#34 Taylor Swift: The Tortured Poets Department

To be clear: the 33rd scientifically proven, objective best album of the year is the sixteen track, sixty three minute original release of the album. That’s already way to the upper limits of how much Jack Antonoff any one human can ever hope to consume in one setting. If you’re here for the thirty one track two fucking hours ‘Anthology’ edition of this album, then I’m sorry, you are insane and I don’t know how you can do that to yourself.

I am also not going to count the 234 different editions of this fucking album that Taylor released in 2024, making sure that she greedily fleeced one of music’s most obsessive fanbases for every last penny they have. Oh! This just in! Taylor has apparently released a new version of the album called ‘The Tortured Poets Department: Capitalism’s Necessary Evil?’, which includes an extra fourteen seconds tagged onto the end of But Daddy I Love Him where Taylor just absolutely lets rip with a huge fart right into the microphone. Some people have accused Taylor of attempting to cynically manipulate the Necessary Evil 2024 countdown in the same way they’ve been manipulating sales figures and charts all year with these unlimited reissues. Well it won’t work, Swifto! I am way to savvy to be manipulated by these hideously manipulative schemes! And anyway, I can’t really afford to after spending more than a hundred quid on the Manic Street Preacher’s January album release. They do it because they appreciate our support!

Tay-Swi’s previous album was the bizarrely overpraised – but massive step back artistically from their lockdown albums – ‘Midnights‘, a record where I really started to feel the continued production of Jack Antonoff really start to run its course. It sounded like Taylor badly needed to try something new, to get out of their comfort zone and really challenge themselves artistically again. By allowing Antonoff so much dampening control over the records sounds, the Taylor machine felt like it was sputtering to a stop, creatively, and that the continued grasp for mainstream uniformity – to be sure to please every person on Earth at all times – had already sapped much of the soul from her art.

Well, they sure showed me! Because ‘TTPD’ is exactly the same shit! Just now there’s six thousand tracks of it spread across more different versions than there are Sun Ra albums!

And it worked, because when you’re on a hot streak of success like Taylor unarguably is, the best decision you can make is to just give people more of the same. Commercially, it might not work forever, but then again it might. Artistically and sonically, Swift and Antonoff are running off more fumes than termites after their nest was discovered on the school baseball field after summer break. That was a very clever line and if you struggled to understand it I would suggest that’s a skill issue on your part, not mine.

And the whole Taylor Swift Military Industrial Complex now is just… exhausting. She’s as close to an omnipresent celebrity as I can remember. And I’m 40 years old! I know I’m obviously particularly invested in music, but someone my age shouldn’t be able to move for rumours about Supergrass reforming, or continued discussions over whether Melody Maker was a better magazine than NME*, or which Herman’s Hermits’ album is best for soothing the most recent flareup of gout. I promise you, Sabrina Carpenter is one of 2024’s biggest new stars, and I have next to nothing to say about her. And yet literally 80% of everything I hear is about Taylor Swift. It’s news about how horrifically successful her latest album/tour/Instagram post was, and that will spawn sixty five billion clickbait headlines on every website you visit, and this will spawn thinkpieces on if Taylor being this successful is good for the planet, which will in turn spawn counter pieces arguing why Taylor is actually a force for good, which will then merge to form the basis of features, posts, articles, movements that actually centre around discussing the debate around Taylor Swift, and how both sides are actually coalescing to form an important part of the Taylor brand.

(*of course it fucking wasn’t, Melody Maker was wank, I’m only speaking hypothetically. Remember Melody Maker’s bizarre campaign against Craig David?? Remember the ‘Alternative Fight Back’ and ’50 things better than UK Garage’?? No, sorry, of course you don’t…)

And then, finally, there’s me. Arguing that it’s all one big marketing ploy by Swiftcover. Oh, and that Taylor is actually a lizard person controlled by Jewish space lasers. Yeah, you’re probably sick of that explanation now.

At the end of the day though, when we just shut out the noise and concentrate just on Taylor’s near impeccable way with a pop song, they’re near unimpeachable. I say near unimpeachable, because Jack Antonoff continues to try his absolute best to impeach the fuck out of this album by sanding off as many interesting edges as he can, but the sheer quality of these songs still win you over. Sixteen tracks and sixty plus minutes run time is obviously ridiculous, but there are at least ten pristine pop songs on this album. Taylor is still a brilliant songwriter and a great pop lyricist (that infamous “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” line is on the expanded edition, so I will not be forced to comment on it here) but I get the feeling that experimentation and artistic ambition doesn’t come naturally to them. Which is fine, it’s not like they’re struggling for talents in other areas. They just need to get the fuck out of their comfort zone.

Or rather: they don’t need to do that at all. They’re as big, as famous and as successful now as any musical artist, any public facing person has ever been. Commercially speaking, what they need to do is release another identical album in a couple of years time, go on another record breaking world tour, and milk her pay pig fans for all their worth with a thousand different album releases next time.

Then, fund the workers revolution. I see you, Comrade Swift.