The Best, Worst, and Weirdest Lyrics on The Tortured Poets Department
Why is she referencing Trey Songz?
Happy The Tortured Poets Department Day! There’s a lot to take in. After teasing her new album release for weeks, at 2 a.m. Friday, Taylor Swift revealed that this was actually a double album, meaning that the record ballooned from a semi-manageable 16 tracks to an unwieldy 31. If you don’t have two free hours to sit and really listen to the whole thing today, I’ve got you. Here are the best, worst, and weirdest lyrics on TTPD. Feel free to skim through this so you can have something to say in your group chats.
Best
“I’ll tell you somethin’ ’bout my good name / It’s mine alone to disgrace / I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empath’s clothing”
On “But Daddy I Love Him,” Swift is locked into the strongest theme on the album: how much it sucks to be famous. It’s a song about being in love with someone, in this case apparently Matty Healy, and your fans telling you loudly and constantly that they hate him. Hearing Swift admit that it is a nightmare to have millions of people think they know how she should be living her life is refreshing.
“And my friends all smell like weed or little babies”
This is a classic good Taylor Swift line. It’s on the Florence Welch collab “Florida!!!,” and it succinctly paints a picture of where Swift is at in her life. It’s the most “I’m in my early 30s” line on the album, and it made me want to hear more from her about being that age. Alas, there are songs about Peter Pan and feeling like you’re in high school on this album, so I’m not holding my breath.
“We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist”
From the title track. She’s right about this, but no one is ready for that conversation.
“I was tame, I was gentle ’til the circus life made me mean / ‘Don’t you worry, folks, we took out all her teeth’”
As you will soon gather, all the best lyrics on TTPD come when Swift sings about the specifics of being the most famous person in the world. On the bridge of this track, “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” Swift declares, “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.” We can all hehe and haha about the fact that she was raised on a Christmas tree farm, but she’s obviously talking about being a teenage pop star. She’s saying she was, at one point, defanged for the public. Maybe what I really want from her is a memoir?
“Breaking down, I hit the floor / All the piеces of me shatterеd as the crowd was chanting, ‘More’”
I’m really not trying to be a broken record here, it’s just that Swift is so locked in when she’s singing about trying to do the Eras Tour in the wake of what were clearly two back-to-back catastrophic breakups. On “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” her voice dances over a sparkly beat while her words convey that she was majorly depressed at the time. It’s a classic pop maneuver, setting your sad lyrics to an undeniable beat, and while this is not “Dancing on My Own,” it is really good.
“You look like Taylor Swift / In this light, we’re lovin’ it / You’ve got edge, she never did”
I loved this little move on “Last Great American Dynasty,” and I love it on “Clara Bow,” sue me!
“Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman / But she used to say she wished that you were dead”
I don’t know that this, from “thanK you aIMee,” is a “best” lyric so much as it is a “gooped and gaggiest” lyric. Longtime Swifties will know that Andrea Swift is a mild-mannered, very smiley woman. It’s funny to imagine her saying that she wants Kim Kardashian dead.
Worst
“At dinner, you take my ring off my middle finger / And put it on the one people put wedding rings on / And that’s the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding”
This comes to us from the title song on TTPD, which most people are clowning for the Charlie Puth line. Those people need to open their third eye and realize that the bridge of this song is worse. In this line, you can really feel that Jack Antonoff/Bleachers influence as she tries to jam as many words as possible into a single breath. “The one people put wedding rings on.” There has to be a better way to say that.
“Now I’m down bad, cryin’ at the gym / Everything comes out teenage petulance”
Swift’s attachment to adolescence and the imagery of that time runs throughout the album, and I just want to shake her and tell her that she’s 34. I guess “cryin’ at the gym” on “Down Bad” is supposed to be, like, relatable vibes, but it hits the ear all wrong.
“You know how to ball, I know Aristotle / Brand-new, full throttle / Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto”
We’ll do a kind of roses-and-thorns thing with “So High School.” The rose? Travis Kelce got a song! The thorn? It’s kind of a dumb one. She sings about how their relationship makes her feel like she’s in high school (complimentary?) with him. You would too if you were spending your nights watching American Pie on date night and hanging out with his friends playing GTA. This song also includes the line “I’m high from smokin’ your jokes all damn night.” No comment on that one.
Weirdest
“Mr. Steal Your Girl, then make her cry”
Why is Swift alluding to Trey Songz?? Hello?? When I heard this on “loml,” an otherwise very sad song about lost love, I had to run it back immediately. This has to be some kind of inside joke between her and whichever boyfriend this one is about (I honestly cannot tell). Right?
“Whether I’m gonna be your wife or / Gonna smash up your bike, I haven’t decided yet / But I’m gonna get you back”
The line itself, from “imgonnagetyouback,” is not so weird. What’s weird is that this song hinges on the same wordplay as Olivia Rodrigo’s megahit “Get Him Back.” Given the fact that people suspect there to be some kind of beef between these two, this is a truly wild choice from Swift and her team. Someone must have said, “Hey, Tay, Olivia has already done this, maybe we skip.” Did she ignore them, or is she so powerful that no one dared bring it up?
“My friends used to play a game where / We would pick a decade / We wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists”
Fittingly, this line comes from “I Hate It Here.” To Swift, I must say this: Girl … what the hell? What are your fantasies of the Industrial Revolution? This is definitely in the top-two craziest Swift lines of all time, and I don’t think it’s No. 2.
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