The Daily Telegraph - Features
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Taylor Swift: The Tortured Poets Department
Republic ★★★★★
Taylor Swift is the great influencer, the reigning pop superstar of our social-media-fixated times. The wittily titled Tortured Poets Department may be the apogee of her selfbranded gossipy songcraft, a musical roman-à-clef so densely packed with references to her own torturous love affairs with other beautiful actors, pop stars and sportsmen that it is hard to decide whether you are listening to a song cycle or a catching up with a soap opera.
On the simplest of terms, what we have here is a very smart, seductive, lyrically sharp set of smooth synth pop songs about affairs of the heart, crafted with love, intelligence and passion – another hugely appealing addition to Swift’s expanding canon. But it can be hard to disentangle the hook lines from the headlines on an album that is not so much a blockbuster entertainment release as a global news event.
So here’s my hot take on the over-arching narrative of the 34-year-old’s 11th original album, one she has described as a “lifeline” album she “really needed” to make. Although it features one sumptuously sad and gorgeous, lyrically forensic dissection of a fading romance with a depressed Brit on So Long, London (that would be actor Joe Alwyn, whom she dated for six years, but sounds like she got over in about six minutes), the arc of this album is about a torrid and obsessive affair with a bad-boy poet. That would presumably be Matty Healy, the frontman for The 1975, who is likely to wince when he hears what she has to sing about him. The album’s stand-out track is the icily vengeful The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, on which she rails against the duplicity of her ex, questions whether he was ever sincere, and evens burns him with a sexual double entendre: “Once your queen had come / You treat her like an also ran / You didn’t measure up / In any measure of a man.” Impressively, the backing amps up with the tone of Swift’s vengeful rage, rising like a percussive tsunami to wash away her feelings. But the same fickle lover is disposed of with more gentle sorrow on brooding piano ballad LOML, an acronym for both Love of My Life and Loss of My Life. Some real heartbreak has gone into these songs, and Swift’s fantastic singing makes sure you can feel every emotion.
This is effectively Swift’s breakup album. It is not in the league of such heartbreak classics as Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks and Joni Mitchell’s Blue, but at least it reaches for such heights. Swift knows her way around metaphors and similes and delights in conjuring delicately cascading tranches of clever puns and dazzling word play rooted in real feelings. Yet she chooses to deploy that wordy singer-songwriter style in a modern pop setting determined to lay radio hooks on thick. There’s an unarguable charm to the romcom country pop of But Daddy I Love Him, the sci-fi synth pop of My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys and Down Bad, and crowd-pleasing electro banger I Can Do It With a Broken Heart. But it is only when Swift stops trying to please everyone all the time and bares her soul and her teeth that she really draws blood.
On the thoughtful album closer, Clara Bow, she takes a stab at the entertainment industry’s obsession with youth and beauty. There are some welcome sharp edges here, but I venture that when she is ready to stop feeding the American dream machine, that is when she will be ready to make her masterpiece.