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The Tortured Poets Department is the eleventh studio album by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Released on April 19, 2024, via Republic Records, it was written and produced by Swift, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner. Swift announced it at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards on February 4, 2024, after winning Best Pop Vocal Album for her tenth studio album, Midnights (2022). Swift conceived The Tortured Poets Department shortly after finishing work on Midnights and continued developing the former during the Eras Tour (2023–2024), her ongoing sixth concert tour. Self-described as her "lifeline" album, The Tortured Poets Department was perceived by Swift as a culmination of imperative songwriting. It is a double album, with the second part, subtitled The Anthology, surprise-released two hours after the first. Post Malone features on the opening track, "Fortnight", which was released as the lead single, and Florence and the Machine features on "Florida!!!". A synth-pop album with rock and folk stylings, its mid-tempo production is driven by synthesizers and drum machines alongside live instruments such as piano and guitar. Its subject matter explores Swift's psyche and examines her public and private lives, blending sorrow and humor in a self-aware approach. Many critics praised Swift's emotional songwriting in The Tortured Poets Department for its catharsis and wit, but some suggested that it lacked the concision and profundity of her past works. The production polarized critics, who found it either tasteful or uninventive. The album broke a string of commercial records in various countries. Globally, it gained the the highest single-day streams for an album on the streaming platform Spotify. In the United States, The Tortured Poets Department sold more vinyl LPs in a week than any other album in the SoundScan era. Background and conception Swift released her tenth studio album, Midnights, on October 21, 2022, to widespread commercial and critical success. In 2023, she released two re-recorded albums, Speak Now (Taylor's Version) and 1989 (Taylor's Version), as part of her re-recording project. On February 4, 2024, the day of the 66th Annual Grammy Awards where Midnights had been nominated, Swift teased the release of a new album by changing the profile pictures across her social media accounts to black-and-white. Fans speculated online that she was preparing to release Reputation (Taylor's Version), a forthcoming re-recording of her sixth studio album, Reputation (2017). Swift's website also appeared as if it had malfunctioned, reporting an unusual non-standard HTTP status code 321, as well as error code "hneriergrd", which fans deciphered to be an anagram spelling "red herring." The source code of the website contained non-English words. On February 4, 2024, Swift won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album and Album of the Year for Midnights; in her acceptance speech for the former, she announced a new studio album that she had worked on since 2022, titled The Tortured Poets Department, set for release on April 19, 2024. The album cover artwork was posted to her social media accounts, along with a photograph of a handwritten note, which incorporated English translations of the words from the source code: 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.Swift characterized The Tortured Poets Department as a "lifeline" album—one that she "really needed" to make. She began conceiving the album immediately after submitting Midnights to her record label, Republic Records, and continued working on it in secret throughout the U.S. leg of the Eras Tour in 2023. According to Swift, creating the album proved to her the integral role of songwriting in her life. She stated, "I have never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it on Tortured Poets." In an Instagram post announcing the album's release, Swift further characterized the album as "an anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time—one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure." Composition Writing and lyrics The Tortured Poets Department consists of sixteen standard songs and features two guest acts—the American rapper Post Malone on the lead single "Fortnight" and the English indie rock band Florence and the Machine, led by the singer-songwriter Florence Welch, on the song "Florida!!!". The album was primarily written and produced by Swift with longtime collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner; Welch and Malone also co-wrote their respective collaborations with Swift. Rooted in personal and introspective songwriting, The Tortured Poets Department explores the emotions that Swift experienced. Some critics commented that she was inspired by her tumultuous relationships to create lyrical narratives that were messy, unbridled, and unguarded, containing meta-references to her personal life through allusions and name-dropping. Swift, speaking to the audience at a Melbourne show of the Eras Tour, described the album as her most cathartic project yet; the track "I Can Do It with a Broken Heart" details how she was undergoing an emotional breakdown while going on tour. Ann Powers wrote in NPR that throughout the album, "Swift is trying to work out how emotional violence occurs." Highlighting the excessive media coverage on Swift's heightened fame and turbulent personal life, Vulture's Craig Jenkins opined that the album finds her "more interested in redrawing boundaries", with songs like "The Tortured Poets Department" and "But Daddy I Love Him" addressing the scrutiny on her past relationships. Heartbreak is the primary emotion; it is expressed via themes of anger, mourning, death, and humor. Swift described the album as "fatalistic" with extensive lyrics about "life or death" that are hyperbolic or dramatic; this is exemplified by the opening track, "Fortnight", whose themes of "longing, pining, lost dreams" recur throughout the album. Besides heartbreak from lost love, other themes include the public perception of her as a celebrity ("Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" and "Clara Bow") and reinventing oneself ("Florida!!!"). Business Insider's Callie Ahlgrim described the album's content as Swift's "messiest, horniest, and funniest". In The Independent, Helen Brown suggested that Swift's songwriting draws on her country roots to explore detail-heavy narratives. While some critics argued that the album is autobiographical in nature, Pitchfork's Shaad D'Souza argued that it straddles the confessional and the fictional storytelling. Production and music The standard edition as a synth-pop album whose mid-tempo production incorporates subdued synths and spare drum machines in most of t.... Discover the Swift Reads popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Swift Reads books.