THE TORTURED CARTOONISTS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY
Reacting to Taylor Swift's surprise double album
THIS WEEK:
Taylor Swift’s latest 31 track outing
“Where Are They Now?” We’re still at The CrossStitch Games!
BEHIND THE PAY WALL: Our Top Tracks! Plus: Catullus “Can Do It With A Broken Heart” and “The Black Dog” Bites
SO! MANY! SURPRISES!
SO! MANY! THOUGHTS!
What are your thoughts on THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT? Let’s discuss!
Presented here in italics, for your convenience, are some of our predictions from last week…
Frega prediction: Will there be talk about dying? Marriage? Motherhood?
Correct! All three! Let’s keep score. Frega: 3. DiPerri: 0
Frega prediction: I think it’s going to be very moody.
Frega: I feel like maybe the whole album sounds like it was written/recorded underwater, like in a submarine recording studio. Like she needs to come up for air.
DiPerri: Even though this is the album where Florence and the Machine is featured, it feels more like a Lana Del Rey album and even unexpectedly slides into 90s dream pop territory at one point (“So High School”). Many tracks feel like they’d be right at home on Folklore or Evermore (“loml,” “Clara Bow,” “The Black Dog,” “The Albatross,” “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” “How Did It End?” “I Look in People’s Windows,” “The Prophecy,” “Cassandra,” “Peter,” “The Bolter,” “Robin,” “The Manuscript."). Now that I’ve gone down the entire tracklist to write those out, it’s most of the bonus tracks! So I’m only now just realizing that it’s not so evenly mixed. Most of the standard album is not dissimilar to Midnights and most of the bonus tracks are cut from the Folklore and Evermore cloth.
I thought we were getting a Civil Wars / Florence and the Machine sounding album. Suckerrrr!
Frega: 4. DiPerri: 0
Folklore, Evermore, and Midnights are beloved, so shouldn’t everyone be happy?
Apparently not. Some complaints we’ve read and heard in person are that it’s too long, too depressing, and everything sounds the same.
DiPerri: First of all, she just got out of a long term relationship and suffered two heartbreaks in rapid succession all while having to “act like it’s [her] birthday every day” on the Eras tour. So of course this album is long and is a lot for us to process because the experience she’s writing about is a lot to process.
In an eight year span, I directed 16 high school theatre productions. When dialogue features critical plot information or deeply emotional conversation, stage motion and gestures should be kept to a minimum so that the audience can process the dialogue. If dialogue is slapstick, more minimal, or rapid, staging can have more action and movement. With The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift offers us her soul. Her fears, her lamentations, and her hopes. Of course there are no song-of-the-summer “bops” (or are there……..? ) because that’s not what this album is.
Have you ever been to a poetry slam? There’s a rhythm and intensity to the manner in which the poets deliver their poems that at times feels circular. At times you feel like your head is spinning around in awe and at other times you’re nodding along with the rhythm and message, entranced by the craft with which the verses have been woven together. TTPD feels more like a collection of poems than “songs,” which is clearly the point. The bonus tracks feature more “songs” with singable melodies so it’s clear that anything that didn’t fit the vibe didn’t make the cut (she left some great sad songs on the cutting room floor for 1989 because it seems she wanted a joyous-sounding album; the bonus tracks for Midnights sound like a completely different album).
There’s somewhat of a dreadfulness that carries through the album from start to finish as Ms. Swift surveys her recent relationships from the Track 5 gutwrencher “So Long London” (Joe Alwyn) to “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” (Matty Healey) to “The Alchemy” (Travis Kelce). We stay in a low place throughout because it’s hard to get off the ground. If two hours of processing all of this seems exhausting, you may be right. If we can’t make sense of it on the first listen, we go back to try again. And again. And again. And again. Each time, gaining new insights just as she likely does with each revisitation.
And each time, we end the cycle with a re-examination of the lasting trauma of a relationship from even longer ago on “The Manuscript.” A lot of people online think “The Manuscript” is either about John Mayer or Jake Gyllenhall or a combination of the two. I think it’s only the latter. There are more references to scripts and acting, and callbacks to things mentioned in “All Too Well” (sipping coffee, dating boys her own age after, etc.) The icy piano on this track sounds like falling tears and, at times, pounding rain.
Frega prediction: Extra vulnerable Taylor, maybe self-critical
Frega: 6. DiPerri: 0
DiPerri prediction: According to Ally Sheehan of “A Girl Named Ally” (the definitive Taylor Swift YouTuber), Taylor Swift is a modern-day Clara Bow. Clara Bow was a silent film actress who rose to meteoric fame for her role in 1927’s It. I watched this film last month and found Bow’s performance charming and the film to be highly entertaining. Filmgoers at the time became obsessed with 22-year-old Bow but, as she was not yet a household name, she was referred to as “The It Girl.” That’s where “The It Girl” comes from and nearly 100 years after Clara Bow, Taylor Swift is “The It Girl.” I suspect this track will be an examination of the pressure and impossible standards that go along with bearing the weight of that label.
Frega: 6. DiPerri: 1…?
DiPerri: Hmm… a lot of this speculation was supplied by Ally Sheehan and I just regurgitated it. One week later, I’d even argue the existential aspect of the song is more shocking and impactful than the beautifully illustrated price of fame. Right?
Frega: 6. DiPerri: 0
DiPerri prediction: THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT ends with “Clara Bow,” whose fame peaked in the late 1920s, early 1930s (she walked away from Hollywood at the height of her fame to raise her children…). Perhaps ending THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT with “Clara Bow” means her next album (album 12) will be the long anticipated jazz album? Perhaps we’ll find out in 2026…
DiPerri: I do not think we’re getting a jazz album next (maybe ever). I’m not going to expect anything because I think that expectations were an impediment on our first listen (mine and yours and everyone else I’ve spoken with). Expectations were high and we hyped up the version of the album we thought we were getting. It’s our own fault. The album we got is far better than the one we thought we wanted. Rolling Stone is spot-on in their review, but not in the way people maybe wanted it to be. The review labeled THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT an “Instant Classic.” It needs time to settle in and that’s great because it’s timeless.
By day, Frega is a high school librarian. Check out the cool display she set up for the students fans!
Frega: 13. DiPerri: 0
We both work with teenagers during the day and it has been interesting to be down in the trenches getting young Gen Z’s reaction to the album in real time. For most of them, the album didn’t land, perhaps because they haven’t experienced profound heartbreaks in their mid-30s so that was inevitable. Those who have stuck with it are beginning to come around though. With reports of “But Daddy I love Him,” “Florida!!!” and “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” as early connectors.
“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?”
AND THE WINNER IS . . . DIPERRI! For marrying Frega!
Also all of us because Taylor Swift gave us THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY. Give it another listen, especially if you don’t like it already love it.
Stick around after the paywall for our top tracks plus more cartoons!
What do you think?!
Bring your friends!
We’re still at Scenes from the CrossStitch Games ! Readers are calling Frega’s writing “Brilliant” and DiPerri’s illustrations “Stupendously creative!”
Hooray! Clap clap clap! Leave a comment over there and highlight your favorite lines!
Read Scenes from the CrossStitch Games!
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