Every Single Album - What's Coming on 'The Tortured Poets Department'? | Every Single Album: Taylor Swift

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Less than a week away from the release of 'The Tortured Poets Department,' Nora and Nathan talk through some of the burning questions they have about this album. They talk about the five "stages of grief" playlists Taylor Swift released on Apple Music (1:00), what it means that this is most likely a breakup album about Joe Alwyn (13:18), and how this album might sound given that Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner are her main collaborators on it (27:54). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have you ever wondered about the meaning behind your favorite song lyric or why certain melodies make your skin tingle? I'm Cole Kushner and these are the kinds of questions I try to answer on Dissect, a podcast that dives deep into one album per season examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. I've dissected full albums by Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead, Tyro the Creator, Beyonce, Kanye, and more. Our latest season just launched all about MF Doom's Mad Villany. Listen to Dissect wherever you get your podcast because great art deserves more than a swipe. And welcome to every single album. I'm Nora Prynciotti.

And as always, I am here with Nathan Hubbard. Nathan, how is your weekend? Well, it was fine, but it's Taylor Swift Week. I mean, my weekend wasn't as good as Taylor's bouncing around Coachella. We had Teichella Part 2 this weekend. Yeah, you were not at Teichella. But I think spiritually, you kind of were. Sure.

As it is a week, less than a week at this point. It's Monday morning as we record this. So we are officially in Tortured Poets Week. And I feel that Coachella turned into sort of the kickoff event for tortured poets release week. And I have no complaints about that. I thought it was great. She definitely was suboptimally sober. Or optimally, depending on how you think about it.

She's being lifted up out of the crowd. It's nice to see them sort of, you know. My favorite part of the whole thing is Justin Bieber is there and around and nobody's videoing him. He's just like an extra in the Travis Taylor thing at Coachella.

Fantastic. Which honestly is probably exactly how he wants it. Justin Bieber is someone who has historically not loved the glare of his own spotlight. He probably is realizing that he would prefer to only attend events that Taylor and Travis also attend. from here on out.

So maybe, I mean, maybe he'll become like one of those little fish that swim around sharks because they just want, like they want the protection. I don't know. All I know is Ice Bice was taking down a giant joint and standing up like nothing was happening.

She really, she can hold her weed. You heard it here first. All right. There are basically four days until Tortured Poets is released. and though I'm counting Coachella, Teichella, as a sort of kickoff event. I think it is.

Okay, tell me more about that if you're something to say. I think this is calculated. I mean, if you remember leading up to Midnights, we had all the videos and the clues. And this time, I think it seems to be that the calculation was, I am the biggest star on the planet right now. anywhere Travis and I go is going to get attention

rather than do an entire album set up and a whole thing and we can talk about this Apple thing which feels like a half-hearted sort of hidden clue thing kind of like a let's throw a little bit of red meat. Do you think it's half-hearted?

Because I was going to say it's not like there aren't clues and Easter eggs and... It's Apple Music which has lower market share. I don't see it absolutely blowing up everywhere. It hasn't created

remotely as much buzz as the vault stuff did where you had this sort of decode. It doesn't feel like there's an internet-wide frenzy. It feels like more people are relying on a couple of swifties to go do the work. And then, oh, okay, hereby was the first word. So I think it's much more. It's been much more about let's just get Taylor out there. She goes to Coachella, that's going to take the oxygen out of everything else that happens. Poor Olivia Rodriguez. God, she's up there with no doubt. She did a great job. but nobody's talking about it because Taylor and Travis are at the neon carnival at 315 in the morning. But yeah, that is just what it felt like to me is they decided that they didn't need to do all of the traditional interviews and even games, online games, because the spotlight is so bright on them right now.

Okay. So if people haven't figured it out by now, that's what we're doing today. We've been enjoying Pop Girl Spring. we've gone through some great albums and had a lot of fun doing that, which we will continue to do later on this spring. However, it's Tortured Poets Week. It's going to be Tortured Poets Week for over a week here at every single album. And it's time for us to talk about just sort of everything that's in the ecosystem

a few days before the release. And I'm interested that you feel like she's not doing much because I don't know. The playlists to me was a big thing. So what we have right now is the Apple Music, lyric, anagram, hidden word game. Right. So, and I agree with you. I don't know that everybody saw this. So just in case people missed it, over the weekend, Taylor started hiding a word a day in the lyrics to one song from the five stages of grief playlist.

