Everything we know about Taylor Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department

From the surprising featured artists to what those wild track titles could mean and more, EW is breaking down what to expect from Swift’s 11th studio album.

Taylor Swift is only cryptic and Machiavellian because she cares.

Practicing what she preaches, the “Mastermind” singer threw everyone for a loop during the 2024 Grammy Awards when she took the stage for winning Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights — her lucky No. 13th time winning one of the golden gramophones — and officially announced her 11th original studio album, The Tortured Poets Department.

“I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years, which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19,” she said on stage, laughing. “It’s called The Tortured Poets Department. I’m gonna go post the cover backstage.”

The announcement shocked Swifties everywhere, because, prior to the awards show, fans guessed that the “Anti-Hero” singer might be announcing the widely expected re-recorded version of her sixth album, Reputation, due to a series of strange and intentional Easter eggs, including the fact her website and online store went down for prolonged periods of time on Grammys Sunday.

Alas, Swift was on her “Vigilante S—” again, and here we are, members of the Tortured Swifties Department, trying to figure out what the new record has in store for us. To that end, here’s everything we know so far about The Tortured Poets Department — but be sure to check back, as this story will be updated as we learn more.

When and where can I buy ‘The Tortured Poets Department’?
The album is available now to pre-order and pre-save on Swift’s website, and is currently being offered in vinyl, cassette, CD, and digital album formats to be released April 19. It will also start streaming on Apple Music and Spotify on that date. The product descriptions on Swift’s site reveal that The Tortured Poets Department will contain 16 new tracks, plus bonus track “The Manuscript.”

On Feb. 16 during her first Eras Tour stop in Melbourne, Swift unveiled an alternate edition of the album, “The Bolter Edition,” which features a new cover and a different bonus track, “The Bolter.” It was made available for a limited time to pre-order on Swift’s website.

The first night of her stop in Sydney on Feb. 23 saw yet another limited-release alternate version announced. This time it was an edition that features bonus song “The Albatross,” and also includes new front and back cover images.

And, last but not least, during her second night in Singapore on March 3, Swift unveiled the “Black Dog” variant, which of course features bonus track “The Black Dog” and yet another new front and back cover.

Interestingly, all the variants feature cryptic quotes on the back covers. The first version of the album — the one featuring “The Manuscript” — says, “I love you, it’s ruining my life.” On the “Bolter” edition, Swift declares, “You don’t get to tell me about sad,” and similarly, the “Albatross” variant asks, “Am I allowed to cry?” The phrase “black dog” has been used as a metaphor for depression, and fittingly that version is the darkest color of the four and features the words “Old habits die screaming.” Could these be lyrics from the album, or perhaps lyrics from each version’s special bonus track?
What promo did Taylor Swift do during release week?
While promotion for the album had been virtually nonexistent besides the aforementioned nuggets teased on tour, things started to pick up the week of Tortured Poets Department’s release. On April 13, Apple Music revealed that it was partnering with Swift to tease out a word a day about the album. A hint on social media directed fans to a different Swift track each day, where the lyrics displayed on Apple Music for said track contained capital letters that revealed a word when unscrambled. The words ultimately spelled out this sentence: “We hereby conduct this post mortem.”

On April 14, while announcing the preorders for the special Target-exclusive, phantom-clear version of the album, Swift shared a new phrase: “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all.”

On April 15, Spotify announced that it would be hosting an open-air installation at the Grove in Los Angeles from April 16 through April 18. Per a release, attendees will be able to explore a poetry library curated to represent the direction of the new album. The shelves will be packed with books and visual surprises for fans to enjoy, and each day the installation will be updated with additional aspects. Swifties not based in L.A. need not worry, though: For those who can’t attend in person, Spotify’s socials will capture the goings-on. The streamer also teased that “fans should keep their eyes peeled at the event and on Taylor’s countdown page for surprises leading into Friday’s release.” Spotify also revealed additional lyrics via a few videos featuring Swift at a typewriter throughout release week.

