Taylor Swift has finally released her much-anticipated new album, The Tortured Poets Department.
In a surprise turn of events on Friday morning, the songstress revealed her new record is a secret double album with 15 extra tracks than expected.
Now available in the form of The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, the album contains 31 tracks in total.
In a post shared on Instagram, Taylor wrote: “It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album.”
“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.”
The singer’s 11th studio album contains a plethora of catchy breakup anthems, inspired by her split from British actor Joe Alwyn.
Their shock break up was confirmed in early 2023, after six years together.
The album contains a host of songs that are said to be about Joe, but the one that has everyone talking is So Long, London.
The song appears at number five on the tracklist, the slot Taylor reserves for the most meaningful song on each of her albums.
It’s title is a clear reference to her previous song London Boy from her album Lover, which she penned about her early romance with Joe and meeting his friends in the UK.
Fans also believe the songs Down Bad, But Daddy I Love Him, I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can), and I Can Do It With A Broken Heart are inspired by Joe.
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It’s been widely speculated the album’s title is a reference to a WhatsApp group Joe shares with Irish actor Paul Mescal, who is the ex-boyfriend of Taylor’s friend Phoebe Bridgers.
In December 2022, the pals revealed they had a WhatsApp group with fellow actor Andrew Scott called The Tortured Man Club.
Paul and Joe have both appeared in TV adaptations of Sally Rooney’s novels Normal People and Conversations with Friends, respectively.
The album’s other song titles include Florida!!! (featuring Florence + The Machine), Fortnight (featuring Post Malone), Guilty As Sin?, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, Clara Bow, and The Manuscript.
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While fans expected the album to be inspired entirely by her split from Joe, a number of songs appear to reference her brief romance with The 1975 musician Matty Healy last year – including The Black Dog and Guilty As Sin.
Taylor dated the British singer early last year, before she struck up a romance with her now-boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce.
While Taylor’s new album reflects on her past relationships with Joe and Matty, the 34-year-old said that chapter of her life is now closed.
In a post shared on Instagram, she wrote: “The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure.”
“This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted.
“This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.”
