I don’t need to explain the above title, do I? Let’s cut the BS and go over my ranking based on four long trips through Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. See below:
Fortnight, thanK you aIMee, So Long, London, So High School, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, The Albatross, Florida!!! How Did It End? Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, The Alchemy, The Manuscript, Peter, I Look in People’s Windows, Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus, Down Bad, But Daddy I Love Him, i’mgonnagetyouback, The Prophecy, Clara Bow, The Tortured Poets Department, The Black Dog, I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can), loml, The Bolter, Guilty As Sin, My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys, I Hate It Here, Cassandra, Robin, Fresh Out the Slammer
This is my Proust, people. So many songs, not sure about it, but in the end, I know it’s a masterpiece. This is where I pour myself a large glass of Prosecco.
What tortures me most about this album is that it doesn’t have a one-word title and I find myself tripping on every part of TTPD. It’s giving me TTPD-PTSD. Can we go back to words like: Red, Fearless, Bed, Vodka, Midnights, Ambien, Cereal? In the end, yes, I bought the cardigan associated with TTPD and it wears like the fluffy clothes I’ve been sporting since leaving my office job. Not sure the sweater will survive its first cleaning, but maybe we can do as one does with a weighted blanket, i.e. never wash it.
I’m grateful for this album because it unlocked parts of my tortured poet past. I peeked down in the cellar and saw those left behind moments with culprits who weren’t there long but who ruined my life. Special shout-out to the rock star who didn’t care that I had to hitch-hike part of my way home across three states. Also, the Genius who broke up with me because I pushed a shopping cart too fast, then resurfaced once a decade, even as I was pledging my eternal love to The One. My “Fortnight” was never a fortnight but a decade of unrequited stupidity that ended when he lost his soul–though I think he still lives nearby. And boy do I “ThanK you aIMee” for your brutality, which sent me to higher, healthier ground. This is me quietly sitting, lighting candles, and sending waves of “go elsewhere, monster.”
“So High School” tempered my cellar bitterness because I got to relive all the Taylor and Travis coverage since August 2023. As too many family members were leaving this earthly plane, I escaped into football and Taylor’s music and the collision of these two dynamic entities. Not only this, but it forced brought my husband, mother, brother, and his husband to commune with me during the Super Bowl. I will be front and center for the 2024-2025 season or as long as my family members keep threatening to shed their mortal coils.
It’s been a rough couple of years and it all hit me when I listened to “So Long, London.” If you take away the romantical parts, it reminds me of my difficult relationship with my father. We are both free now. I feel love, closure, and relief that he is no longer suffering–but sadness, too. I feel the weight of his life-long melancholy. He can’t have felt good about being estranged from me. The good parts–running around the track with him, watching all the sports, mountain climbing, his patting my back when I was sobbing, taking me to my favorite crappy movies, and class roller-skating parties–that was my dad, too. There is a lot to remember and love, but there is also an ending.
I love what critics and fans have been saying about TTPD, that this album represents the end of another era. I am so ready for the next one.
PS. I’m at that age where I check who is younger than I am (everyone is). I wanted to see how much younger Post Malone was than me. He couldn’t be younger than 40, right? He sort of has that “lived-in” look some musicians have. But holy face tattoos, people, he is 1/2 my age! He could be MY SON. Also, Jake Tapper is younger than I am. As is Dana Bash.
Patience Bloom 