Midnight on April 19, 2024. Screams from fans around the world as they start playing “The Tortured Poets Department,” a piece of work Taylor Swift has been working on for 2 years, her 11th studio album.
The Tortured Poets Department has climbed to the #1 Album spot on Apple Music in just the first 8 hours. The Album is on the top hits of the day in the first couple days of its release, based on the Billboard Hot 100.
It’s not a Taylor Swift album if there isn’t a surprise. At 2 AM, she released a deluxe version including 31 songs entitled, The Anthology, unlike the original which includes 16. Multiple versions of the first album are available for vinyl, CD, and digital. And the Anthology is available for digital only currently.
On this album, there are 2 songs with featured artists. Track one, titled “Fortnight,” features Post Malone, and also has a music video released at 8 pm on album release day.The other song is titled “Florida!!!” that features Florence the Machine.
Students have mixed opinions about the new album release.
“The songs that I listened to seemed really sad and were repetitive. I did like the more upbeat songs better than the sad slow ones but there were barely any,” freshman Sadie Regardie shared.
Certain tracks on the album have been speculated to be about people who are or have been in Swift’s life. Most suspected the majority of the songs to be about Joe Alywn, Swift’s previous boyfriend. The couple had broken up in April of last year, but fans have suspected that some of the songs such as “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” to be about Matty Healy, a two month “situationship.”Although, fans became really excited when they realized “The Alchemy” and “So High School” on the album are about Travis Kelce, Taylor’s current relationship.
Freshman Genevieve Riley stated, “I do like the album so far, I think it is different from other albums that she has done, and the lyrics are really complex and unique.”
Even though the album was just released, there is not doubt that it will thrive on the Billboard charts for the next few weeks.
