Full disclosure: Taylor Swift pulled a fast one last night.  After dropping "The Tortured Poets Department" at midnight (her 11th studio album), she dropped another 15 songs two hours later.  We're talking about the first 16 songs here.  Songs about tortured poets (Matt Healy?) from an obviously tortured poet.  Swift's lyrics aren't written in high school math class anymore: "The smoke cloud billows out his mouth like a freight train in a small town". . ."my friends all smell like weed or little babies".

 

The production is perfect.  Her voice is nicely positioned in the front of the mix, allowing you to get lost in the lyrics, but you won't miss the continued maturation of her voice. Her low register is Joni Mitchell-Karen Carpenter solid in several songs, like "So Long, London", "The Alchemy", and "I Can Fix Him".  If you've avoided falling into the Taylor Swift rabbit hole all these years, let this be the album you finally give your attention to.

 

 

photo credit: makaiyla willis