Key Takeaways
Swift’s new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” draws heavily from poetic traditions, revealing deep literary inspirations in her songwriting.
The album mixes references from high and low art, challenging traditional boundaries and prompting discussions about artistic value.
Swift’s exploration of genre and style raises questions about her place within the broader artistic canon, hinting at a legacy that defies easy categorization.
Critical Analysis by Joe Santamaria
Masters in Irish Literature, Degree in English and Related Literature
Taylor Swift is undisputedly the biggest musical star on the planet at the moment, with streaming and ticket sale records being broken almost at will. Few artists have ever captured the world’s imagination the way Swift has, with her legions of fans ready to dissect her every move, whether professional or personal. In Swift’s case, that distinction has become increasingly blurred as her profile has risen.
On April 19th, Swift released her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, to great critical and commercial acclaim. This caught our attention, so we thought we’d do a deep dive into the album to see how much poetry has influenced Taylor’s work, and how much influence she has given the form in return.
Background
Taylor the Poet?
Swift is an artist who requires no introduction, but we thought we’d touch upon some of her engagement with poetry prior to the release of this most recent album. In a 2016 73 Questions interview with Vogue, Swift shared that she would consider teaching English at school had she not achieved her musical dreams. In terms of her lyrics, the most prominent example of her engagement with the form came in 2020, when Swift released the song, The Lakes, as a bonus track on her album, Folklore. This song draws its inspiration from the Lake District in England, and the Romantic poets, or Lake Poets, that lived and died there during the nineteenth century.
More broadly, Swift’s deeply introspective and personal lyrics have drawn comparisons between the artist and the Confessional poets of the 1960s, including Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell. Moreover, Swift’s original lyrics are regularly praised for their poetic qualities and she is widely regarded as one of the most creative lyricists working in music today.
The Tortured Poets Department
When this album was announced back in February 2024, fans were quick to speculate about almost every aspect of the album, including its style, artwork, personnel, and more. Perhaps the greatest subject of debate, however, was reserved for the manner in which the songs would depict Swift’s former partner, the actor Joe Alwyn. The release of the album’s song titles only heightened this speculation, as many of them appeared to allude to Alwyn.
Some attention was also paid to the lack of an apostrophe in the title. As a reminder to any readers who may have forgotten, the lack of apostrophe means the title refers to a department that contains a number of tortured poets, rather than one belonging to a single poet. Fans were quick to point out the title’s similarity to the name of a WhatsApp group Alwyn had mentioned in an interview, ‘The Tortured Man Club.’
The album was slated to contain 16 tracks but Swift revealed it was a double album on the day of its release, with a further 15 songs released two hours after the initial album. The second part was subtitled, The Anthology, by Swift, which is a term commonly used to describe a collection of poems.
Finally, the album’s release date, April 19th, was also the 200th anniversary of the death of the English poet, Lord Byron. Not only was Byron closely associated with the Romantic poets with whom Swift referenced in The Lakes, but he was also one of the individuals who shaped our modern understanding of celebrity.
Analysis
This article is not meant to be a review in the traditional sense, as there are a great many of those out there already. Neither is it an attempt to judge the poetic quality of Swift’s original lyrics or determine their literary merit. Instead, we’d like to think of it as an exercise in poetic archeology in which we pore over the album with a metal detector and see what allusions, references, or inspirations we believe pertain to poetry or literature more broadly. Having done so, we’ll attempt to outline what it might all mean and determine how deeply Swift is actually attempting to engage with the art form.
Why Poetry?
Swift is hardly the first popular musician to draw upon poetry for inspiration. In fact, music and poetry share a close bond that goes back to the ancient world – the iconic Greek poet Sappho composed her works to be sung. The distinction between lyrics and poetry has been much debated, especially after the decision to award the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan, who is predominantly a songwriter rather than a writer of novels, drama, or poetry. Swift’s own works have been drawn into this discussion after a number of universities have begun to offer literary courses that feature her lyrics over the past few years.
