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Taylor Swift's New Album Has Features From Post Malone & Florence + The Machine
Here’s everything we know about the record, so far.
Although Taylor Swift didn’t end up performing at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, she still managed to bestow a massive gift to her fans: the announcement of her next studio album.
In the middle of her acceptance speech after winning Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights, Swift dropped the bomb that her next album is on the way and already has a title and release date: Called The Tortured Poets Department, it’s slated for release on April 19. “I’m gonna go and post the cover right now backstage,” she said, and true to her word, the austere black-and-white (and surprisingly sensual) album art appeared on her grid shortly after.
Swift was expected announce something during the awards, but the overwhelming consensus was that it’d be the release date to Reputation (Taylor’s Version), her next album to receive a re-recording. Her look for the evening even appeared to point in that direction with her wearing a solemn white gown complete with black opera gloves, the same colors of the original Reputation album cover. Naturally, her fake-out has prompted a full-on meltdown online, with Swifties wondering: When’s the next single, Tay Tay?
Read on for everything we know so far about the album:
What is Taylor Swift’s New Album Called?
The project will be called The Tortured Poets Department, a title that could be a nod to the 1989 Robin Williams-starring film Dead Poets Society.
When is Taylor Swift’s Album being released?
The album is out soon — April 19, 2024.
What songs will be on the album?
Swift officially revealed the album’s tracklist on Feb. 5. The album will have a total of 17 songs including one bonus track, and will be split into four sides. Post Malone and Florence + The Machine will also have features on the album.
Side A
- “Fortnight” (feat. Post Malone)
- “The Tortured Poets Department”
- “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”
- “Down Bad”
Side B
- “So Long, London”
- “But Daddy I Love Him”
- “Fresh Out The Slammer”
- “Florida!!!” (feat. Florence + The Machine)
Side C
- “Guilty As Sin?”
- “Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?”
- “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”
- loml
Side D
- “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”
- “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”
- “The Alchemy”
- “Clara Bow”
- Bonus Track: “The Manuscript”
What are the themes of the album?
As sharp-eyed Swifties have already pointed out, The Tortured Poets Department is suspiciously similar to a real group chat name between her ex Joe Alwyn and Paul Mescal. In a 2022 interview with British GQ, Alwyn and Mescal revealed that they text each other in a chat called The Tortured Man Club, an allusion to the complicated male characters they played in their respective Sally Rooney TV adaptations.
Fans suspect that Swift’s upcoming album will be all about Alwyn and his “tortured man” tendencies. Given the track titles of some of these songs — “So Long, London,” and “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” — it seems as likely a theory as any.
But there’s also a writerly theme woven in throughout the whole of the project, from its collegiate-inspired name to the “From the desk of Taylor Swift” flourishes she’s included elsewhere. There’s a chance the album will also channel aspects of more autofiction storytelling, with Swift taking up the pen as the “Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department.”
See the early poem Swift released during the album’s announcement below:
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
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