What is the track list for ‘The Tortured Poets Department’?
Just a day after first announcing the new album, Swift revealed the back cover and track list. The tracks are divided up into four “sides”:

Side A

“Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)”
“The Tortured Poets Department”
“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”
“Down Bad”
Side B

“So Long, London”
“But Daddy I Love Him”
“Fresh Out the Slammer”
“Florida!!! (Florence + the Machine)”

Side C

“Guilty as Sin?”
“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”
“I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”
“loml”

Side D

“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”
“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”
“The Alchemy”
“Clara Bow”
Bonus Track: “The Manuscript”

So what does it all mean? There’s a lot to unpack here. The sides could just be the way the vinyls shook out, or maybe each grouping tells a different story, or utilizes a different sound — this is Swift after all. Additionally, the two featured artists, Post Malone and Florence + the Machine, who have never collaborated with Swift on any prior record in her discography, could not be more different in terms of their own sound. Could that point to TTPD containing multiple genres of music?

The song titles themselves are interesting and rather dramatic, with many being longer than the average Swift track title. At first glance, many appear to be possible breakup songs, or songs about difficulties in a relationship, with a few possible new-love bops thrown in. (For reference, Swift and British actor Joe Alwyn announced that they’d broken up after six years together in April 2023. She was then briefly rumored to be seeing 1975 musician Matty Healy, who is also British, but later in the year went public with boyfriend and NFL star Travis Kelce.) Then again, Swift has written about other peoples’ lives and fictional characters and storylines before (see: Folklore and Evermore). So without having the album in hand, it’s impossible to say for sure what anything is about, though that hasn’t stopped fans from trying.

The song “So Long, London” immediately calls to mind the Lover track “London Boy,” reportedly about Alwyn. It’s also the fifth track on the album — a coveted space on any Swift record, as she infamously reserves it for the most emotional song.

“But Daddy I Love Him” feels like a possible reference to the same line in The Little Mermaid, which was released in, ahem, 1989. That film, of course, featured a young woman who trades her voice for the love of a man. Interestingly, Swift has in the past dressed up as Ariel from the film for Halloween.

“Fresh Out the Slammer” seems like it could be about breaking free of a relationship or gaining independence in some way, and also feels like a sister to the Reputation track “…Ready For It?” which is also rumored to be about Alwyn and features a similar prison reference in the lyric “He can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor.” Speaking of which, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor starred together in the 1966 movie adaptation of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, which bears an eerie similarity to the TTPD track titled “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”

Eagle-eyed Swifties have pointed out that “Florida!!!” is noteworthy, as the Eras Tour stops in Tampa were the first Swift performed after her breakup with Alwyn was made public in the beginning of the massive, record-breaking tour. To that end, could “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” reference having to face going on the biggest tour of her life after heartbreak?

And then there’s “Clara Bow,” which seems to reference the Old Hollywood starlet of the same name. EW broke down what that could potentially mean for the track here. The new song joins the ranks of other Swift ditties about real people, including 2012’s “Starlight,” about Ethel Kennedy, and 2020’s “The Last Great American Dynasty,” about Rebekah Harkness.

When the album became available to pre-save on Apple Music, it was revealed that seven tracks will be explicit. Those seven are “The Tortured Poets Department,” “Down Bad,” “But, Daddy, I Love Him,” “Florida!!!,” “loml,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.”

What has Taylor Swift said about ‘The Tortured Poets Department’?
Since announcing the album, Swift has unveiled tidbits about it at various Eras Tour stops. During her first show in Tokyo on Feb. 7, she told the screaming crowd she’d been working on the album since right after she finished Midnights. “So I started working on it immediately after that, and I’ve been working on it for about two years,” she said. “I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour, and when it was perfect in my opinion — when it was good enough for you — I finished it.”
Swift continued, “And I am so, so excited that soon you’ll get to hear it and soon we’ll get to experience it together. I’m over the moon about the fact that you guys care about my music. It still blows my mind.”

In Melbourne on Feb. 16, she revealed that, more than any previous album, TTPD was a record she “needed to make.” It was “really a lifeline for me,” she said. “Just the things I was going through, the things I was writing about, it kind of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life, and I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more.”