And the first was hidden in Glitch, which is on the denial playlist. And the hidden word was hereby. And then on Sunday, the second word was peace, was. in peace and it was conduct in pieces on the bargaining playlist. So hereby conduct, there's a lot of people who think it's going to spell out. You know, I hereby conduct the first meeting of the tortured poets department or something like that. And we will see that's fun.

You know, it's nice to have a little hidden word thing. To me, what's happening there is she's leading people back to the playlists. Well, let's talk about them. The playlists to me was a big deal. the five playlists, each one for one of the five stages of grief, you know, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And to me, this was a big deal because she puts these playlists out and she has a little message that accompanies each one of them. And the two to me that were kind of like, whoa, were denial and bargaining, particularly denial because she's just recontextualizing a lot of songs that people know as romantic

songs, as love songs, as happy songs. And she said in the voice note, this is a list of songs about getting so caught up in the idea of something that you have a hard time seeing red flags possibly resulting in moments of denial and maybe a little bit of delusion. And on that playlist, there's lavender haze. There's sweet. nothing. You're in the kitchen homin. All that you ever wanted for me was sweet nothing. There's cruel summer.

And there's lover. And I mean, telling everyone in your audience that lover is a song that she wrote while experiencing denial. To quote, to quote Will Ferrell and Anchorman, I don't believe you. So, okay. I don't believe you. I love the way her mind works. I love the way that she needs structure in her life.

She needs numbers to add up. She needs to make mathematical and structural sense of her entire universe. and I think she can do that retroactively almost as like a mind game for her. I do not believe that all of these songs were written from a place of one of five feelings or emotions. And I think this was done as a fun game, but I think if you really press,

I mean, lover was not written from a place of denial. It was not written from a place of denial. You don't think it's possible that lover which was written to sound like a first dance song at a wedding. And look, this is going to be a breakup album. It seems really clear that that's the case. Yes. There are rumors swirling about, you know, cheating and not being comfortable in the limelight and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I don't think that there is a lot of concrete evidence to support some of those theories. So I don't want to get into those. in the limelight, there's a lot of evidence. Yes, yes. There's no evidence to the cheating stuff. Like, I just don't want to go there because it seems like people are creating stuff and that's hurtful and whatever. The one thing that Taylor Swift herself has seemingly sort of sanctioned as part of the issue here in song has to do with marriage. So it doesn't seem impossible to me. But I'm interested in the fact that it doesn't totally hold for you because if that's the case that,

I feel, then I, like, I have to tell you that I feel weird about this. Yeah, and I feel weird about it. I just think recontextualizing your entire catalog into five structures that change the meaning of a ton of the songs in service of an album that's coming up and a promo campaign that seemed to glom on to some structure that the fan base created when they saw the vinals, it feels like a lot of, like, flywheeling and Easter egging that is taking on more meaning than maybe it meant. I could absolutely be wrong.

I just, when I saw the playlist structures, I actually was like, I'm out on this. Like, this is fun to go through, and it's creating a lot of buzz, and people are like, I am dying at, you know, song X being on playlist Y. Holy moly,

I just feel like it feels like a retroactive piecing together of puzzle pieces and repainting of pictures with colors that were meant for a different canvas. So if I can then be a little bit like vulnerable on Maine here, and like, nobody come at me because I just have to work through this, okay? And I just have to speak my truth. I feel a little bad for Joe.

I feel like there is a lot of weird energy in the ecosystem. Yeah. And the idea that you feel like you are, reading this as something that was sort of like after the fact thrown together and stitched into a tapestry that represents a lot of the last

however many album cycles and however many years as something really sad and painful and something where there was like a lot of hidden harm behind the scenes which is the message that I get from these playlists. What I'm what I take from You know, the statement of that is it wasn't happy and there was a lot of harm going on that people didn't know about. And that's a complicated thing to do when you are one of the most powerful celebrities in the world because there is an inevitable punching down that you have to navigate and try to avoid.

and I think the only way to actually do that is if it's really real, is if it's like, well, it doesn't matter who I am or the stature of my celebrity or the, you know, power dynamic between someone and their ex. That's her life and her story

and her feelings and her emotions. And if that all comes through, I think, really like truthfully and honestly and vividly in this album, then I think and hope that where I come down on this is like, you know what? tough break. Like, if you're in a relationship with someone who has this track record of turning their personal experiences and their pain into their art, then that's, that's the

cost of doing business. If this is like, this is, this is searching for a narrative, it, it kind of weirds me out. Well, and I just, I, I, I have been thinking this for a couple of weeks, and I'm just going to say it out loud, even if that might be a very unpopular opinion among people who listen to this podcast, or maybe it's something that other people are sort of like trying to figure out too. I don't know. But like... She got up on stage. She got up on stage before the release of Speak Now and without naming names, basically said, please do not come after John Mayer. And that seemed to happen after people came for Jake around the release of red and the scarf thing and the video and all that.

