An Overdue Indictment, A Justified Acquittal: The Tortured Poets Department

by Lily Meade

When I was asked to analyze The Tortured Poets Department and write this review, I thought two things:

First, how great to be paid to do something I would have been doing anyway.

Second, how will I do this objectively?

I am a confessed Swiftie, but people come to reviews for honesty. They don’t want to read paragraphs of someone gushing, rating songs on a vibes scale, or keysmashing in all caps. As a traditionally published novelist raised by a journalism major, I am aware and value the integrity of nuanced critique.

But I’ve found as I’ve listened to Poets that it is impossible to divorce the art from the artist on this album. To understand this record is to examine the evidence Swift has put on display. The exhibits can’t be summarized in mere compliments or complaints on wordplay and production, at least not in entirety. To judge The Tortured Poets Department—as Swift herself asks you to do—is to judge not only Taylor, in her rawest and most unvarnished glory, but also yourself and those around you.

In ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ Taylor directly scolds her most loyal fans whose so-called best intentions for her have corroded from a comfort to a catalyst. What is the point of wanting the best for someone—she asks across imagery of a dutiful daughter running off with a western outlaw—if you don’t truly know what they want at all? She’s hit her breaking point and the pieces are scattered in every line of this album.

She’s been known to strike back at the media and misinformation, but this is the first time she’s targeted the people who supposedly claim they care. From the wine moms who watch her spotlighted like Princess Diana on football games to the most dedicated and ravenous Swifties who would proudly claim to know everything about her. “I was tame, I was gentle, till the circus life made me mean,” she snarls in ‘Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?’ “Don’t you worry, folks. We took out all her teeth.”

Most people would have expected this album to stir up intense feelings. It was forecasted to be brutal and sad, but is really only one of those things. This is an album of rage and defeat. Every fan theory is proved wrong and reflected in a hall of mirrors back at the creators and collaborators, a distortion of pain and anguish people wished from her to entertain them at the crumbling carnival freak show of her life.

This album makes you feel uncomfortable. About Taylor. About her suitors. About yourself. But it is somehow also an exhilaration of release. It is a black comedy of sorts, shocking you into laughter at things that seem too rough to joke about. She is no longer simply vulnerably honest, but unrepentantly so. She can scold her most devoted about judging her romance and call the same icon of affection ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ mere tracks later.

Before this album was released, Taylor talked repeatedly about how writing it was healing for her in a crucial way. She was vocal about how excited she was to share it with us, which feels like a fever dream on your first listen of the record because the rage is palpable. Taylor is coming undone and lashing out. It feels exactly like watching an autopsy on someone still alive, seeing the examiners dissect and diagnose every failing while the subject bleeds out on the table.

This is not going to be an album of universal acclaim. It is going to cull the herd of the casual public as well as those who claim to truly stand by Swift. She has murdered the princess of the fairytale she built her image around until the tower became a trap. She is happy to be the haunting witch looming over the townsfolk daring them to try her. She’s satisfied in the death of her sainthood for the sake of her humanity.

The only fan theory that seemed to survive the actual album was the stages of grief, but even that is not executed as assumed. The form of acceptance that Taylor reaches in ‘Clara Bow,’ the final song of the album’s original tracklist, is not an optimistic breath of fresh air on the other side of a trial but instead a lament. It is a chronicle of the passage of time, a cycle repeating endlessly, young talents being sacrificed again and again to the altar of adoration with no absolution.

And yet still, the album as a whole is a balm of relatability if you can stomach the scathing enough to truly listen. Taylor Swift is not perfect. She has confessed that time and time again but it never seems to sink below the surface level. It’s inescapable now. “Tell me I’m despicable, say it’s unforgivable. What a crush, what a rush! Fuck me up, Florida!” She’s gleeful in how thoroughly she has destroyed her aching halo. It’s so freeing, for her and for yourself. If you let it.

I am feeling unmoored in every aspect of my life. Personal, professional, existential. I’m currently crowdfunding to help me avoid homelessness for the third time. I feel a distinct level of humiliation and haunting resentment that less than a year from the publication of my debut novel I am in the worst financial position I have ever been. While my peers announce third and second book deals, my book gets bumped because patching the fires of my life hurt my ability to revise quick enough.

To say that I was looking forward to a bookish themed Taylor Swift album that we assumed was about mourning a lost future was an understatement. I have never felt so defeated, jaded, and hopeless as I have in the past few months. So I should feel unmoored by the reality of this record, right? I should be reeling. This album did not convince me that everything will be okay again with time, that I still have the chance for a great tomorrow despite how endless my struggles are now.

