Taylor Swift Flips Off Cancel Culture And Longs For Marriage And Motherhood In The Tortured Poet’s Department

The two items you will need for your The Tortured Poet’s Department double album listening endeavors: a dictionary…and maybe a gun. 

When was the last time a pop star was able to convince a multitude of Gen Zers and millennials to physically leave their homes to stand in line for…a CD? So it goes to show the power and magic of a Taylor Swift album release, 20 years into her career. 

“What is with the frenzy?” you may be wondering.

Imagine Michael Jackson or The Beatles having a baby with Nancy Drew. Then that baby was raised by Julia Child, a pack of sweater wearing woodland creatures, and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. It grows up to have enviable wit, a roaring stage presence, an insatiable drive to be number one, a gift for songwriting, and an aptness for solving mysteries and dropping clues. All while making time, of course, to make cinnamon rolls from scratch. This is the enigma of Taylor Swift. Just when you think you’ve figured her out, she surprises you, because her “biggest fear is to be average.” And one thing about Taylor, she doesn’t lose.  

Fans counted down with baited breath for The Tortured Poet’s Department, to see what new version of herself she would show us. The answer revealed on Friday’s midnight release was a mature, self-assured, sarcastic, grown woman who doesn’t need any backseat drivers (or stalker fans cough cough) telling her what to do with her love life. 

And boy, does she know how to plan surprises. Two hours after dropping TTPD, Swift released a secret double album containing an additional 15 songs. 

The prologue of the album (featured in the physical booklet of that CD you probably didn’t wait in line for) sets the scene of this particular chapter in Swift’s swirling cacophony of tangled loves lost and found. To put it plainly, she went through a breakup after being in girlfriend purgatory for six years. The breakup was a slow burnout, transpiring over years, with a lot of time to process. This album is about what happened after that breakup…and what caused the next one. Within a few months of losing Joe Alwyn, who by fan interpretation was a melancholic, safe, but boring self-important actor with commitment issues, Taylor had moved on with her backup plan: best friend of a decade, Matty Healy, frontman of the 1975. Unbeknownst to us, Matty was the love of Taylor’s life. The timing was never right. Something always kept them apart, but they kept in touch, secretly harboring a desire to be together as more than friends. While the pulse was fading from her relationship with Alwyn, Swift hints at secretly planning her grand escape to Healy, where, ideally, they could have the life they always wanted together, at last. 

Obviously, we know how the story ends, and it’s not with him. So Swift is asking for some mercy. For understanding. Could we grant her a pass for her brief spiral into insanity, risking everything momentarily for the rebound who got away? 

“As you might all unfortunately recall / I had been struck with a case of a restricted humanity / Which explains my plea here today of temporary insanity.”

She’s better now, healed. She has escaped the hospital as a perfectly well-adjusted woman. But we all hit our limit, don’t we? She just happened to hit hers amidst launching the highest grossing world tour of all time, when she thought she could soften the blow of losing one love with gaining another, only to lose them both consecutively. Good news for us, it’s the most toxic and treacherous relationships she writes best. 

“A smirk creeps onto this poet’s face / Because it’s the worst men that I write best.”

Now she’s burning the letters of her past loves once and for all. Starting over. And she’s doing it with humor, bite, and unflinching rare form. 

But rest assured, she’s still the same hopeless romantic that she was at 17, writing lines like “he was chaos, he was revelry, / bedroom eyes like a remedy.” Except now she’s 34, and there’s more to life than dating the boy on the football team…she’d like to get married and have babies too. With a certain tight end on the Kansas City Chiefs? According to TTPD, it’s not out of the question. 

The plot twists in The Tortured Poet’s Department would give any amateur Swift fan whiplash, but we seasoned Swifties take these personal detours into the catacombs of her heart in stride. What the public assumed was going to be an album dissecting Swift’s breakup with Alwyn was actually an overview of the highs and lows of her brief and long awaited love affair with Healy. We didn’t even know it, but we had been bread-crumbed the Alwyn breakup over the last few years in Folklore (“Illicit Affairs”), Evermore (“Tolerate It”), and Midnights (“Bejewelled,” “Glitch”). She’s already moved on. Catch up!

In fact, some fans speculate there isn’t one song in all 31 about Alwyn at all, but like most Swift albums, the inspirations for each song are up for debate. 

Stand out lyrics include Swift’s scorcher on “But Daddy I Love Him,” where she calls out over-zealous fake fans and cancel culture vultures who made public pleas and petitions for Swift to dump Healy for being too “problematic.” 

“I’d rather burn my whole life down / than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning."

