Taylor Swift turns her breakup with Joe Alwyn into a therapeutic album: The Tortured Poets Department

The breakup after six years of Taylor Swift’s relationship with actor Joe Alwyn returns to the fore this Friday before the launch of ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, in which the American dissects the evils of her relationship and undertakes a therapy exercise after the end of the dream.

Throughout the 31 tracks that make up the singer-songwriter’s eleventh studio album, which breaks “records” for listening and ticket sales, It is easy to find direct allusions to your ex-partner. Once again, his personal life constitutes his favorite material to build songs and, with them, pay off debts.

“This album reminded me why songwriting is something that really helps me in my life. I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I did on this one,” Swift herself commented in public (West Reading, 1989) about the therapeutic effect of a highly anticipated work that was leaked online in full this Thursday.

Rumors about the possible thematic core of the album began since at the last Grammy gala she herself revealed the title, very similar to that of an “online” chat that her ex shared with the actors as well. Paul Mescal y Andrew Scottcalled ‘Tortured Man Club’.

That is also the title of one of the featured cuts, in which Swift blurts out to her interlocutor with the pretense of a writer (it should be remembered that Alwyn co-wrote some of the singer’s songs in the past): “You’re not Dylan Thomas and I’m not Patti Smith.”.

In addition, The geographical coincidence between the British nationality of his ex and the inspirational source of the song does not seem coincidental. ‘So Long, London’, one of the most tortured along with ‘Florida!!!!’. Regarding this, there are those who have pointed out that this was the state in which ‘The Eras Tour’ ended when the couple’s breakup was made public in April 2023.

The reproaches continue in one of the potentially most radiable topics of this batch, ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’ (in Spanish, my child only breaks his favorite toys), in which the artist announces the moment when she gives up on a relationship that is not prospering: “I abandon building castles that he destroys.”

Until the end with ‘Clara Bow’, Named after the silent film actress of the same name, heartbreak conceptually covers the entire album and, with it, the melancholy becomes strong, but without despair in its words or its forms, rather acceptance, with spaces for irony and sarcasm in cuts like ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ o ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’

It is that, almost at the end, one of the few reliefs of accelerated and eighties “bpm” that can be found in this ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, marked by the emotional density of songsco-produced by the author together with her inseparable Jack Antonoff.

Under his criteria, synthesizers and electronic arrangements largely replace the organic textures that accompanied the melancholy that also permeated previous works such as ‘Evermore’ or the previous ‘Folklore’, both from 2020.

In the midst of all this, from time to time glimpses of Swift from the “country” era emerge, such as when she recovers the ukulele and old melodic structures from then, see in the dynamic and long ‘But Daddy, I Love Him!’.

The two collaborations on this album, which was published without a prior letter of introduction, deserve special mention: on the one hand, Post Malone in the initial ‘Fortnight’ (in which he is vocally relegated to more accompaniment work) and, on the other, Florence + The Machine in the cathartic ‘Florida!!!!’, with a more balanced vocal relationship between the two performers.

Con ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ Already on the streets, Swift will begin the European leg of her ‘The Eras Tour’ in Paris on May 9, 10, 11 and 12. There will be fifty performances until the end on August 20 at Wembley Stadium in Londonwith stops such as those on May 29 and 30 at the renovated Santiago Bernabéu stadium in Madrid.