Taylor Swift does not rest. And she’s not letting Swifties rest either. While accepting the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album for her 2022 smash hit Midnights on Sunday, Feb. 4, the superstar announced she’s releasing her 11th studio album, not even two years after her last body of originals, and only six months after the release of her most recent re-recording. All of this, mind you, while touring all corners of the world in her record-breaking Eras Tour. She really would break her back to make us all break a smile.
Taylor’s legendary run with folklore, evermore, and Midnights, which landed her two Grammys for Album of the Year in three years, and made her the most popular artist on Earth, will undeniably be hard to follow, but if there’s anyone that can, it’s her.
What’s the title of Taylor Swift’s upcoming album?
Taylor’s new album is ominously titled The Tortured Poets Department (not to be confused with the Dead Poets Society — don’t be like me). A title so much longer than those of her previous records that Swifties have joked that Taylor’s ever-growing personal and professional friendship with Lana del Rey has caused her to drop the one-world album titles for a full sentence.
The album will have literary inspirations and is conceptualized to fit the hierarchy and bureaucracy of an actual department. To introduce the release, Taylor left fans a message in a file signed “The Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department” and initiated with the sentence “And so I enter into evidence.” As for what that evidence is, the singer cryptically listed her “tarnished coat of arms,” her “muses, acquired like bruises,” her “talismans and charms,” the “tick, tick, tick of love bombs, and her “veins of pitch black ink.”
The thesis of the album, however, was in the closing of the letter where Taylor wrote “All’s fair in love and poetry.” Fans generally believe this means The Tortured Poets Department will be a vulnerable album, where the artist will bear her soul and talk about the heartbreaking ending of her six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn.
At the Grammys, Taylor said she had been holding on to the secret of this brand-new album for two years, which is also when she wrote what is still the clearest window she’s opened into the break-up in the form of the song “You’re Losing Me.” Could this new album explore the relationship between making great art and experiencing the suffering that almost always inspires it? Its title and description certainly seem to point in that direction.
What’s the tracklist for The Tortured Poets Department?
The Tortured Poets Department will be composed of 16 new songs, plus a bonus track. The latter is titled “The Manuscript.” The deluxe version of the CD will contain what Taylor calls “Collector’s Edition artifacts” including a “The Manuscript” patch, a “Department” bookmark, a “The Manuscript” magnet, and four photo cards.
One of the first factors fans look for in a tracklist is the collaborations and The Tortured Poets Department did not disappoint in that… department. The album includes two featured artists, and they’re not small names either. Rapper Post Malone and rock band Florence+ The Machine both lent Taylor a helping hand. GRAMMY-nominated producer Louis Bell is a rumored producer on the album — he’s worked with Taylor on the song “Afterglow” from her Lover album.
- “Fortnight (ft. Post Malone)”
- “The Tortured Poets Department”
- “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”
- “Down Bad”
- “So Long, London”
- “But Daddy I Love Him”
- “Fresh Out the Slammer”
- “Florida!!! (ft. Florence + The Machine)”
- “Guilty as Sin?”
- “What’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”
- “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”
- “loml”
- “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”
- “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”
- “The Alchemy”
- “Clara Bow”
- “The Manuscript (Bonus Track)”
When is The Tortured Poets Department coming out?
Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album The Tortured Poets Department is dropping on April 19, 2024. Anyone attending the Eras Tour after that date will have extra homework to get through ahead of their concert, but, also, hopefully, a brand new set waiting for them on stage.
The album is available to pre-order now on Taylor Swift’s official store in all formats including CD, cassette, and vinyl. The Collector’s Edition Deluxe CD with all the artifacts described above is a limited release, available until February 7th at 9 pm EST. Prices range from $12.99 for the CD to $34.99 for the vinyl.
