Taylor Swift Tortured Poets Department review: Album finds star vulnerable but vicious

That Taylor Swift would write a break-up album is no surprise.

Over her last 10 records, the star has taken a scalpel to her personal life, filleting the details of flings and trysts and heartbreaks to create some of pop’s most memorable lyrics.

For the last half-decade, she’s been in romantic mode. Songs like Delicate, Lover, Invisible String and Lavender Haze were all inspired by her boyfriend of six years, the British actor Joe Alwyn.

They were so close that Swift moved to London, and shared writing credits with Alwyn (under the pseudonym William Bowery) on her Grammy Award-winning albums Folklore and Midnights.

Then, in April 2023, a month after Swift kicked off her record-breaking Eras tour, it was announced that they had split.

An anonymous source told People magazine it was “amicable” and “not dramatic”. But when the singer announced her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, at the Grammys this February, fans began to speculate it would deal with the fall-out.

They were quick to note how the title bore similarities to a group chat shared by Alwyn and his fellow actor Paul Mescal: The Tortured Man Club.

Then, Swift told the audience at a concert in Melbourne that the album was her most cathartic project yet.

“It kind of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life,” she said. “I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it on Tortured Poets.”

It certainly feels like a purge