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Taylor Swift - 'THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT'


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Posted

Starry eyes sparking up my darkest nights

The stars in your eyes shine brighter in Tupelo

You're a bandit like me, eyes full of stars 

Do I really have to chart the constellations in his eyes?

I thought I was better safe than starry-eyed 

Gazing at me starry-eyed, in your Jehovah's Witness suit

 

How do we join the dots 

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Posted

This is kinda a more boring era than Midy and that's saying a lot...:rip:

 

I want TS12 with a new production style soon but at the same time, I want a full era. She better wrap these rerecordings asap tbh

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Great Username said:

She told me, "Some things just take time

How can you be sure if you won't try?"

She said, "I guess I'll take this pain

Instead of your name"

 

I said I don't mind

It takes time 

I thought I was better safe than starry-eyed 

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa :cries:

The way I hear both catalogues in a whole new light now, the sheer depth of the craters she has imprinted upon the history of music forever.. we will be scouring these discographies for an eternity finding parallels

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Posted
1 hour ago, Great Username said:

Starry eyes sparking up my darkest nights

The stars in your eyes shine brighter in Tupelo

You're a bandit like me, eyes full of stars 

Do I really have to chart the constellations in his eyes?

I thought I was better safe than starry-eyed 

Gazing at me starry-eyed, in your Jehovah's Witness suit

 

How do we join the dots 

Someone take this imagery away from Her :deadbanana4:

Posted
13 hours ago, wastedpotential said:

Someone take this imagery away from Her :deadbanana4:

it's giivng the car and the bar

  • Haha 1
Posted

Why is ICDIWABH #26 on the hot 100 this week?

Posted
52 minutes ago, By the Water said:

Why is ICDIWABH #26 on the hot 100 this week?

The remix from that OTH, I think :gaycat4:

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Posted

need her to push GAS asap! 

 

and give it a "rockier" remix

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Posted

I really need GAS? as the third and final single yet we'll be getting Down Bad with a cheesy alien themed mv for sure :'( 

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Posted
25 minutes ago, IBeMe said:

I really need GAS? as the third and final single yet we'll be getting Down Bad with a cheesy alien themed mv for sure :'( 

ttpd-smoking-duck.gif

 

Good ******* luck :deadbanana4:

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Posted

I'm just grateful she bothered commissioning and releasing that remix for ICDIWABH like that, in and of itself, was more than I expected :deadbanana2:

 

It's about to get its cute top 10 pop radio peak and then collapse off the charts by next week and that'll be a wrap for the TTPD era

 

:suburban:

 

Spoiler

And I'm desperately trying to get to 3000 posts in this thread before that happens for personal reasons and my unemployed state of mind so please ignore the spam

 

:ryan3:

 

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Posted

I haven't listened to this in a while.

 

:deadbanana2:

 

loml is still one of my favorites.

 

 

Posted

i need BDILH to be made a single

Posted (edited)

Hello everyone! It's been a while, let me go on a pointless rambling about the album.

 

I've been thinking a lot about TTPD lately, and especially why I don't listen to the album that often in its full length despite loving most of the 31 tracks. The conclusion I came up with is that the album is super depressing, and everytime I listen to it in full, I end up feeling kinda bad. And tbh, that kind of kept me wondering. Why is this album so depressing. At its core, it's a break-up album, and it's not the first time she made one. But for all the others, I'd say the main emotions that ges through is sadness and anger. For TTPD, we find that too, but on steroid. Take songs like loml or The Prophecy for example, it's mostly depression and despair. The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived is likely the most scathing song of her entire career. While Begin Again was the hopeful song on Red that she was getting through her breakup, on TTPD, the closest song to this is So Long London ("you'll find someone, I'll find someone"), which says a lot about how dreading everything felt to her.