This feels a lot more like red than it does speak now in terms of the buzz that's being allowed to build. And I think for sure, in hindsight, at the end of any relationship, you look back and you go, oh, and you see a bunch of things in a different light and you feel like you were a prison. I mean, it's clear she tried to make this work for six years. it's clear that she probably wanted to get married and that he didn't. And it's clear that there's a whole lot of hurt about that

that would persist within the relationship. And then afterwards, when you go, God, some of that feels like I just wasted six years of my life, I could see a ton of resentment and anger and all of those things. Which she's so entitled to. 100%. I really firmly believe it doesn't matter, doesn't matter how famous you are.

It doesn't matter how rabid your fans are. It doesn't, like, if that is her story, she's entitled to it. And you don't get to say, you know, you're too rich or too famous or two whatever. No way. To be able to write your own breakup album. No. This won't be her first breakup album. Let's be clear.

And as you say, like, you know what you're getting. You know, if you haven't been paying attention, that's on you, buddy. It's just the whipping the base into a frenzy around it. wonder, because we still have days left, I wonder if she isn't going to overtly put some constraints on this, or if she's actually still carrying so much resentment and anger about the relationship that she's intentionally not going to put constraints on it. But we have seen her put constraints on it before. She's not putting constraints on this, Nathan. There's no world in which that's happening. Let's see. I mean, I think... So long London. My boy only breaks his favorite toys. But Daddy,

I love him. I can fix him. No really I can. The smallest man who ever lived. Like, this is a pretty of all we know about this album, just from from track listings. Yeah. From, you know, so long London is track five, right? Like, yeah. She's naming names. And that's, that is her history. That is what we love about Taylor Swift. It is a complicated thing to do right now. When you're the biggest star in the world. Yeah. And also it's a complicated thing to do. and a thing that she has never done about a six-year relationship. Yeah. As like a fully formed human being, right?

Yeah. When I say constraints, I just mean she didn't pull any punches on Speak Now. She didn't pull any punches on all too well. I'm sure it appears she didn't pull any punches on this album. I just wonder if outside of the art, in the days leading up, that she will direct the army to stand down from a full-on bullying campaign. it's turning into, certainly in sections and corners of the fan base, it's turning into a full-on bullying campaign. Now, again, as you said, Joe Alwin, you signed up for this? You knew what you were

getting? You're a big boy. But I don't know. There's, there is a tiny bit of ugliness as we lead up, which is, yeah, let's gear up for a fight. And I'm not so sure that that's what this is about for her, as much as it is articulating all of the feelings that happen in a relationship when, when there aren't mutual feelings, right? There was clearly a disconnect and a dissonance between what he wanted and what she wanted

and that is going to be the mother of this art. Well, that's okay, but can we keep the fan base from adopting that and seeking vengeance? And to some extent, like,

the answer to that is probably no. And I'm not, I don't know. I'm... She spared John Mayer. The fan base was dear enough for a fight. And that went away quietly into the night.

Yeah, I mean, doing that 10 years after the fact or whatever, like, I'm not saying that it's not, that it wasn't a good thing to do. I was really impressed with her in that moment. I thought that that was actually a rare moment of someone in that type of position, sort of trying to harness it. I just think that it's very different. Well, she seems to be as publicly comfortable and as in love as she's ever been in her life. overtly.

That's what it looks like to most of us, I think, right? Well, sure. But, like, again, what the takeaway from this would be is sort of like, you know, don't believe what you see. I don't, I'm less concerned with what it actually means in real life in a weird way than I am with sort of like establishing the stakes of this album within the context of a sort of who won the breakup type of public narrative. It just doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like a really right artistic space. I guess, but then maybe it's a really fruitful one actually. Like maybe I guess what I'm trying to say here is it's making me feel like there was a lot of pressure on this album to come with receipts about what that relationship was like and what those experiences were like because the context that has been built up around it is you didn't actually know what was going on. And it was a lot more tortured, pardon the pun, than people realized.

And part of the project that's going on right now and has already started with the playlists is we're going to re-contextualize a lot of that. And I don't actually, like, I obviously don't, don't be a weirdo online. Don't bully people you don't know online or people you do know. Like, the. I don't mean to, like, I hope that. you know, everyone including Joe or whatever is like safe and healthy and happy and whatever. My, what's happening with me is not like, oh God, what's going to happen to Joe all.

