Taylor Swift knows The Tortured Poets Department is a mouthful to say, so she has an alternative.
“You could call it Tortured Poets if you just refuse to memorize more than one-word album titles,” Swift, 34, quipped during her Saturday, February 17, Eras Tour concert in Melbourne, Australia.
The Tortured Poets Department will be Swift’s 11th studio album and drops on April 19, news she shared at the 2024 Grammys earlier this month.
“[The way I can celebrate] is by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the past two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19th,” Swift said on February 4 when she nabbed the trophy for Best Pop Vocal Album. “It’s called The Tortured Poets Department and I’m going to go post the cover right now backstage.”
Swift, who later won Album of the Year for the fourth time, wasn’t always planning to announce her album at the awards show.
“I had told my friends, I told Jack [Antonoff], but I hadn’t really told very many other people,” she said during one of her Eras concerts in Japan days later. “I thought, ‘OK, if I’m lucky enough to win one thing tonight, I’m just gonna do it. I’m just gonna announce my album.’And luckily enough, that ended up happening.”
Swift continued, “My backup plan was I was gonna do it tonight in Tokyo. But thanks to you and your support, I was lucky enough to win a Grammy and tell you about it on stage at the Grammys.
The pop star shared the tracklist for The Tortured Poets Department and its first “bonus version” on her Instagram on Feburary 5. Swifties have theorized that TTPD is is primarily inspired by a breakup and will serve as a sister album to Swift’s 2022 record, Midnights. Songs on The Tortured Poets Department include “So Long, London,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “I Can Fix Him (No, Really, I Can)” and “Down Bad.”
Swift revealed during her Friday, February 16, concert that a second bonus version features the single “The Bolter.”
“I needed to make it. It was really a lifeline for me,” Swift said of the LP on Friday. “It sort of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through life and I’ve never had an album where I’ve needed songwriting more than I needed it on Tortured Poets.”
While Swift has not shared her musical inspiration for TTPD, many fans think it is about her breakup with Joe Alwyn. Swift and Alwyn, 32, dated for six years before Us Weekly confirmed their split in April 2023. She has since moved on with NFL star Travis Kelce, who has already “heard” snippets of TTPD.
“I have heard some of it, yes, and it is unbelievable,” Kelce, 34, gushed in a February press conference ahead of Super Bowl LVIII. “I can’t wait for her to shake up the world when it finally drops.”