My interpretation of all this (which is most likely completely false but still, I personally find it compelling) is that the death of her relationship with Matty is also the death of "her old self" in a way. She has spoken at length through her catalogue about how much stronger/colder she is after the 2016 debacle, compared to her youthful optimism she had previously to that. The way I see it, her relationship with Matty Healy could have been her opportunity to re-tap into that and get her innocence back in a way. And as she perfectly puts it into words herself in Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus, it was all a lie she told herself. She had changed, he had changed, and everything was just them wondering "what if". And I think she wasn't prepared for the answer she got. At this point, she realized that nothing could ever bring her her innocence back, which is demonstrated very well on the song Peter. Here, she depicts a girl waiting by the window for Peter to come back, but at the end "the woman who sits at the window has turned off the lights". To me this reads like her final goodbye to her old self, to that innocence, to that youthful optimism.

Likewise, I think that's why we get so many songs talking about her fame/public debacles on the album. Who's Afraid Of Little Old Me is her way of lashing at what made her lose her innocence/"old self". Similarly, the songs about Kim is also a reflection of what this relationship brought her back to. And because all this fame reflection brought her to Clara Bow, thank you god. This song is kind of her ultimate song about how fame/the industry treats female artist and it's by far far far her most articulate and best written song on the subject. This is everything The Man wish it would be (but failed miserably).

Out of all this, that's how she gets to songs like I Hate It Here and Robin. The first one being pretty obvious. This life can be extremely overwhelming, infuriating, dehuminasing… so she explains how she manages to get through it by escaping in her mind/fantasies. Consequently, she expresses to Robin, a kid, how much he has to cherrish that moment in his life where he's still far away from all the chaos, and that the adults have to protect that part of his life before it's too late.

 

Outside of this complete fantasy (or maybe it's not fantasy and I explained exactly how Taylor felt, who knows, and in the end, does it even matter if I'm right or wrong?), I wanted to share after 5 months my feelings towards the album itself.

At first, I considered the album to enter the cannon of my ultimate Taylor albums ever (which contains evermore, Red, folklore and Speak Now). Nowadays, I would say it will not enter this hall of fame. There are a couple points that make me come to this conclusion:

  • The album is too long. While I understand why it is this long, it's still too long. There are multiple songs that I think should've been cut, because they either don't fit whatsoever (like So High School, the biggest offender) or because I simply think they're dragging (Robin is first in line for this). A bit of trimming would elevate the album A LOT.
  • The tracklisting is a mess. I don't like that the standard and The Anthology are separated. The sonic vibes are just not at all similar, and it makes it hard to think about the complete thing as only 1 big album when you simply listen to them back to back. Songs from the standard and The Anthology should've been mixed. Second thing, storytelling wise it's really not consistent and it would've needed something a little more considered (but Taylor is famously bad on that front so well). I still can't believe a song like The Alchemy is coming after The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, like it makes absolutely ZERO sense.

That aside, I think the album contains some of her best writing ever. She's sometimes going overboard, but it's very few and far between imo, and it also fits with the title of the album that invokes something more litterary so I'm perfectly fine with it. A lot of songs also have multiple layers of reading. That's something I really like because it gives them more depth and interpretations, which simply is a net positive in terms of making them interesting. Imo, there's several career highlights on the album. If I had to make a very condensed lists of what has become essential songs for me, it would be: MBOBHFT, SLL, BDILH, FOTS, loml, CB, HDIE, IHIH and The Prophecy.

For all the hate Jack receives, I think he actually made the most interesting songs of the album in terms of production, like Fresh Out The Slammer, WAOLOM, I Can Fix Him, BDILH, TBD, imgonnagetyouback and ILIPW. Meanwhile, I think bar a few exceptions (BDILH, TSMWEL, Clara Bow, SLL), the production from Aaron is very same-y from what they've already done before. I'd like to see both gone for TS12 (or limited to a couple songs), but if I had to choose only one to be gone, it would be Aaron. Despite that, even if the songs from Aaron sound like nothing new, I still love them so I'm good.

 

I posted my condensed tracklist of TTPD a while ago, but let me do it again because that's what I'm listening to most of the time. I think it just works very well, and I'd say it would have landed a much better critical reception for the album.

