Taylor Swift announced a new album titled The Tortured Poets Department during her Best Pop Vocal Album acceptance speech at the 66th Grammy Awards show in Los Angeles Jan. 4. The album will be released April 19.
The audience watching this year was heavily comprised of Swifties who were elated when Taylor Swift was first spotted on the red carpet wearing an elegant, classy, and timeless white dress, paired with black gloves. The two colors complemented each other. Earlier that morning, Swift caused mayhem when she changed her profile icons across all her social media platforms from the recognizable cover of her 10th studio album, Midnights, to a gray-filtered version of the cover. Fans had been speculating a handful of possible dates for when Swift would release the highly anticipated Reputation (Taylor’s Version,) and initially thought this was the first clue that a new Taylor’s Version announcement was on the brink. Later that day, Swift’s online website “crashed.” The homepage of the website had an error message that read, Error 321 Backend fetch failed. This is a communication error that occurs with a receiving fax machine, typically when there is poor telephone connection. This left fans with only one lyric in mind from Swift’s lead single from Reputation, titled Look What You Made You Do, in which she says, “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now.” Sitting below the error message was a cluster of letters that fans would unscramble to “red herring.” A red herring is “a clue or piece of information that is, or is intended to be, misleading or distracting.” Fans then wondered what the red herring Swift was alluding to could be. The general consensus was that the “distraction” might be the Grammys themselves, and that Swift would actually announce Reputation (Taylor’s Version) in the near future, possibly at her approaching Eras Tour shows.
Swift had twelve previous Grammys under her belt when she won Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights. Since thirteen is Swift’s lucky number and is such a massive part of her life, fans could only hope that she would make a special announcement for this special win. Swift accepted the award and gave her speech in which she shocked everyone by saying, “I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret I have been keeping for the last two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19. It’s called The Tortured Poets Department.” Many swifties got flashbacks to when only two short years ago Swift announced Midnights at the 2022 Video Music Awards by telling the audience in a similar manner, “I thought it might be a fun moment to tell you that my brand new album comes out October 21. I will tell you more at midnight.” The Tortured Poets Department will include 16 standard tracks ranging from Track 1: Fortnight, Track 5: So Long, London to Track 16: Clara Bow, and one bonus track appropriately titled, The Manuscript.
Immediately after making the thrilling announcement, Swift posted the album cover along with a snippet of the album’s prologue that reads, “And so I enter into evidence. My tarnished coat of arms. My muses, acquired like bruises. My talismans and charms. The tick, tick, tick of love bombs. My veins of pitch black ink. All’s fair in love and poetry. Sincerely, The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department.” From the few picture shown of the album photoshoot, the information given in the prologue, and the titles of the songs, it’s safe to assume the main theme and marketing of this album will be centered around poetry and writing. The idea that “All’s fair in love and poetry” is Swift’s way of telling everyone that she feels it’s fair game to express and give the listener whatever personal feelings and descriptions are necessary surrounding everything that has happened in her life for the last two years in this album’s lyrics. That then poses the question of whether or not this album will be more raw and honest than her past projects. Only time will tell.
All in all, the Midnights era has officially come to an end and Swifties are no longer setting their clocks to meet Swift at midnight like they’ve been doing for the past two years, but instead prepare to join the department of tortured poets.
