Taylor Swift bared her soul on The Tortured Poets Department, which is already making history less than 24 hours after its release.
Swift, 34, dropped her 11th studio album on Friday, April 19, to widespread fan enthusiasm, who quickly pushed the record up the charts. At 6 p.m. ET on Friday, a mere 18 hours after fans started hitting play, Spotify announced that TTPD is the first LP in platform history to garner more than 300 million streams in a single day.
The Tortured Poets Department initially broke the record for the most-streamed album in a single day in 2024 a mere 12 hours after its drop, surpassing the likes of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine, and just kept growing. The TTPD lead single, “Fortnight (featuring Post Malone),” also made history on the streamer and is the most-streamed song in a single day.
The top three most-streamed albums in a single day in Spotify history are all Swift albums. TTPD is followed by 2022’s Midnights, and her October 2023 release, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), is in third place. Swift also retains her spot as the most streamed artist in a single day in Spotify history, breaking a record she previously set with her 1989 rerelease last year.
TTPD dropped at precisely midnight on Friday, two hours before Swift surprised Us with the news that the record is actually a double album — and she had 15 more songs to share with her supporters.
“The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time — one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure,” Swift wrote via Instagram on Friday. “This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed.”
She continued, “And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.”
Swift’s latest record is primarily inspired by heartbreak based on her breakups with Joe Alwyn, whom she dated between 2016 and 2023, and Matty Healy, her brief fling the following spring. Swift also takes aim at Kim Kardashian in tracks “thanK you aIMee” and “Cassandra” over their bad blood surrounding Kanye West’s forged 2016 phone call.
TTPD isn’t just about negative emotions, as her courtship with now-boyfriend Travis Kelce is seemingly chronicled on both “The Alchemy” and “So High School.”
“Truth, dare, spin bottles / You know how to ball, I know Aristotle,” she sings on “So High School,” referring to Kelce’s career as a pro football star. “Brand-new, full throttle / Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto / It’s true, swear, scouts honor / You knew what you wanted and, boy, you got her.”
Swift’s last line of “So High School” seemingly refers to Kelce, 34, manifesting their connection by showing up to her Eras Tour concert in Kansas City with a DIY friendship bracelet that had his phone number on it. When they didn’t cross paths in July 2023, he recalled the story on his “New Heights” podcast and she reached out.
The Tortured Poets Department is out now.