Like, I don't, I don't want to say that I don't care because he's a person, whatever. But that's just like not the thing that I'm, I'm worried about to the extent that I'm worried about anything. It just feels like it has already been established what this album is. And that feels like a lot of pressure. for who for you as a listener or for Taylor for Taylor for Taylor I mean the album's written right

so the songs are what they are but it feels like she has really told us that there is a story to be told that happened and people didn't realize it was happening while it was happening and so then this album has to kind of get into that and look

maybe it's maybe it has some real lyrical specificity that's heart-wrenching and sort of gets people there. And that's probably a great album. I mean, there is a world in which all of the anxiety that I have about sort of like the stakes that are being raised here is met. And this is like one of the great breakup albums of one of the great breakup songwriters ever. Right? That's entirely possible. It just feels really big.

It feels really emotionally big. And I think one thing that we've talked about in the past is, like, for people who have liked every single Taylor Swift album that has ever existed, there's always this, like, weird anxiety before release. Well, that's what I wouldn't ask you. How much of this is just your, every single time we do this, you are nervous and you're worried that it's not. I feel like this album, it doesn't have to be big.

She is so big that she is now. as a cultural phenomenon bigger than any piece of art that she could put out there. And she has put out so much art over the last two years that to me it takes a little bit of pressure off this. This album can suck.

And she's still going to be the biggest star in the world this summer, gallivanting around Europe with a six foot five tight end from the Super Bowl winning football team. Yeah, I don't, I'm not worried about the album charting. You know, everyone's going to listen to it. It's going to be huge. The metrics are going to be...

But when I said flop, I meant like the music. This one could be a... In a weird way, I'm not worried about the music. Like, what are you worried about? I just, at this point, have come to trust her enough that maybe I'm getting over that thing that we talked about and rechanneling that into worrying about a backlash or how people are going to receive it. I just think that you can kind of trace the contours of her career by whether or not she has

had an appropriate foil. Like, Taylor Swift is a lover, but Taylor Swift is a fighter. And Taylor Swift kind of wants an adversary. And I don't know that's like... She gets her feelings hurt. And that's really compelling. It is a thing that I love to hear her channel. And I suppose where I land with this is like, are we about to learn that this like this, like,

B minus list British actor? was the foil or was sort of the, that this experience rises to that level? What level? Where it's an appropriate thing for her to take on. Like the last chapter of this woman's career was spent essentially challenging the norms of the music industry writ large. to pivot from that to Taylor Swift versus Joe Alwyn, which is what this is turning into a little bit, is a tough needle to threat.

So I hear you on that. I guess there's a couple things that I would say. First of all, the listener, the fan base is going to have to make some decisions about how they receive the art itself. because you're going to be listening to a breakup album while your entire social feed is filled up with her looking, again, like she is completely in love. Like the opposite of the relationship with Joe,

as it's seemingly portrayed here, he was hidden away and, you know, afraid to let her bejewal. And Travis is sort of the definition of a guy who is empowering her to do that, and she seems to be very much happy and in love. So the actual circumstances on the ground. There were really, really romantic and sweet-looking public experiences between the two of them. When she talked about him at the Grammys, it was moving when, you know, the little snippets in the documentary.

I'm not saying the... I agree. That's going to make it hard to we contextualize the relationship and buy into, I was, you know, six years of hostage. but it is going to be knowing just her public nature right now and what appears to be the state of her, you know, emotional and heart, you know, well-being is going to be an interesting thing to try to put aside to just receive the art. And so I am in my own way, like, wondering,

how am I going to try to approach these songs? Am I going to try on first blush to connect every single lyric with one of those photos or one of the mini eras within the Joe era or am I going to just try to take it as a song that's reflective of a set of feelings and block all of the Taylor Swift is a massive star and I know more about her life than I want to

and than I should to be able to objectively receive this art. It's going to be an interesting listening experience for that reason because of just the height, of her stardom. That's, I think, a real, that's, that's the best way

of putting it. And that's maybe the best way of articulating my, my sense of slight anxiety here is just, I am concerned. It is going to be

very difficult for people to hear the songs here. I don't think, I want to be very clear here. I don't think that she's, like, doing a bad thing. This is her life.