Like all creatives, Swift’s work exists on a spectrum that is generally understood to range from high art at one end to low art at the other. This spectrum applies to all art forms and often determines the extent to which a film, song, television show, or play is labeled as ‘art’ or ‘entertainment’. For instance, we tend to regard the theatre as a high art form, whereas soap operas are regarded as light entertainment.
However, many of these forms of expression have spectrums of their own. Take films for example: Fast and Furious is seen as entertainment by most and makes hundreds of millions at the box office but receives award nominations. Conversely, there are countless examples of arthouse films that make a fraction of the money but receive critical praise and a plethora of awards. That is because those films are viewed as art rather than entertainment.
The same spectrums exist in Swift’s own medium. Mozart’s music resides at one end and jingles at the other. Pop music, the genre to which Swift is generally thought to belong, is often viewed at the more commercial end of this spectrum. We tend to think of it as entertainment first.
The significance of aligning this album with poetry from the outset is that poetry is firmly rooted at the artistic end of whatever spectrum to which it belongs. Rightly or wrongly, poetry is associated with complexity, ambiguity, intellect, and exclusivity – all things that make it more exclusive and, by definition, less popular. Even compared to novels and plays, poetry is a niche interest subject. We like to think we’re playing our part in breaking down those barriers here at Poem Analysis by making the form more accessible but these associations take a while to shift.
It should be emphasised that these spectrums are often ridiculous and should often be ignored. There are many examples of films, songs, and plays that are deemed to possess artistic merit but retain popular appeal. Likewise, the notion of what makes something ‘art’ is often rooted in outdated and often problematic assumptions that need to be interrogated further. That conversation, however, would need an article (or book) all to itself.
Swift is all too aware of the place her songs are thought to exist on this spectrum and, like many artists, is entitled to feel a sense of frustration at the fact others appear to have the final say on what kind of an artist she is. Her shift between styles and genres over the course of her career, which she has labeled her eras, demonstrates her reluctance to be pigeonholed as a pop artist, country singer, or any of the many other titles that have been attributed to her over the years.
Her decision to reference poetry in an album that, unsurprisingly, broke all kinds of streaming and presale records implies that she would like to see the entertainment-art dichotomy challenged or, better yet, done away with altogether.
Taylor’s Department
Some of Taylor’s engagements with poetry on the album are more obvious than others, none more so than the music video that accompanied the opening track, Fortnight, which features Post Malone as well as actors Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles, best known for their roles in the 1989 film, Dead Poets Society. This clear allusion to another non-poetic medium that engages closely with poetry and still achieved great commercial success is a clear sign that the aforementioned distinctions matter to Swift and that she is keen to challenge them. Moreover, the music video clearly draws inspiration from the recent film, Poor Things, in which Swift occupies the role for which Emma Stone recently won an Oscar. Poor Things is based on a novel that is in turn inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This layering of different literary and artistic references demonstrates Swift’s willingness to undermine the narrow prisms through which consumers are expected to engage with film, music, and literature.
The first explicit lyrical engagement with poetry arrives in the chorus of The Tortured Poets Department, in which the narrator declares that the addressee isn’t “Dylan Thomas” and that they aren’t “Patti Smith”. For those who don’t know, Dylan Thomas was a twentieth-century Welsh poet best known for his poem, Do not go gentle into that good night, and the radio drama, Under Milk Wood. Widely regarded as one of the finest poets of his generation, Thomas also fits the stereotype of the ‘tortured artist’ that Swift alludes to in the title, given his long battle with alcoholism.
The Patti Smith reference is more ambiguous, given the fact she is better known as a singer and songwriter than as a poet. With numerous beloved songs and dozens of published books, Smith is an artist who trumps the aforementioned spectrum of art, given she has achieved commercial success as a songwriter while also writing poetry and prose that would ordinarily be associated with higher art. While the song declares that the speaker and addressee are distinct from Thomas or Smith, the very need to make this claim implies others have made those comparisons beforehand. Nobody is required to deny things that were obviously not the case.
