While some listeners aren’t so sure about Taylor Swift making her latest (double) album 31 songs, Bowen Yang is all in on The Tortured Poets Department.
“Tortured Poets is really phenomenal. It has some of her best songwriting. It is also, I think, intentionally superfluous. I think she needed to get to 31, and that’s what the anthology is about, right?” Yang exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of Oatly x Barry’s x Bowen Yang Classtacular on Monday, April 22. “Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, she could have edited, she could have pared this down.’ No, this is all in the design of Taylor. It had to be 31 tracks. She has to invert this thing that we are familiar with in terms of the lore of Taylor Swift. She wants to subvert that literally by making it 31 songs and not 13 or anything to do with 13, and I think she succeeded in doing that.”
While Yang agreed with Us that it’s “a lot of words” to break down, he thinks the majority of the “phrasing is unresolved or purposefully vague,” adding: “It is literal poetry in the way that the meter and the scansion is all very fluid.”
When it comes to his favorite song (so far), the Saturday Night Live star tells Us that he’s “really” loves “The Alchemy,” inspired by her boyfriend, Travis Kelce.
“I’m a sucker for ‘The Alchemy.’ The internet doesn’t seem to love it as much as I do, but I love ‘When I touch down / Call the amateurs / Cut ’em from the team / Ditch the clowns, get the crown.’ I’m like, I love that.’ It’s so cute. It’s about Travis. It’s so sweet,” Yang said.
The other track on the album about Kelce is titled “So High School,” in which Swift sings: “Truth, dare, spin bottles / You know how to ball, I know Aristotle / Brand new, full-throttle / Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto.”
As fans of Yang and Matt Rogers’ podcast, “Las Culturistas” know, Yang is a big video game fan, so Us had to ask Yang about the Grand Theft Auto lyrics and whether it “checks out” for Kelce.
“The Grand Theft Auto thing checks out for me, for sure,” Yang said. “I mean, ‘So High School’ is very much for millennials. I’m sorry, Gen Z. It’s for us. For American Pie and Grand Theft Auto to be in the same song for [millennials]. … It’s culture.”
Yang confirmed to Us that he and Rogers will further address TTPD on the Wednesday, April 24, episode of their podcast. On Monday, meanwhile, he had to focus on cohosting a Barry’s class in Chelsea in honor of his Oatly partnership, which comes on the heels of the brand’s Unsweetened Oatmilk having been featured the past month in shakes at the Fuel Bar nationwide.
“The fuel bar is a required stop for me. … I beeline to it on the way into any Barry’s class,” Yang told Us ahead of the workout, noting he typically opts for a Green Latifah shake. “[Recently] I was like, ‘I don’t miss the actual milk I put in before at all.’ I think that’s the whole point of this partnership is that it is kind of a really inspired choice for them even to be together because I think I’m not the only person who finds the fuel bar very, very essential to the Barry’s experience. You’ll see as soon as you’re done with this, you’re going to be like, ‘I need something substantive in me right now,’ and your body will thank you for it.”
After his chat with Us, Yang headed into the class to host the 50-minute “workout,” which included the comedian’s colorful commentary, replacing weights with Oatly cartons and more. When asked how he prepared for the event, he quipped: “I don’t sleep. I don’t stretch. I hope to get a Charlie horse at some point in this class.”
