now. I scribbled in my journal just the other day something about how I wanted to begin a new chapter in my existence but didn’t know how to end the current one.

The answer is that I’ve continued writing a book whose final chapter has already ended. There is nothing left to gain from avoiding the final word that will close out the tragedy I’ve been retelling.

With this album, Swift spoke to everything that hurt her most, but with that final lyric at the end of the last song, it’s over. So long. You’re free. It took you 31 tracks to get there, but aren’t all of our most devastating seasons a little bit too long? Ever so slightly uncomfortable the longer we endure them?

It’s merely a coincidence that there are 31 songs in TTPD to digest for each of my 31 years. But contemplating an album requires a healthy amount of suspended disbelief. Tortured Poets is not about me, except when it’s playing in my ears, at which point I become the tortured poet. Until it ends.

The people who will enjoy this album most are the ones willing to give themselves over entirely to rapid introspection. You’ve likely never been to The Black Dog, but you’ve most likely lost a person who took a piece of your soul with them when they left. You’re probably not famous, but you’ve almost certainly shattered under the weight of capitalism’s endless screeching demands.

And that is the point of all of this. You cannot fully appreciate this album until you are willing to face your own demons, past or present. Swift writes in layers. Her songs are about multiple things at once. Look hard enough and you will find yourself in the music of a stranger, and you must decide whether or not you’re ready for the reflection snarling back at you.

Do not run from the truth. Listen closely, and it will guide you toward your new beginning.