These refutations are quickly followed by another when Swift declares that “this ain’t the Chelsea Hotel” which refers to the iconic New York building that housed countless artists over many decades, including Thomas and Smith. Dylan Thomas even stayed at the hotel in the days before his death. Swift’s decision to publically distance herself from these iconic figures and locations of modern artistic production speaks to a fundamental awareness of the fact her music has, until recently, been excluded from such vaunted company as an artist. A later reference in the song declares that fellow songwriter Charlie Puth ought, in Swift’s opinion, should “be a bigger artist” which further suggests the artistic canon was at the forefront of Swift’s mind when writing the song. The Chelsea Hotel and its inhabitants could even have inspired the title of the song and album, as it was a haven for precisely the kind of creatives that have helped define our modern perception of what makes a ‘tortured artist’.
The suggestion that Swift may have been excluded from a haven of fellow creatives is further supported by the fact that imprisonment and incarceration are among the album’s most pervading and enduring symbols. Cages, locked doors, and chains are mentioned explicitly in at least six of the songs while exclusion and the desire to escape are alluded to in others such as Florida!!! and I Look in People’s Windows. While some fans and critics have rightly pointed to romantic relationships as the cause of such symbolism, this interpretation fails to take into account the fact that several of these references allude to being prevented from entering a space rather than leaving it.
If failed relationships with Alwyn or singer Matty Healy are the reason Swift returns again and again to these symbols, then they would surely only relate to being trapped within unwanted boundaries rather than outside of them. Instead, these simultaneous symbols of entrapment and exclusion could serve to illustrate Swift’s frustration at the limited artistic space she has been afforded until recently. The songs’ lyrics both push against the arbitrary limits of popular music while they speak to an inability to penetrate the exclusive world of high art to which the speaker appears irrevocably drawn.
Hidden Clues
An artist like Swift, whose ability and propensity to weave subtle clues into her work, outfits, music videos, and social media posts is legendary; her lyrical engagement with poetry was never likely to end with explicit references. This next section will attempt to tease out some of the more obscure references to poetry and literature, as well as contend with how they might relate to the album’s apparent wider interest in Taylor’s position in the artistic canon.
Having spent some time poring over the songs’ lyrics, it quickly becomes apparent that there are not many touchstones of the Western canon that Swift hasn’t alluded to over the course of these 31 tracks, even referring to the West itself in the opening line of But Daddy I Love Him. Topics like the Western canon are ordinarily the subject of seminar debate in universities, not pop songs. Taylor clearly doesn’t agree.
Several foundation texts of the Western canon are referenced, including the Bible in The Manuscript, Guilty as Sin, and The Prophecy while Homer’s Iliad is evoked through the titular mention of the Trojan Princess Cassandra in one of the songs from The Anthology. These poetic references serve their own purposes in the context of those songs but they also form a literary backdrop that few pop albums ever desire for, let alone create.
Moreover, by focusing on the plight of female figures such as Eve in The Prophecy and Cassandra in the song that bears her name, Swift captures something about what being a prominent female figure is like. Eve has long borne the scorn of those who blame her for mankind’s expulsion from paradise, while Cassandra’s sage counsel was repeatedly unheeded by men in positions of authority. Finally, the two women represent both sides of the expulsion-entrapment theme mentioned earlier in this article, as Eve was prevented from returning to Eden while Cassandra was unable to leave the walls of Troy for ten years while under siege.
Other classical references support the album’s grounding in the poetic and literary spheres while also supporting the notion that Swift feels trapped in the restrictive role that has been traditionally reserved for pop stars, especially female ones. The reference to “years of labor” in Fresh Out of the Slammer evokes the story of the twelve labors of the demi-god Hercules and, thus, associates Swift with iconic Athenian playwrights such as Euripides, who explored that story in his drama.
A veiled allusion to the myth of Sisyphus in So Long London is made explicit in thanK you aIMee, in which Swift’s narrator claims to have “pushed each boulder up the hill”. According to the myth, Sisyphus was tasked with rolling a boulder up a hill every day for eternity as punishment for his crimes on Earth. His story is most famously recorded by the Roman poet Ovid but also has strong links to the twentieth-century Nobel Prize-winning writers Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett. Both Hercules and Sisyphus are condemned to serve some kind of punishment in lieu of or in addition to their incarceration. Swift’s crimes and those of her narrators are unclear, yet they seem compelled to serve out the same punishments.
