The final time Taylor Swift launched an album, Midnights, she stunned everybody by dropping a 3 A.M. Version later that evening, loaded with new songs. But it surely seems that this time, 3 hours was too rattling lengthy for her to attend. At 2 A.M. final evening, with no warning in any respect, Swift introduced that her brand-new (and wonderful) The Tortured Poets Division was secretly a double album all alongside. She had one other 15 songs able to go, including as much as 31 in all. (That’s proper, 13 backwards.) She actually is drilling down on the entire “I like you, it’s ruining my life” factor.
Just like the Midnights 3 A.M., the second half of Tortured Poets: The Anthology is extra acoustic, extra delicate, extra Quill Pen, rather more Aaron Dessner. In case you most well-liked 3 A.M. to the correct Midnights (“The Nice Battle,” “Larger Than The Entire Sky”) you may additionally choose the second hour of the Anthology. It’s practically all hushed piano ballads, with out Half One’s synth-pop manufacturing, reaching all the way in which into homegrown Folklore/Evermore magnificence. Extra tortured. Extra poetic. “Peter,” “Cassandra,” “The Prophecy” — these are a few of the strongest songs Swift and Dessner have crafted collectively.
Taylor hasn’t given Half Two its personal particular person title — but. But it surely’s obtained its personal sonic character. Even the Jack Antonoff tunes sound kinda Dessner, simply because the Dessner songs on Half Two sound kinda Antonoff. (One among this inventive trio’s strengths is that these two producers by no means step on one another.) But each side of the Anthology match along with a surly edge that Taylor has by no means flaunted like this earlier than. The closest factor to a flirty line on both half is the second in “I Hate It Right here” when she sings, “Inform me one thing terrible/Such as you’re a poet trapped within the physique of a finance man.”
The 4 bonus tracks (from the bodily albums) match collectively, virtually as a collection, framing Half Two like bookends. “The Black Canine,” “The Manuscript,” “The Albatross,” “The Bolter” — they’re stark piano narratives about totally different sorts of mad ladies. They’re all searching for totally different sorts of revenge, whether or not the world views them as romantic beliefs (“The Manuscript”), sexual toys (“The Bolter”), curses (“The Albatross”), or quasi-stalkers whose buddies actually need to confiscate her cellphone for the evening (“The Black Canine”).
“The Prophecy” is a personality we encounter throughout Tortured Poets — the lady who’s been ready far too lengthy for her goals to return true, till she feels her youth drain away. (Because the impeccably tortured William Butler Yeats would say, “Too lengthy a sacrifice could make a stone of the guts.”) “A lesser lady would have misplaced hope,” Swift sings, however she’s been on her knees for therefore lengthy, praying for deliverance, she feels cursed. “The Prophecy” has the album’s fiercest vocals, all compressed fury, when she sings, “A larger lady stays cool/However I howl like a wolf on the moon/And I look unstable / Gathering the coven ‘around the sorceress desk.”
“The Prophecy” leads naturally into “Cassandra,” the well-known Homeric fantasy of the prophetess, the King of Troy’s cursed daughter, with the ability to see into the long run however not for anybody to imagine her. Swift’s Cassandra sits in her jail cell, asking “Do you imagine me now?,” whereas a self-righteous mob is crying out for her blood. She snarls, “When the primary stone’s thrown, they’re screaming/Within the streets there’s a raging riot/When it’s ‘burn the bitch,’ they’re shrieking/When the reality comes out, it’s quiet.”
“Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” (produced by Antonoff) seems like a counterpart to “Maroon,” besides this time, the romance on the ground with the roommate’s screw-top rosé results in a sadder destiny. She’s with an addict — “You wanted me however you wanted medication extra” — but she will’t break away. She’s nonetheless haunted by the query of what she might have accomplished in another way, lengthy after he’s moved on. She asks, “If I promote my house/And you’ve got some youngsters with an web starlet/Will that make your reminiscence fade from this scarlet maroon?”
However “Peter” is the show-stopper. Swift goes again to the story of Peter Pan, the misplaced boy, and Wendy, who waited too lengthy for him to develop up. Swift already launched this Peter on Folklore, again in “Cardigan,” when he was leaving Wendy and he or she was pitifully “making an attempt to alter the ending,” even after the story was over. By now, she’s giving up on him. Swift sings, “You mentioned you’d come and get me, however you have been 25/The shelf lifetime of these fantasies has expired/Misplaced to the ‘Misplaced Boys’ chapter of your life/Forgive me Peter, please know that I attempted.” Wendy isn’t making an attempt to alter the ending any extra — however she’s questioning when she will get to start her personal story.
For a change of tempo, “So Excessive Faculty” is the “Hits Completely different” of this crop, going for light-hearted power-pop guitar jangle. She’s obtained a crush on a brand new man — “I’ll drink what you suppose and I’m excessive from smoking your jokes” — what a line.) It’s a visit again to her teen years, making out whereas they watch American Pie as his bros play Grand Theft Auto. But it’s the sort of high-school scene the place she by no means slot in. As she sings, “Fact, dare, spin bottles/You understand how to ball, I do know Aristotle.”
The 2 halves of Tortured Poets may sound totally different. Half One has the nastier wit, the pettier break-up rants, the funnier shade. However they nonetheless really feel like totally different halves of the identical assertion, sharing that sense of post-breakup grownup disenchantment. Like lots of people of their mid-30s, Taylor’s tortured poets really feel misplaced in a future they don’t acknowledge, as a substitute of the long run they spent their 20s coaching for. Within the 2020s, that’s not precisely one pop star’s downside.
Certain, it’s a bit impolite of Swift to drop one other hour of music on the world, when individuals are nonetheless reeling from an album that’s solely two hours previous. However to cite Yeats once more, in a query that might sum up quite a lot of Taylor Swift’s profession: “When did the poets promise security?” In her case, that’s by no means.
