Clumsy, jarring, predictable: not vintage Taylor

Defensive lyrics and affecting moments-what El Hunt makes of the Queen of Pop's latest release

-  El Hunt

WHILE Taylor Swift has long occupied the top tier of pop, she's now a titan of the genre, and with the arrival of The Tortured Poets Department this morning, she is easily the most successful singer in the world.

And when it comes to the art of carving out a personal mythology through music, nobody can match Swift right now. Over the course of almost 20 years, she has steadily forged a complex language of symbols, motifs, and numerology in her writing, and her songs often feel like puzzles packed with personal revelations, ready to be cracked. So the arrival of a new album - and a surprise second installment of extra tracks two hours later, turning it into an "anthology" - is not just a chance to hear a new batch of potential pop bangers; it also allows dedicated Swifties to start excavating the lyrics for clues.

At the time of her last release, Midnights in 2022, she seemed happily coupled up with the actor Joe Alwyn, but plenty has changed since; namely, the ending of that relationship, a subsequent fling with The 1975's Matty Healy, and now her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce. In other words, there's plenty to get into here.

All of these loose threads inevitably feed in. References to real people pop up throughout the record (if the cigarette-smoking, Dylan Thomas-obsessed typewriter enthusiast on the title-track isn't at least partially based on Healy, I'll eat my library card), but the majority of the saddest, most affecting moments concern the ending of her six-year relationship with Alwyn.