Taylor Swift Talks Inspiration and Meaning Behind Her New 'The Tortured Poets Department' Songs, and Unveils Surprise Double Album!

Taylor Swift hosted a special midnight (ET) listening party for her new album, The Tortured Poets Department on iHeartRadio, and she gave some insight into her writing and thought process for some of her new songs. While she didn't do a soundbite for every song (she skipped "So Long, London," but Swifties already know who that one is about), she made it clear that the work as a whole is a "dramatic, artistic, tragic take on love and loss."

As the album dropped, she shared this message on her official Instagram:

"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. 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. 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.

And then all that's left behind is the tortured poetry."

"It's a very fatalistic album," Swift declared at the beginning of the iHeartRadio complete top-to-bottom playthrough. "There are a lot of dramatic lines about life or death. 'I love you it's ruining my life' -- like these are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say, but it’s that kind of album." Below is a bit she said about some of the songs on the first 16 tracks she released at midnight.

The Tortured Poets Department tracklist:

1. Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)

"I've always imagined that ['Fortnight'] took place in this American town where the American dream you thought would happen to you didn't. Right? You ended up not with the person that you loved and now you have to just live with that every day, wondering what would have been, maybe seeing them out. And that's a pretty tragic concept, really."

2. The Tortured Poets Department

3. My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

Swift said she wrote this song alone "from the perspective of a child's toy" that has been broken. It's how she thinks a lot of people feel in a relationship when they're being disrespected or unappreciated. "It's a song about denial," she said.

4. Down Bad

Swift said that many of the songs use metaphors to discuss heartbreak, and "Down Bad" is about the feeling of being lovebombed and "when someone rocks your world and then abandons you." For this song, she sings from the perspective of a girl abducted by aliens and then left alone in a field.

5. So Long, London

6. But Daddy I Love Him

7. Fresh Out The Slammer

8. Florida!!! (feat. Florence + The Machine)

"What happens when your life doesn't fit or your choices you've made catch up to you, and you're just surrounded by these harsh consequences and judgment and circumstances did not lead you to where you thought you would be, and you just want to escape from everything you've ever known? Is there a place you could go? I'm always watching Dateline -- people have these crimes that they commit where they immediately skip town, and go to, they go to Florida. They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in. And I think when you go through a heartbreak, there's a part of you that thinks 'I want a new name, a new life, I don't want anyone to know where I've been or know me at all.'"

9. Guilty as Sin?

10. Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?

11. I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

12. loml

Though Swift did not give a verbal intro to this song, its lyrics did put an end to fan speculation on what exactly "loml" stood for. After singing the words "love of your life" throughout the song, at the very end, she concludes, "You're the loss of my life."

13. I Can Do It With a Broken Heart

14. The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

15. The Alchemy

16. Clara Bow

Soon after her midnight listening party began, Swift's socials dropped another countdown clock, ticking away toward 2 a.m. Fan sites also noted that many of her teased lyrics did not appear in the first 16 songs that were currently being heard for the first time. But once the clock hit 2 a.m. on the East Coast, Swift confirmed that The Tortured Poets Department is a surprise double album.

She then released The Anthology, another 15 songs tacked onto the tail end of Tortured Poets. That release brought the grand total up to 31 songs, making this Swift's longest album yet. Those songs are listed below:

17. The Black Dog

18. imgonnagetyouback

19. The Albatross

20. Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

21. How Did It End?

22. So High School

23. I Hate It Here

24. thanK you aIMee

25. I Look in People's Windows

26. The Prophecy

27. Cassandra

28. Peter

29. The Bolter

30. Robin

31. The Manuscript

During a February concert in Melbourne, Swift spoke a bit about the album, saying "it was really a lifeline for me," according to video footage posted to social media. "Just the things I was going through, the things I was writing about, it kind of reminded me why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life."

The Tortured Poets Department is now available on all streaming platforms.

Tags

Taylor Swift, Iheartradio