And until, until it seems like she's really intentionally whipping people into a frenzy and you know internet is going to internet I don't really put that on her primarily

I just think that it's becoming about something that is really not the album itself and therefore unless the album itself really finds a way to both transcend that, but also satisfy all of the questions that that context is creating about, like,

well, what did we actually not know? And, you know, was this, was there mutuality to this? Were there mistakes on both sides? Or is this, like, this is a real villain? And I just think that's a hard thing to do. Now, if there's anyone who can, it's Taylor Swift. But it, the hyper public nature of her current relationship with Travis is going to be part of this art because there's going to be a part of that which is her overtly and publicly saying see it is possible to be a partner to me see it is possible to do all these things that I'm telling you through this album I wasn't receiving so how the listener and the fan base separates these things is going to be

fascinating can I tell you what I'm worried about anxiety hours Yes, please tell me. Well, when we reviewed Midnights, we loved it. And as we reviewed the 1989 bonus tracks, we loved them. But we traced a lot of sounds to work that Taylor and Jack, and to a lesser extent that Taylor and Aaron Dessner have done together. And Jack Antonoff, her primary producer, through the entire Joe years, right? Yes.

And what we said at the end of that review of that episode was this is great. I really hope that she next time goes with new fresher people to push her to a place of more discomfort or challenge to try something new. because we are hearing some songs and some sounds that we've heard before. And we said that delicately, but we meant it. And now we have a Taylor Swift album coming that looks longer than most of the ones that she's done, that has longer songs, that has more flowery lyric title or song titles, that I expect more punctuation, that I expect is lyrically going to be somewhat different. but sonically, my anxiety this week is it's going to sound like a bit more of the same and less of a, whoa, which is how we felt when she first started working with Aaron Destner.

Or whoa, you know, when she made the transition to pop and first started working with Jack Antonoff. So I'm a little bit anxious that when we wake up Saturday morning, you and I, having had this thing in our hands for about 24 hours, and we do our, every single album pod on torture poets, that I'm going to have to dance around this exact question, which is shoot. It's got really interesting insight. The lyrics are fascinating. She's opened her heart.

And I feel like we've heard some of this before. So we don't know. We should say that we don't know for a fact, right, who's going to be credited on this album. It seems fairly safe to assume that Jack and Aaron Dessner remain the primary class. There's a photo of one of the vials that Taylor posted where you can see like SSN-E-R in a line on it that looks like sort of the credit line on the record, which seems like it would say, you know, produced by Aaron Dessner or whatever. She's been in and out of electric lady quite a bit.

Now, you know, whatever that means. Jack did the weird thing where he hung up on the Dutch. Dutch newspaper that asked if he was... Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, Wendy, he just didn't want to answer the question. Or somebody... Like, I was revisiting that because I was like, are there any other clues about who's working on this?

And I'd forgotten that it was a Dutch newspaper that asked Jack Antonov, are you working on Taylor Swift's Tortured Poets Department? And Jack said, you know I don't talk about that. If you want a click baity thing, go somewhere else or something, I'm paraphrasing. And I just forgot that it was a foreign publication. I'm actually, frankly, not sure that the Dutch newspaper does know that that Jack Antonoff doesn't talk about that.

Frankly, I'm not sure that I knew that Jack Antonoff doesn't talk about Taylor Swift. Jack Antonov talks about Taylor Swift quite a bit. It was a strange reaction. There's a lot of people who've been asked about this album, even in private, by me, who've said, yo, I've got some NDAs. Like the long arm of the law is effective

in the Taylor Swift universe right now. Yeah. Can I... I'll speak from the heart for the... Not for the second time this podcast. I've hopefully been doing it the entire time. But I'll get another thing

off my chest here. Can I say that I don't get Jack Antonoff's sort of like public vibe and persona whatsoever? Did you see him fall off the stage at Coachella? I did. I did. I'm not at all saying anything negative. I kind of think it's funny, but I just want to go on record saying that like the constant bit that he seems to be doing when he talks to interviewers or like is on camera, I don't understand it. And I would

love it if someone would explain it to me because I never know when he's serious. Yeah. I never once. I'm like, okay, like I, whatever his sense of irony is, I can't compute it. I'm in capable of following. It's the Jersey, the Jersey sense of humor escapes you. I don't think it's a New Jersey thing. I know plenty of people from New Jersey who's, whose bits I can interpret. Like the way that he tweets, it doesn't make any sense. Like, it's sort of funny.

I'm sort of like, I'm intrigued. And I would like to learn more. He's been about being constantly busy and like, I can't do this. I don't get it. Like, I don't get the bit. I'm sorry. I didn't mean. to take the spot here.

