It seemed like an album tied to the sadness of a breakup. It seemed that his verses were going to be a kind of chronology of the disaster, a page in which to find all the answers to his gray adventures. It seemed that Taylor Swift He was going to return to his old ways of loving disaster, but he ended up pointing a gun at all the members of his sonic universe. The Tortured Poets Department was leaked a couple of days before its release, scheduled for Friday, but the American singer surprised (her specialty) by announcing a double album, The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, composed of a total of 31 songs (more than two hours of enjoyment swiftie).
The double album has become, not only the most played album in one day so far in 2024 on Spotify, has also far exceeded the listening figures that the artist achieved with Midnights (2022), an album with which he has already broken several records. In a matter of 24 hours, The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology received 313.7 million listeners on the platformbecoming the first album in history to exceed 300 million streams on the app. The song Fortnightalong with Post Malone, received more than 25 million listens, a historical record for views in the history of the platform.
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Each new musical project of the singer translates into a kind of numerical Excel in which all the synonyms of success are raised. Record after record, after record after record. Swift only finds competition in herself. Each new album is an opportunity to pulverize her previous numbers and statistics. A race with a single participant which leads her to be playing in her own league. Not in vain, with Midnights Taylor achieved 184.7 million plays on Spotify, a figure that was already stratospheric at the time, but which has almost doubled with The Tortured Poets Department. It doesn’t matter if industry giants like Beyoncé or Ariana Grande release a new project, the taylorswiftmania always two steps ahead.
In The Tortured Poets DepartmentTaylor Swift talks about love, breakups, excessive expectations, situationships (romances that do not become consolidated relationships but that hurt almost as much as walking on hot stones), of hate, of depression and of all the emotions that have fueled your Psyche in the last two years. Her album is an opening into the mind of one of the great global stars in her peak, at the peak of his career, and everything that entails. Headlines, paparazzicriticism, praise and a whole entourage of followers who closely inspect each of his steps, errors and successes.
With humor, with rage and with anger: Swift distributes left and right, one of his most successful ancestral arts. She messes with fans who do not respect her love decisions, with her ex-partner Joe Alwyn for pushing her to the brink of her depression, with Matt Healy, singer of the band The 1975 with whom she had a torrid romance, for not choosing her and breaking her heart. …The American singer leaves no stone unturned in an album that has generated diverse opinions. Some consider it an instant classic (as in the case of the magazine Rolling Stonewhich elevates it to one of the artist’s most personal albums) and others believe that the singer has entered a loop of productivity and little originality (as in the case of The Sydney Morning Herald, who believes that Swift should take a break). I cry a lot, but I am productiveas she herself intones in I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.
“I have never needed to compose songs as much as in Tortured Poets”declared in one of the concerts of The Eras Tour in Melbourne. Taylor Swift’s new album is a three-handed creation: the singer herself, Jack Antonoffhis right hand in the studio, and Aaron Dessner (the virtuoso producer who collaborated with the American on Folklore and Evermoretwo of the singer’s most awarded albums for their descriptive lyrics).
It may interest you: Who was Clara Bow, the ‘it girl’ of silent cinema to whom Taylor Swift pays tribute in ‘The Tortured Poets Department’
One of the songs of The Tortured Poets Department its titled Clara Bowa nod to the queen of flappers and muse of silent cinema in Hollywood. Bow was one of the key profiles of this current, since No one personified the Roaring Twenties like she did.. Her short hair, her Cupid’s bow-shaped lips (and always painted red, as happens with Taylor Swift) and her predilection for playing emancipated women made her a female sexual freedom icon. Among the films he shot are some of the classics of Hollywood silent cinema, such as The Plastic Age (1925) or Mothers who dance (1926). Flirty, youthful and sassy, her films were a clear reflection of her vivid personality.
Its cinematographic popularity increased at the same time as its notoriety as a public entity. The headlines about his life were piled up in the newspapers and glossy magazines, which observed with a magnifying glass any of his movements, actions, appearances or relationships. A clear parallel with the world swiftie, No? Although they say that Hollywood banished her, it was Bow herself who decided to hide behind the curtain.
