Taylor Swift has officially entered a new era, with the release of her surprise double album, The Tortured Poets Department. In the early hours of April 19, 2024, Swift commemorated the record's release with a lengthy Instagram post, where she looked toward the future while closing the door on her time as a tortured poet.
"The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time—one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure," she wrote in the caption, along with dreamy black-and-white portraits matching the mood of the album.
"This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed, And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted," she added, in a nod to ongoing speculation that the album takes major inspiration from her former relationships with actor Joe Alwyn and The 1975 frontman Matty Healy.
"This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry," she concluded.
Swift has teased her eleventh studio album's melancholy, lyrical themes throughout the past two months since she announced The Tortured Poets Department during her acceptance speech at the 2024 Grammys. Her mood board for the record appears to have been filled with black-and-white film photography, type-written pages, and nods to famous poets throughout history.
The singer also shared a second sentimental message along with her Instagram post revealing her surprise anthology album.
"I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs," her post continued. "And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours."