This album gave me a knife, still dripping with blood, and told me to carve out the rot. It won’t heal what was lost. It cannot hide the holes. It won’t make me prettier or more liked. It might make everything worse. But it’s my choice. “They say, ‘Babe, you gotta fake it till you make it.’ And I did,” Taylor croons to a relentless danceable beat in ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.’ She goes on and on about how amazing, productive, and talented she is to be able to execute her job so flawlessly when she’s absolutely miserable.

And that’s what I needed to hear. I will still be capable of going after what I dream of, what I crave so desperately, the only thing that gives me true purpose. I can still do my job, even if I feel like everything is falling apart. In this culture where all we do and interact with is designed to make us aim to be adored, a call to be human over humble is overdue.

That’s the only parasocial part of her life we can truly claim as our own. We are still allowed to find ourselves in the pain she chooses to pen, but that is all we are entitled to. We are not owed a seat or a governing vote to her most private desires or despair, no matter the reason or claimed concern for the cost. “I’ll tell you something about my good name: it’s mine alone to disgrace.”

The Tortured Poets Department is an indictment as well as a justified acquittal. The defendants and prosecutors are yours to interpret. No member hazed in the fraternity will leave the ruling unchanged. In the aftermath, the cold light of day feels alien. The scandal, guilty or not guilty, will stain the accused forever no matter the outcome.

What comes next? Taylor leaves this chapter unfinished in the physical versions of the album. The album drives you to the cliff edge she keeps taking listeners in so much of her suicidal ideation. You stare at the rocks that could slice apart everything that you thought you knew. About her. About what you expected, wanted, internally demanded this album to be. Do you walk away? Will that change anything? Is it easier to end it all than to sit in this pain? You can’t go back. “Your home is really only a town you’re just a guest in.”

But Taylor will never avoid the unexpected. At 2AM, she dropped nearly an entire extra album of songs (including all the supposedly gatekept bonus songs on the individual variant editions). A choice of what story is told to the listener depends on how deep they’ll seek info about her, rewarding the very fans she was lecturing for their invasive obsession earlier. The casual listener will simply pick up the original album at their grocery store, never knowing what they’ve missed.

If the original tracklist’s timeline is the past few years, The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology tracklist makes a map tracing all the way back to her childhood, pulling all the monsters out from under her bed and putting them on display.

The themes of the main album continue here, both confessional and intentionally grating. She acknowledges in ‘I Hate It Here’ that she knows she’s killing the vibe—“everyone would look down, cause wasn’t fun now”—but it’s her party after all so are you really going to tell her she’s not allowed to cry? You should know better than to even consider that by now.

Here is also where she shares glimpses of the songs that were expected to be turned for the final exam, like the first sip of alcohol love rush of ‘So High School’ and the reclamation of pain in ‘thanK you aIMee.’ Fairytale and classic literary imagery give weight to the aesthetic themes of the pre-release marketing.

But make no mistake, all is not forgiven. The anger and frankness stays. “The empathetic hunger decends,” she points out in ‘How Did It End?’ She refuses to tell the sordid details of the hurt of lost dreams, instead dissecting only the aftermath, since that’s what everyone feeds on anyway. But in the album's revised final closer, ‘The Manuscript,’ she revisits a relationship that’s haunted her and will haunt you on your future listens of the record. What truly motivates the bad decisions and dire dedication she serenades?

The metaphorical cliffhanger shuts the door of the department firmly behind you when you finish the record. Like a graduation, there are so many questions behind and ahead. Taylor offers no further explanation--a fitting callback to her now-second angriest record, 'Reputation'. The path to where she is—where you are now--is carved in stone, you cannot change it. You can only go forward.

To leave The Tortured Poets Department to understand that every tower must fall, but it is only from the rubble that we can rebuild. It won’t be easy. It won’t be clean. It will never be the same, but maybe that’s a good thing.

Lily Meade is a young adult novelist. Her debut novel, THE SHADOW SISTER, is dedicated to Taylor in gratitude for her pandemic financial gift that saved her mother’s life. She is @LilyMeade on most platforms (but is most insufferably an active Swiftie on Twitter). Her work has been published in Bustle, Teen Vogue, and Publishers Weekly. Her second novel will release Fall 2025. You can learn more about her at lilymeade.com