After spending the entire weekend diving deep into Taylor Swift’s extensive 31-track album The Tortured Poets Department, the singer herself has kindly stepped forward to provide Swifties with some extra insight.
On April 22, Amazon Music introduced a special album experience where Taylor Swift provides commentary on each track, woven throughout the album’s songs. Swifties can enjoy the album with Taylor’s full commentary by saying, “Alexa, I’m a member of The Tortured Poets Department,” or by using the Amazon Music app.
Describing the first single, Fortnight, featuring Post Malone, Swift explains, that the song exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout this album. One of which being fatalism — longing, pining away, lost dreams. She thinks that it’s a very fatalistic album in that there are lots of very dramatic lines about life or death. ‘I love you, it’s ruining my life.’ These are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say. It’s that kind of album.
Taylor Swift spoke about another track that her fans have noticed which is Clara Bow, Swift shared that it was inspired by her own experiences in the entertainment industry and the common practice of comparing and pitting female artists against each other. She explained, Clara Bow is a song that she wrote as a commentary on what she has witnessed in the industry over the years. She said she remember being a little kid sitting in record labels trying to land a deal.
The label would tell her that she reminded them of someone else, and then they’d say something negative about them. It’s like they were saying, she could be the new replacement for this other woman who’s already done great things. She added that’s how society often teaches women to see themselves.
Her collaboration with Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine, Florida!!! is said to be inspired by true crime.
The singer’s 11th studio album quickly became the most streamed album on Amazon Music on its first day on Friday. It also sold a whopping 1.4 million copies on its first day of release in the U.S.