 

Spoiler

1. The Black Dog

2. So Long London

3. Guilty As Sin?

4. The Albatross

5. How Did It End?

6. Fresh Out The Slammer

7. Fortnight

8. The Alchemy

9. But Daddy I Love Him

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

11. My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

12. Down Bad

13. The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

14. loml

15. Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

16. The Prophecy

17. I Can Do It With A Broken Heart

 

Many of songs are left on the cutting room floor, some of my favorites too, but this makes a very cohesive, coherent, and clear representation of the album imo

Edited by Klein
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Posted

Gut her like a fish :razzle:

Posted (edited)

He sent me down town lights...

I hadn't heard it in a while

Am I allowed to cry....?

 

Please just make this a single and get the era over with

 

ovNCIxA.jpeg

Edited by mael
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Posted
5 hours ago, Klein said:
  • Second thing, storytelling wise it's really not consistent and it would've needed something a little more considered (but Taylor is famously bad on that front so well). I still can't believe a song like The Alchemy is coming after The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, like it makes absolutely ZERO sense.

 

Love the thoughtful analysis as per usual :gaycat4:

 

To this, I will say that I think TTPD hosts the most coherent and sequential storyline of her entire career. The run from SLL -> TSMWEL is basically chronological in a way that she's never done before (maybe there are some super vague hints of it on reputation, but not like that). The first four tracks are a bit wonky (I guess I think of Fortnight as the abstract from the album, then the title track and My Boy are... a little taste of Matty I guess, and then Down Bad is just there (but it wouldn't really make sense anywhere else in the tracklist either, so I guess that's as good of a spot as any)), and then you're transported through the entire story of their fling and then you're dumped into the Travvy song (which I agree is a bit of whiplash, though not on the level of say... London Boy -> SYGB -> False God) and then there's Clara. 

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Posted

are we expecting a Down Bad remix on October 18?

Posted

I've never understood the whiplash allegations. Bops come after sad songs or two separate stories/experience are consecutive on almost every album, so maybe it's something I just accepted.

 

I also personally get a kii out of things like All Too Well > 22 bc it's giving

spacer.png

and if that's not indicative of pulling yourself up by your boot strings, then 

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Posted
15 minutes ago, Nein said:

are we expecting a Down Bad remix on October 18?

Why that date specifically? 

Posted
34 minutes ago, wastedpotential said:

Love the thoughtful analysis as per usual :gaycat4:

 

To this, I will say that I think TTPD hosts the most coherent and sequential storyline of her entire career. The run from SLL -> TSMWEL is basically chronological in a way that she's never done before (maybe there are some super vague hints of it on reputation, but not like that). The first four tracks are a bit wonky (I guess I think of Fortnight as the abstract from the album, then the title track and My Boy are... a little taste of Matty I guess, and then Down Bad is just there (but it wouldn't really make sense anywhere else in the tracklist either, so I guess that's as good of a spot as any)), and then you're transported through the entire story of their fling and then you're dumped into the Travvy song (which I agree is a bit of whiplash, though not on the level of say... London Boy -> SYGB -> False God) and then there's Clara. 

The Alchemy isn't a Travvy song :gaycat6:. Actually if it was, it would make sense to put it post-TSMWEL (albeit the transition is a bit brutal). But I guess you're right. SLL -> TSMWEL is a coherent storyline (if you remove WAOLOM). 

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Posted
12 minutes ago, Dear Reader said:

Why that date specifically? 

The start of the new NA leg in Miami! That's the first date, and it's a Friday

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Posted
7 hours ago, Klein said:

Here, she depicts a girl waiting by the window for Peter to come back, but at the end "the woman who sits at the window has turned off the lights". To me this reads like her final goodbye to her old self, to that innocence, to that youthful optimism.

this is so true and it's why Robin indirectly fits the album's narrative imo

Posted

I just love Taylor so much. Ok is she wants to give us TS12 so bad do it Mother... there's only 1 you of you no pun intended.

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