Not only does she not care what you have to say about who she dates, she isn’t even reading it. 

“I’ll tell you something about my good name, / It’s mine alone to disgrace”

A.k.a. she’ll never let 2016 happen again. No one is going to tell Taylor when she’s done. Only she decides that. Huge L for the judgmental cancel culture creeps who love micromanaging what other people are allowed to say and do. 

 “So Long, London” appears to have a Joe Alwyn shoutout, with “and I’m pissed off / you let me give you all that youth for free.” Six years is a long time to hope and wait for a marriage proposal that isn’t coming in your late 20s and early 30s. 

Swift reveals that she harbored a secret emotional affair toward Healy, which she hid from Alwyn at the end of their relationship. If no one knows you’re thinking about being with someone other than your boyfriend, is it really cheating? She meditates on the idea in “Guilty As Sin?” 

“Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me” gives Swift the opportunity to reflect on the gaslighting she’s endured by the media and public for her entire life. 

“I was tame, I was gentle 'til the circus life made me mean.” / "Don't you worry, folks, we took out all her teeth." / “Who's afraid of little old me? Well, you should be.”

By the time she gets what she had been building up in her head, a relationship with Matty Healy, alarm bells start to ring, and the sexiness of a secret affair is wearing thin fast. After Swift goes out on a limb and pledges her allegiance to defending the relationship, Healy seemingly ghosts. Using the excuse that it’s what’s best for her so as not to jeopardize her career, as she’s begging him not to drop her off right where he picked her up in pieces in the first place. 

“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is the brother-cousin to “Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve,” a brutal, no-holds-barred punch to the gut on Healy. “You didn't measure up. In any measure of a man.” / “And you deserve prison, but you won't get time.”

The album doesn’t end without a couple of nods to Swift’s current relationship with American football prince Travis Kelce. In “The Alchemy,” Swift uses football imagery to announce that as wild and unexpected they may be as a pair, who is she to deny the chemistry between the two? Swift’s past British beaus are described as warming the benches, for the winning streak that is Kelce and Taylor’s love. 

“These blokes warm the benches / We’ve been on a winning streak / He jokes that ‘It’s heroin, but this time with an ‘E’"

The biggest criticism of the album is that Jack Antonoff, Swift’s long-time producer and best friend, is stifling her ability to soar to new heights in her sound. Some Swifties feel as if the synth, mid-tempo beats Antonoff is known for have run their course, and maybe Antonoff is the next boy she needs to break up with. 

If unique sound from Taylor is what you were hoping for, and you can’t help but be a sucker for the all-American romance of the football star and the pop star, look no further than “So High School,” one of the bonus tracks on the 2 a.m. secret album called The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. 

Sounding like it belongs on the soundtrack of an early 2000s romcom, which is when Kelce and Swift themselves would've been in high school, Swift shares some gushy, private (and sexy) moments between her and Kelce. 

“I feel so high school every time I look at you.”

She paints a picture of a goofy jock, who makes her feel young, makes her laugh, and seems to have a really happy, joy-filled, uncomplicated life. 

“I'm high from smoking your jokes all damn night.”

A nice break, undoubtedly, from the Tortured Poet Matty Healy. 

Might be a little awkward next time she’s around Kelce’s friends because…uh…well, I’ll let her say it: “I'm watching American Pie with you on a Saturday night. / Your friends are around, so be quiet. / I'm trying to stifle my sighs.”

Doesn’t look like this is just a rebound, either. Because after poking fun at Kelce’s famous “kiss, marry, kill” E! Interview, she reveals that she thinks he’ll do all three: “Are you gonna marry, kiss, or kill me? / It's just a game, but really. / I'm bettin' on all three for us two.”

Who would he be killing? Perhaps the Chairman of The Tortured Poet’s Department. The Girl version of Swift, in order to make room for the wife and mother chapter she so clearly longs to be in after lyrics like, “At dinner, you take my ring off my middle finger, / and put it on the one people put wedding rings on, / and that’s the closest I’ve come / to my heart exploding.” And “talking rings and talking cradles, / I wish I could un-recall / how we almost had it all.”

The Tortured Poet’s Department is complicated, full of Swiftie lore from past Taylor relationships and flashbacks to past lyrics. It’s sad, incandescent, convicted, wordy, and moody. Deeply funny and self-deprecating. Vulnerable and self-reflective. It also hints at longings for a different life. One that envisions late night cuddles and bedtime stories, instead of red eye flights and shoveling relationship ash in public crematories. 

Because even though Swift might be a billionaire pop star, at the end of the day, she’s still just a girl. 

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