Then, while on hiatus from the tour on April 5, Swift teamed with Apple Music to reveal five exclusive playlists on the platform that explore the five stages of heartbreak — which some fans had theorized the new album could explore thematically. She chose songs from her own catalog that fit each stage — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — and said a few words about each one. Interestingly, each playlist is named after a different TTPD track or potential teased lyric from the different album variant covers: Denial is the “‘I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life’ Songs” playlist, Anger is the “‘You Don’t Get to Tell Me About Sad’ Songs” playlist, Bargaining is the “‘Am I Allowed to Cry?’ Songs” playlist, Depression is the “‘Old Habits Die Screaming’ Songs” playlist, and Acceptance is the “‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’ Songs” playlist. So, while these musical groupings don’t contain any new music to analyze and obsess over (yet), it does seem to suggest what themes the album could ultimately be about.

Never one to miss an opportunity for some promotional synergy, on April 8, the day a solar eclipse covered parts of North America in brief darkness, the songwriter teased some new lyrics from the album on her Instagram, which read, “Crowd goes wild at her fingertips, half moonshine, full eclipse.” Of course, Swift didn’t reveal which song the lyrics are from, although popular guesses included “Clara Bow” and “Florida!!!”

What’s the sound or vibe of the album?
Although the vibe or sound cannot always be totally ascertained by the aesthetic Swift goes with for the album art (see: Midnights in all its ’70s-era fashion, but not sound), the vibe so far is somewhat seductive, maybe a bit dark and angsty. The first look contained a photo of what appears to be a prologue to the album. Written by Swift, it reads: “And so I enter into evidence / My tarnished coat of arms / My muses, acquired like bruises / My talismans and charms / The tick, tick, tick of love bombs / My veins of pitch black ink.”

She ends the note by decreeing, “all’s fair in love and poetry…” and signs it off with, “Sincerely, The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department.” The album cover is in grayscale, with Swift lying on a bed of white sheets clad in all black. The back of the album shows Swift with her hand against her forehead, and features the words “I love you, it’s ruining my life.” It’s her sultriest cover yet, and her poses scream, well, tortured artist. But the song titles, as mentioned above, are giving big, unhinged, sassy “Look What You Made Me Do” energy. Until Swift weighs in on the sound or provides some sort of sneak peek (like a music video or single), we’ll just have to wait and see.

Who are the writers of the album?
Apple Music unveiled the songwriting credits for the standard version of the album, which clocks in at 65 minutes and 8 seconds in length, on April 15. The credits for the bonus tracks from each of the special editions of the record have not yet been revealed. The credits for the standard album are:

1. “Fortnight,” featuring Post Malone: Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff & Austin Post
2. “The Tortured Poets Department”: Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff
3. “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”: Taylor Swift
4. “Down Bad”: Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff
5. “So Long, London”: Taylor Swift & Aaron Dessner
6. “But Daddy I Love Him”: Taylor Swift & Aaron Dessner
7. “Fresh Out the Slammer”: Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff
8. “Florida!!!” featuring Florence + The Machine: Taylor Swift & Florence Welch
9. “Guilty as Sin?”: Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff
10. “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”: Taylor Swift
11. “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”: Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff
12. “loml”: Taylor Swift & Aaron Dessner
13. “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”: Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff
14. “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”: Taylor Swift & Aaron Dessner
15. “The Alchemy”: Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff
16. “Clara Bow”: Taylor Swift & Aaron Dessner
Is there a single or music video yet?
Swift teased in a video posted to her Instagram account on April 16 that a music video — likely for the song “Fortnight,” given the 14 hash marks shown in the clip — would debut on the album’s release date at 5 p.m. PT.

What else do we know?
The Tortured Poets Department release date, April 19, happens to be National Cat Lady Day, and Swift is the queen of cat ladies. April is also National Poetry Month. And, on April 19, 1775, the first shots of what would become the war for American independence from England were fired… which could just be a coincidence… or…