OPINION — Going into my first pay attention of The Tortured Poets Division, I had no thought what to anticipate. 

And popping out the opposite aspect of a 16-track launch, adopted by 15 extra shock songs two hours later – titled The Anthology – I do not actually know what we simply sat via.

However all I can say is: thank god Taylor Swift launched that second album.

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Just about the complete first drop of the album, save for a few tracks, appears to be about Matty Healy – a man Taylor had a two-month fling with final yr. 

However with the 15 new songs, we acquired a Kim Ok diss observe, an old-school-Taylor music about falling for Travis, and songs about feeling unlovable, unable to commit, and ready for a boy to develop up. 

Whereas it is fairly spectacular that she was capable of craft such a powerful narrative story from what seemed to be a rebound situationship, it is with the discharge of the remainder of the tracks that it actually looks like a Taylor Swift album.

That is my tenth new album launch as a Swiftie, going again to 2009 when my buddy and I listened to Fearless – downloaded from Limewire – on a Discman earlier than college. 

READ MORE: ‘Protested an excessive amount of’: Taylor’s essential message to followers in new music

So although I am not a music skilled, I’m definitely well-versed within the lore of Taylor Swift. And I am assured after I say that this album is like none we have seen earlier than, and none we’ll get once more. 

It is a captured second of a quick time frame in Swift’s life. Her earlier albums have been about wanting again, wanting ahead, reflecting and hoping. However TTPD is about shedding your self in delusion.

On the usual TTPD launch, there are not any ‘glitter gel pen’ songs – the label Swift offers to her upbeat, enjoyable, tracks like Shake It Off, We Are By no means Getting Again Collectively, and Karma. 

The album ‘quill’ and ‘fountain pen’ songs about unhappy tales, packaged into neat four-minute tracks with an excellent beat (thanks, Jack Antonoff). And in contrast to Folklore and Evermore, these tracks aren’t fiction. 

Save for So Lengthy London (in regards to the breakdown of her relationship with Joe Alwyn), every music tells a narrative of clinging onto a false actuality that she’d in-built her head.

Within the album’s prologue poem, Swift admits this album was born of a time when she was feeling notably mentally unstable. “I had been struck with a case of a restricted humanity / Which explains my plea right here in the present day of momentary madness.”

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“It was a mutual manic part,” the poem continues. “It was self hurt.”

It is clear she’s speaking in regards to the two-month interval the place she dated Matty Healy following her breakup – when Swifties wrote open letters begging her to dump him, when headlines trashed their relationship as he was accused of racism. 

Swift’s publicist swore they have been ‘simply associates’ however Swift mouthed “I like you” to him from the stage.

Half 1,000,000 folks flocked to Swift over these 4 phrases

And judging by lyrics on However Daddy I Love Him, she did not care in any respect about how folks labelled their relationship. “I would slightly burn my complete life down / than pay attention to 1 extra second of all this bitching and moaning.”

Swift has by no means been this uncooked and open on an album. She’s conducting a autopsy on a relationship that was by no means meant to be – regardless of how a lot she wanted it in that second.

She’s admitting to being in a compromised psychological state, sharing particulars that, with out this album, followers would by no means have identified about her non-public life.

Within the half-hour between digesting the usual album and being hit over the pinnacle with the Anthology, I felt a bit like I used to be floating out to sea on a life raft. WTF did I simply take heed to?

Nonetheless, Swift actually introduced it again with the 15 shock songs. 

Might I direct your consideration to So Excessive Faculty, a music which is clearly about Travis Kelce. Lastly, a glitter gel pen music on the album.

With lyrics like “Reality, dare, spin bottles / You know the way to ball I do know Aristotle”, it is an upbeat and optimistic antidote to the miserable Healy songs that dominate the album. 

Equally, the music thanK you aIMee, a thinly veiled reference to Swift’s one-sided feud with Kim Kardashian is a grown-up model of Look What You Made Me Do, the place she’s wanting again on the scenario with maturity.

There are such a lot of extra references in right here that I am simply ready for the smarter Swifties to choose up on and assist me perceive – from Cassandra of Troy to Peter Pan, to whoever or no matter Robin is, it looks like we’ll be studying increasingly more about this album within the days and weeks to come back. 

Swifties, we’re so again.