But I think about, like, I've thought this so many times, and I don't think I've ever said it out loud. I couldn't possibly understand less what Jack Antonoff is doing when he comports himself in the public eye. But I would be interested to learn more. Well, I hope that you get whatever musical work

that they have done for this album. Because, again, that is the thing I'm most concerned about. Lots of content being created on top of itself, lots of overlap in the timelines of when all these things are created and invariably there are going to be some repurposing of sounds

or snippets of things. I really am excited to hear this record. I'm desperately hoping that it sounds different and like a big step forward. But it may be that the emotional heaviness around the end of this relationship with Joe was the fuel for this fire and what she chose to do was use a comfortable medium,

comfortable people, comfortable sounds, to tell this story of six years of her life. You know where I'm landing after this conversation, which has really helped me process some of my feelings, is that I think you're right about that. I think if we set the expectations of there's going to be a real, sonic shift here

and something left field and unexpected. I don't think that we're going to go there. I think it's pretty clear that Jack and Aaron, two people who she's done most of her recent work with,

but also particularly in Jack's case, but I think in Aaron's as well, she's described, and a lot of their collaborators have described as people who are particularly adept at creating a safe space to work in and creating a space where it feels

possible to emote some of the most challenging and sad and deep feelings of a person's experience that they want to put into an album. That is the thing that Taylor Swift likes about working with Jack Antonoff the most, right? Is their personal ability to sort of like get to those places together? And where I'm landing here and finding, again, no pun intended, maybe a little bit of peace. four days before this album comes out. Here we go. Is she's taking, this is a big swing.

She's taking a big swing because it's a big swing to write a huge breakup album that bears it all and to just do it. And I think that's what she's doing. I think she's just, I think she's saying, I have made a career in part at being unbelievably good at channeling these experiences and writing about specific moments of heartbreak and many other things. As we've talked about a zillion times,

Taylor Swift does not just write breakup songs, but she's really fucking good at it. And it's absolutely been a building block. And I think she's, maybe she's taking the challenge head on here of saying I went through the mother of all breakups in her life. and what do I do when I'm completely devastated?

I write about it. And I'm not going to pretend that that's not what this is. And I can actually reframe. Maybe am I going through the stages of grief? Am I now in bargaining? Maybe we'll find out. You're really progressing down the path. That's exactly what I was going to say.

Am I allowed to cry? But maybe where I'm coming to is that, is that she's just meeting that head on and not saying I'm going to try to obfuscate and I'm going to try to... I mean, think about the things that we said about folklore and Evermore,

not like in a totally complimentary way, but just in a sort of like, yeah, okay, these are about characters, Taylor. Like, this song's about Taylor Swift. And she's just saying, like, this is what happened in my life. And is that a complicated thing to navigate when you are the most famous woman in the world?

Absolutely. is it probably additionally complicated when the imbalances of that dynamic in her previous relationships seem to have been one of the things that didn't go right? Absolutely. Do I still worry a little bit about a sort of outside Swiftydom reception to that imbalance? Yeah. But I act, if what she's saying is like, I am working with the people who I feel like I can channel all of that with and we're just going to do it. And this isn't actually about like doing something really all that new, but is more about taking something, the breakup song, which is part of her signature as an artist and saying

this is the mother of all breakup songs and breakup albums of my career. and this was devastating and I'm channeling that and I'm really going for it, then like I will saddle up for that. And I am now after this podcast emotionally ready. Thank you for going on this journey through the five stages with me. You're welcome. We've done it. Oh, boy.

Should we just end the pod there? Do you have anything else to say? I think that's it. We have just a few days. You and I are going to spend 36, six-ish hours, absolutely binging this thing, and we'll get back together, and we'll see what this actually is. Is it just a cope? Is it a reaction to her famous words about my life as a fishbowl? And she's just come to accept that. And just like we're seeing everything there is to see with her

and Travis, she's, you know, a window, a window to her heart is this record. I don't know. It's, it's, I think in the big picture of her career, this is one of the safest, albums that she's ever put out. I will understand more about the setup. I think once we hear the music and the lyrical content. And yeah, it's going to be a fascinating week. There will be a moment when I press play where I'm a little sad that Fortnite featuring Post Malone doesn't sound like the AI version that's all over TikTok right now because I got to say it kind of slaps. Go listen to that. This has been every single album.

Tortured Poets Preview Edition. I'm Nora Prenziotti. As always, he is Nathan Hubbard. Thank you to Kai McMullen for producing this episode. And we will be back later this week to talk about the album.