Everything we know about Taylor Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department

From the surprising featured artists to what those wild track titles could mean and more, EW is breaking down what to expect from Swift’s 11th studio album.

Taylor Swift is only cryptic and Machiavellian because she cares.

Practicing what she preaches, the “Mastermind” singer threw everyone for a loop during the 2024 Grammy Awards when she took the stage for winning Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights — her lucky number 13th time winning one of the golden gramophones — and officially announced her 11th original studio album, The Tortured Poets Department.

“I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19,” she said on stage, laughing. “It’s called The Tortured Poets Department. I’m gonna go post the cover backstage.”

The announcement shocked Swifties everywhere, because, prior to the awards show, fans guessed that the “Anti-Hero” singer might be announcing the widely-expected re-recorded version of her sixth album Reputation, due to a series of strange and intentional Easter eggs, including the fact both her official website and store went down for prolonged periods of time on Grammys Sunday.

Alas, Swift was on her “Vigilante S—” again, and here we are, members of The Tortured Swifties Department, trying to figure out what the new record has in store for us. To that end, here’s everything we know so far about The Tortured Poets Department — but be sure to check back, as this story will be updated as we learn more.

When and where can I buy ‘The Tortured Poets Department’?

The album is available now to pre-order and pre-save on Swift’s website, and is currently being offered in vinyl, cassette, CD, and digital album formats to be released on April 19. It will also start streaming on Apple Music and Spotify on that date. The product descriptions on Swift’s site reveal that The Tortured Poets Department will contain 16 new tracks, plus bonus track “The Manuscript.”

On Feb. 16 during her first Eras Tour stop in Melbourne, Swift unveiled an alternate edition of the album, “The Bolter Edition,” which features a new cover and a different bonus track, “The Bolter.” It was made available for a limited time to pre-order on Swift’s website.

What is the tracklist for ‘The Tortured Poets Department’?

Just one day after first announcing the new album, Swift revealed the back cover and tracklist for the record. The tracks are divided up into four “sides,” as follows:

Side A

“Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)”
“The Tortured Poets Department”
“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”
“Down Bad”

Side B

“So Long, London”
“But Daddy I Love Him”
“Fresh Out the Slammer”
“Florida!!! (Florence + the Machine)”

Side C

“Guilty as Sin?”
“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”
“I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”
“loml”

Side D

“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”
“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”
“The Alchemy”
“Clara Bow”
Bonus Track: “The Manuscript”

So what does it all mean? There’s a lot to potentially unpack here. The sides could just be the way the vinyls shook out, or maybe each grouping tells a different story, or utilizes a different sound — this is Swift after all. Additionally, the two featured artists, Post Malone and Florence + the Machine, who have never collaborated with Swift on any prior record in her discography, could not be more different in terms of their own sound. Could that point to TTPD containing multiple genres of music?

The song titles themselves are interesting and very dramatic, with many of them being longer than the average Swift track title. At first glance, many appear to be possible break-up songs, or songs about difficulties in a relationship, with a few possible new love bops thrown in. (For reference, the singer-songwriter and British actor Joe Alwyn officially announced they’d broken up after six years together last April. She later was briefly rumored to be seeing 1975 musician Matty Healy, who is also British, but later in the year went public with boyfriend and NFL tight end Travis Kelce.) However, Swift has written about other peoples’ lives and fictional characters and storylines before (see: Folklore and Evermore). So without having the album in hand, it’s impossible to say for sure what anything is about, but that hasn’t stopped fans from trying.

The song “So Long, London” immediately calls to mind the Lover track “London Boy,” reportedly about Alwyn. It’s also the fifth track on the album — a coveted space on any Swift record, as she infamously reserves it for the most emotional song.

“But Daddy I Love Him” feels like a possible reference to the same line in The Little Mermaid, which was released in, ahem, 1989. That film, of course, featured a young woman who trades her voice for the love of a man. Interestingly, Swift has in the past also dressed up as Ariel from the film for Halloween.

“Fresh Out the Slammer” seems like it could be about breaking free of a relationship or gaining independence in some way, and also feels like a sister to the Reputation track “…Ready For It?”, also rumored to be about Alwyn, which features a similar prison reference in the lyric: “He can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor.” And speaking of, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor starred together in the 1966 movie adaptation of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, which bears an eerie similarity to the TTPD track titled “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”

Eagle-eyed Swifties have pointed out that “Florida!!!” is noteworthy, as the Eras Tour stops in Tampa, Florida were the first Swift performed after her breakup with Alwyn was made public in the beginning of the massive, record-breaking tour. To that end, could “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” reference having to face going on the biggest tour of her life after heartbreak?

And then there’s “Clara Bow,” which seems to reference the Old Hollywood starlet of the same name. EW broke down what that could potentially mean for the track here. The new song joins the ranks of other Swift ditties about real people, including 2012’s “Starlight” about Ethel Kennedy, and 2020’s “The Last Great American Dynasty” about Rebekah Harkness.

What has Taylor Swift said about ‘The Tortured Poets Department’?

Since first announcing the album, Swift has unveiled tidbits about it at various Eras Tour stops. During her first show in Tokyo on Feb. 7, she told the screaming crowd she’d been working on the new album since right after she finished Midnights. “So I started working on it immediately after that, and I’ve been working on it for about two years,” she said. “I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour, and when it was perfect in my opinion — when it was good enough for you — I finished it.”

Swift continued, “And I am so, so excited that soon you’ll get to hear it and soon we’ll get to experience it together. I’m over the moon about the fact that you guys care about my music. It still blows my mind.”

In Melbourne on Feb. 16, she revealed that, more than any previous album, TTPD was a record she “needed to make.” “It was really a lifeline for me,” she said. “Just the things I was going through, the things I was writing about, it kind of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life, and I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more.”

What’s the sound or vibe of the album?

Although the vibe or sound cannot always be totally ascertained by the aesthetic Swift goes with for the album art (see: Midnights in all of its ’70s-era fashion, but not sound), the vibe so far is very sultry, maybe a bit dark and angsty. The first look contained a photo of what appears to be a prologue to the album. Written by Swift, it reads: “And so I enter into evidence / My tarnished coat of arms / My muses, acquired like bruises / My talismans and charms / The tick, tick, tick of love bombs / My veins of pitch black ink.”

She ends the note by decreeing “all’s fair in love and poetry…” and signs it off with “Sincerely, The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department.” The album cover is in grayscale, with Swift lying on a bed of white sheets clad in all black. The back of the album shows Swift with her hand against her forehead, and features the words, “I love you, it’s ruining my life.” It’s her sultriest cover yet, and her poses scream, well, tortured artist. But the song titles, as mentioned above, are giving big, unhinged, sassy, “Look What You Made Me Do” energy. Until Swift weighs in on the sound or provides some sort of sneak peek (like a music video or single), we’ll just have to wait and see.

By Lauren Huff

Photo: Getty