She recently shared five playlists with Apple Music, with a press release revealing that the songs on the album fall into one of five stages of a break-up, from denial to anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Before the total solar eclipse on April 8, the pop star dropped the first lyric from the album, sharing a video of a typewriter forming the words: “Crowd goes wild at her fingertips/Half moonshine, full eclipse.”
The Tortured Poets’ Department tracklist
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!!! (feat. 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
Who is the album about?
Shortly after Swift announced the album, fans connected its title with her most recent ex-boyfriend, Alwyn.
In a December 2022 interview with fellow actor Paul Mescal for Variety, Alwyn referenced a group chat the pair are in, along with Fleabag star Andrew Scott. The title of the group chat? “The Tortured Man Club”.
During the interview, Mescal asks Alwyn to remind him, “what’s the name of the WhatsApp group we’re in?”
Alwyn responds, “It’s either the ‘tortured’ or the ‘lonely’ - ‘Tortured Man Club,’ I think. Me, you and Andrew. It hasn’t had much use recently.”
“No, I feel like we’re less tortured now,” Mescal jokes in response.
Swifties were quick to dredge up the video clip to support their theories that the new songs are about Alwyn, with one writing: “Joe Alwyn are you ready for your tape?”
It’s not the first time Alwyn has featured on one of Swift’s albums. The pair were together for six years, and the actor was often referenced throughout Swift’s albums Reputation, Lover, Folklore, and Evermore - think songs like London Boy and Lover. Alwyn even had some creative input into Folklore and Evermore, under the nom de plume William Bowery.
Recently, fans suggested that Swift’s 2023 single You’re Losing Me was inspired by the break-up, as it was released shortly after news broke of the split.
Ahead of the album’s release, The Tortured Poets Department will get its own “library installation” in Los Angeles, according to Spotify.
The installation promoting the album will include an outdoor “poetry library” that has reportedly been “highly curated to represent the direction of the new record”, according to People magazine.