Not all of the poetic allusions are classical. Swift’s mention of soliloquies in But Daddy I Love Him clearly invokes the English writer William Shakespeare, whose use of the dramatic technique remains defining in the twenty-first century. Nor are her references limited to poetry in the English language – The Anthology track, The Albatross, shares its title with a poem from the French Symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire. Even more curiously, the poem’s primary interpretation relates to how society will always misunderstand artists and belittle their talents instead of appreciating them. Swift’s decision to align her song with this poem implies an affinity with its central message – like Baudelaire, Swift is pushing back against the assumed wisdom of critics and academics who claim insight into the value of art they did not help create.
This interpretation is further strengthened by the fact the song refers to a series of supposedly sage observations made by unnamed “wise men”. These words of advice are presented as though commonly known, but we could find no mention of them outside of the song’s lyrics. The lack of names and the absence of any credentials invite the listeners to question why they are so quick to believe the comments of, historically male, critics about art rather than listen to the views of artists themselves.
High and Low Art
It is important to highlight the fact that Swift also makes reference to a great many other types of music, film and forms of entertainment over the course of the album. In fact, she often places the references typically associated with ‘high art’ so that they appear to be in dialogue with the ‘low ones’. We have already mentioned how But Daddy I Love Him draws upon Shakespeare and mentions the Western canon but the current debate for the origin of its title is being fought between fans of Disney’s The Little Mermaid and the 2004 film, The Notebook. It is no slight to those films to say that they are not ordinarily thought to be major contributions to the story of Western art. Taylor’s album appears to ask a series of simple but complex questions: why not? Perhaps even more pressingly: who decides?
One of the album’s most popular songs, So High School, name drops the Greek philosopher Aristotle, even claiming to “know” him before making reference to the 1999 sex comedy, American Pie, the 1962 science fantasy novel, A Wrinkle in Time, and the popular video game, Grand Theft Auto. The song, Loml, makes reference to impressionist artwork before mentioning the hip-hop and R&B-inspired song, Mr. Steal Your Girl by Trey Songz. Swift evokes the classic children’s novel, The Secret Garden in I Hate It Here, and the iconic character, Peter Pan, from the novels of J.M. Barrie and numerous film adaptations in the song, Peter. The final track of the album’s first section, Clara Bow, draws parallels between our modern times and the Golden Age of Cinema in which the song’s titular figure was a major star, while also giving a shoutout to the singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks.
Conclusion
Overall, the sheer number and array of cultural reference points ensure the album becomes something of a library of Swift’s wide-ranging influences and artistic heroes. Moreover, the decision to layer these references indiscriminately alongside one another, with little regard for their connotations or position within the artistic hierarchy speaks to Swift’s fundamental disregard for the hierarchy in the first place.
On the one hand, the album is a series of pop songs that have and will continue to make vast sums of money and break all kinds of commercial records. It is also an album about breakups and fans are not wrong to speculate that certain real-life people may have inspired certain songs or lyrics. This article’s view that the album is also an instance in which Swift is flexing her artistic muscles and challenging the orthodoxy of the Western canon is not contrary to those interpretations but can instead sit alongside them.
Finally, amidst the rich tapestry of creative expression Taylor weaves throughout the album, she manages to insert herself. The closing lines of Clara Bow refer to Taylor Swift as though being spoken of in the future, just as the song’s lyrics look back at the life and experiences of Clara. This subtly invites us to question how Swift will be regarded in the years to come, just as critics, readers, and academics continually rework and redefine the legacies and impacts of the artists of the past. In The Tortured Poets Department, Swift provides enough cultural touchstones to embody the full breadth of the Western canon to date. The ending of Clara Bow offers a fleeting look into the future of that canon, with Taylor’s place in it still very much up for grabs.
