The Tortured Poets Department

The Tortured Poets Department
The Tortured Poets Department
	Standard cover
Studio album by Taylor Swift
Released	April 19, 2024
Studio	Audu (Brooklyn); Big Mercy (New York City); Conway Recording (Hollywood); The Dwelling (New York City); Electric Lady (New York City); Electric Feel (Los Angeles); Esplanade (New Orleans); Hutchinson Sound (Brooklyn); Long Pond (Hudson Valley); Miloco (London); Narwhal (Chicago); Pleasure Hill (Portland); Prime Recording (Nashville); Rue Boyer (Paris); Smilo Sound (Orcas Island); Tiny Telephone (Oakland); Unknown locations (Biarritz, Los Angeles, Paris);
Genre	Synth-pop; folk-pop; chamber pop;
Length	65:08
Label	Republic
Producer	Taylor Swift; Jack Antonoff; Aaron Dessner; Patrik Berger;
Taylor Swift chronology
The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology
	Double album cover
Singles from The Tortured Poets Department
	"Fortnight"; Released: April 19, 2024;

The Tortured Poets Department^[a] is the eleventh studio album by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on April 19, 2024, through Republic Records. It was expanded into a double album upon release, subtitled The Anthology, containing a second volume of songs.

Swift began writing The Tortured Poets Department shortly after finishing her tenth studio album, Midnights (2022), and continued developing it behind the Eras Tour in 2023. She described The Tortured Poets Department as a cathartic album and conceived it as an imperative songwriting project amidst her heightened fame and media scrutiny. The songs introspect on her public and private lives, detailing tumult and sorrow via motifs of self-awareness, delusion, anger, mourning, and humor. Produced with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, the album is a minimalist synth-pop, folk-pop, and chamber pop effort with rock and country stylings. The composition is largely mid-tempo, driven by a mix of synthesizers and drum machines with piano and guitar.

The album broke various sales and streaming records. It achieved the highest single-day and single-week global streams for an album on Spotify and topped the charts in territories across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Americas, breaking chart records in Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In the United States, The Tortured Poets Department debuted atop the Billboard 200 with first-week 2.6 million album-equivalent units, including 1.9 million pure sales, marking Swift's biggest sales week and record-extending seventh release to open with over a million units. Its songs made Swift the first artist to monopolize the first 14 positions of the Billboard Hot 100, with the lead single "Fortnight" at the top.

The album polarized critics upon release: most reviews were positive and praised Swift's cathartic songwriting for its emotional resonance and wit, but some found it overlong and lacking profundity. Journalists attributed the mixed reception to Swift's celebrity, which was used by reviews to prioritize gossip and sensationalism over artistic evaluation. Subsequent assessments of the album appreciated the musical and lyrical nuances that emerged upon further listens. Swift included songs from the album in the 2024 phase of the Eras Tour.
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[a]