Imprecatory pop

THE FIRST TIME I cried while listening to The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology was when I heard Taylor Swift sing, “My beloved ghost and me” in the bridge for “How Did It End?” It was the combination of “beloved” and “ghost”—Song of Solomon collides with therapy speak—that struck me. This is the spiritual collision Swift captures in TTPD, her 11th studio album.

This is quite the space to occupy for the most dominant cultural force since the Beatles. TTPD is Swift’s fifth album since 2019, and it became the first album to hit 1 billion streams on Spotify in a single week. Swift has more No. 1 albums than any other woman, and she’s the first living artist since Herb Alpert (!) in 1966 to have four titles in the Billboard Top 10.

More than anything, her newest album acts like an imprecatory psalm, with Swift naming and rebuking her enemies. It is a 31-track meditation of wrongs done by her former loves (by all accounts, Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy), by her fans, and, yes, by herself. Swift does not seem interested in forgiveness (“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”) or letting go of grudges (“thanK you aIMee”). These factors may explain the regrettably high volume of explicit language throughout TTPD (including several F-bombs).

Much of Swift’s heartbreak stems from dashed hopes of marriage and family. As she sings in “loml” (“loss of my life”), “Talkin’ rings and talkin’ cradles / I wish I could un-recall / How we almost had it all.”

Swift employs Christian imagery and language as she recounts the death of her dreams. This is most apparent on “Guilty as Sin?,” where Easter symbolism abounds. On “But Daddy I Love Him,” she asks us not to pray for her as she names the sins committed by “vipers dressed in empath’s clothing.” Later, on “Cassandra,” she scorns the “Christian chorus line” who “never spared a prayer for [her] soul.”

Unfortunately, the midtempo synth-pop that comprises most of the first half of TTPD works against these themes. There are two exceptions. “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” is big, catchy, cathartic. “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” is a frenetic, electric jam that belies lyrics like, “I cry a lot but I am so productive, it’s an art.”

Songs like “loml” and most of the second half move in a more acoustic direction. They’re sad and lush and create an emotional ecosystem that’s easy to get lost in. In “The Prophecy,” intricate guitar work lays the foundation for what’s really a prayer. Swift sings, “I’ve been on my knees / Change the prophecy / Don’t want money / Just someone who wants my company.”

Still, all the what-if-ing can feel overdone. The Catholic poet Dana Gioia, in his poem “Summer Storm,” warns against playing games with “What ifs that won’t stay buried … / Strangers we might have married.” He knows that “memory insists on pining / For places it never went,” and that life would not “be happier / Just by being different.”