Tortured Poets Department: An Album review

Simply put, underwhelming. Its derivative instrumentals create a stale taste that lingers throughout the first half of the album.

The once poppy and bombastic beats scattered throughout 1989 have been swapped out for dubious nothing burgers of pure emptiness. Its swirling instrumentals remind me of Taylor swift, scavenging away at the last remnants and unused tunes of Midnights. However, despite Midnights being one of my favourite Taylor Swift albums, the once hazy and smokey vocals of Midnights has been replaced with gasping breaths of a Lana Del Ray imitation.  Talking about Lana Del Ray, Taylor, through my judgment seems to be trying to replicate Lana Del Ray’s deep voice and emotional sorrow or even a watered-down version of Olivia Rodrigo, Guts. To get into the real meat and potatoes, I’ll pull apart some of the songs that caught my attention. And believe me there aren’t many, not to say that there aren’t any problems, but its because each song sounds the same and its honestly disappointing. Fortnight itself is a good album opener and I quite liked it. Its instrumentals, although basic still provided a familiar tone and sound reminiscent of Taylor Swift. Post Malones part was also quite nice, proving himself still worthy of a good artist. Tortured Poets Department on the other hand. Where do I fucking start.

You left your typewriter at my apartment. Straight from the tortured poets department

Fucking kill me.

Taylor Swift, for a while has proven time and time again that her lyricism is as volatile as her relationships. This bland and cheesy opening line baffled me, confused me. Wake up Taylor, what is a tortured poets department? Do you mean Dead Poets Society, that you blatantly copied from? The typewriter itself is meant to establish a connection to Matty Healy. You were together for two months. This really raises an eyebrow because half of this album is about this man. Write something else for ONCE. The album is tiring and a pain to listen to, the same unoriginal story replaying over and over again, dragging this album lower and lower in my mind. These cringe-worthy bars are scattered all over the album and literally kill the poets that try to decipher what Taylor is trying to say. The next line:

I think some things I never say Like, Who uses typewriters anyway?

This weird fourth-wall breaking just makes me sad. It’s a filler line meant to show Taylor’s exploration and realisation of what shes writing but I really don’t think so. Its supposed to come off as witty, like shes examining and going over what shes saying. This thoughts-to-lyrics process is something quite common in songs but the way Taylor does it. Its just disappointing. Now, I personally dislike Taylor Swift but I do recognise her influence in the music industry and her talent. 1989 in my opinion is a 9/10, a certified banger so it just disappoints me seeing a wet fart of Tortured Poets Department.

Moving on, I could write an entire thesis on the embarrassing Tortured Poets Department but I’ll move on to more positive aspects of the album. Despite the name, Down Bad actually left a strong impression on my second listening. The opening instrumentals is actually really nice. The weird tugs in the instrumental proved to be quite entertaining, to be honest, the instrumentals were very nice throughout the entire song. Taylor’s soft talk-singing also added a layer of smooth pure ecstasy that just made me want to close my eyes and reflect on my past relationships. The atmospheric add-ons spread throughout the track provided a very groovy experiment.

 Now to sum up, because I feel like I’m done with Taylor Swift, Tortured Poets Department was an underwhelming, derivative, and empty album. As usual, her chorus’s proved quite entertaining and hooked me in just as I was about to lose interest in her bland verse’s. Tortured Poets Department, tries so hard to be something Taylor Swift cannot do. The copy-cat vibes of Lana Del Ray just makes me want to listen to Lana Del Ray instead. Tortured poets department holds up to a strong 3.