It’s not Swift’s fault that we’re so obsessed with her, but this album gives the impression that she can’t quite hear herself over the roar of the crowd. Tearjerkers like “So Long, London” and “loml” fall short when every lyric carries equal weight. There’s no hierarchy of tragic detail; these songs fail to distill an overarching emotional truth, tending to smother rather than sting. It would help if Swift were exploring new musical ideas, but she is largely retreading old territory—unsurprising, perhaps, given that the last three years of her life have been consumed by re-recording her old albums and touring her past selves. The new music is colored in familiar shades of Antonoff (sparse drum programming, twinkly synths) and Dessner (suppler, more strings). Songs sound like other songs—“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” like Midnights’ “Mastermind”; the intro of “So Long, London” like that of Folklore’s “My Tears Ricochet.” Her melodies feel staid, like they are made to fit the music, rather than the other way around.
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If Swift believes that output for its own sake is what she has to offer, she underestimates her gift. Listeners who believe that her every ounce of experience is inherently interesting—because she was the one to have it—misunderstand her as well. Taylor Swift doesn’t need a whole album to tell the story of a relationship; she only needs one song, sometimes even one line. She almost has it in Tortured Poets’ title track, with the tossed-off brilliance of “We’re modern idiots.” She’s nearly there with the vignette, which needs a bit more burnishing, about her man slipping a ring from her middle to her eager left ring finger at dinner. You can see what she’s chasing here: the moment in time that triggers a flash of feeling that lasts forever—the sort of thing people call Swiftian. We’ve been students of Swift’s poetry for years. The lesson of The Tortured Poets Department is not to push through the pain—it’s to take the time to process it.