But that song is one of the best on the album. Her incredible collaboration with pop wizard Florence Welch is a breath of fresh air, allowing Swift to utilize a more theatrical and dynamic aesthetic. Another great piece, “Guilty as Sin?,” is a rare Antonoff production that puts Swift's voice in a '90s soft rock vibe rather than heavy-duty electronics. This track in particular presents a vivid Swiftian image. “Messy upper lip kisses” from imagined lovers, friends in their 30s who “all smell like weed or little babies.”
It wouldn't be a Swift album without some overheated, disproportionately extended revenge songs. There's a goofy tune here called “Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?”, a rage against a grand, booming palette. Considering the enormous cultural power Swift wields and the fact that she has skillfully expressed humor and irony elsewhere in her own catalog, it is surprising that she does not deliver this piece without a (necessary) wink.
Many great artists have been haunted by the feeling of being underestimated, and when they become too successful to convincingly argue for their position as the underdog, they have had to find new targets for their anger. Facing a similar moment in her career, Beyoncé chose to turn her gaze outward. In her latest release, 'Cowboy Carter', she takes aim at the racist traditionalists who remain in her music scene and the notion of genre as a means of redemption or limitation.
Swift's new project is anchored in her internal world. The villain of “The Tortured Poets Department” is a less famous ex-lover, and in the unexpectedly venomous “But Daddy Loves Him,” “Wine Mom” and “Sarah and Hannah in their Sunday best” cluck their tongues at us. there is. The speaker's decision to date. (Some might speculate that this is actually aimed at her own fans.) “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is probably the most satisfyingly wicked breakup song Swift has written since “All Too Well.” There is no doubt about it. Is the clash between the world's smallest man and the tallest woman a fair fight?
That's a tricky question. Swift may have wanted to unpack from her uneven LP, “Midnights.” And yet Swift was asking deeper, more challenging questions about gender, power, and adult femininity than she does here. It's a disservice to “The Tortured Poets Department” that the starry-eyed fascination with fairy tales seeps back into Swift's lyricism. It focuses almost exclusively on the redemption of romantic love. I've been trying to keep a tally of how many songs tease a wedding ring and lack of fingers. Ultimately, this perspective leaves the album feeling a bit hermetic, lacking the depth and taut structure of her best work.
Swift has been promoting the poetry-themed album with hand-typed lyrics, sponsored library installations, and even an epilogue written in verse. Her obvious love of language and fascination with the way words come together in rhyme certainly runs through Swift's writing. But her poetry is not a marketing strategy or aesthetic. Poetry is a holistic way of looking at the world and its language, turning both upside down to find new meaning and possibility. It also often runs counter to the ruling principles of Swift's current empire, an art form where less is more.