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Calling all tortured poets! This week’s round-up of new music is filled with heavy hitters.
Taylor Swift’s long-awaited 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, arrived in the form of a surprise double album on Friday (April 19), which features two major collaborations: Post Malone, whose name is billed on the lead single, “Fortnight,” as well as Florence + The Machine on track eight, “Florida!!!” On Instagram, Swift described the project as “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. 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. 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.”
Over in the hip-hop world, Nicki Minaj tapped the star-studded trio of Travis Scott, Chris Brown and Sexyy Red to join her for the “FTCU (Sleeze Mix).” In its 18th week on the Hot 100, “FTCU” sits at No. 79 after peaking at No. 15. The Pink Friday 2 track should receive a chart boost thanks to the “Sleeze Mix.”
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In the rock genre, Pearl Jam dropped their 12th studio album, Dark Matter. The album, which arrive via Monkeywrench Records/Republic Records, spans 11 numbers, including the previously-released midtempo cut “Wreckage” and the title track, which powered to No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay and Rock & Alternative Airplay Charts.
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DJ Snake and Peso Pluma also teamed up for the dance floor hit “Teka,” which dropped just in time for Peso’s performance at Coachella weekend two.
With so many great music options available this weekend, we want to know which is your favorite. Check out our Friday Music Guide here, and let us know by voting in our poll below.
What’s Your Favorite New Music Release of the Week?
Taylor Swift unveiled her The Tortured Poets Department double album on Friday night (April 19), and it’s already one of the year’s top albums. In less than 12 hours, Swift’s 11th studio album has become Spotify’s most streamed album in a single day in 2024 so far, Spotify confirmed to Billboard. The project is also her […]
The Tortured Poets Department has quite the staff! Taylor Swift released her highly anticipated new double album on Friday (April 19), and across the LP’s 31 tracks lies a slew of references to celebrities inside and outside the worlds of music and poetry. When the “Cruel Summer” singer first revealed the Tortured Poets tracklist in […]
From Oscar winner to music maker! One of Taylor Swift’s famous friends, Emma Stone, is credited for helping with The Tortured Poets Department track, “Florida!!!,” which features Florence + the Machine, according to People. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “‘Florida!!!’ is a song I wrote with […]
Taylor Swift has always been, first and foremost, a songwriter. But with a title like The Tortured Poets Department, the pop star’s new album calls even more attention to her lyricism than usual, inviting listeners to dissect, interpret and intellectualize each track just as a scholar might pore over the works of Walt Whitman or […]
ENHYPEN are getting ready to take ENGENE’s out to the ballgame. The seven-man K-pop boy band announced on Friday morning (April 19) that their fans can catch members Heeseung, Jay and Ni-Ki at T-Mobile Park in Seattle on April 29, where the trio will throw out the first pitch at that day’s game between the […]
As Taylor Swift‘s 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, made its way into the world at midnight on April 19 via Republic Records, Swift’s longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff tweeted in praise the new project.
Early on April 19, Antonoff wrote, “love this album more than i can say …. love you all very much … more later very overwhelmed … love you taylor.”
Antonoff also seemed to praise specific songs from the album in other tweets, writing, “!! FOTS heads lets go!!” which seemed to be a nod to the song “Fresh Out the Slammer.” He also wrote, “down bad heads as well,” which seemed to refer to the album’s “Down Bad.”
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The Tortured Poets Department features 16 songs, including collaborations with Post Malone (“Fortnight”) and Florence + The Machine (“Florida!!!”). At 2 a.m. on Friday, Swift surprised fans by revealing that The Tortured Poets Department is a double album, and released a slate of 15 additional tracks.
Antonoff, who also serves as the lead singer for the rock band Bleachers, is a co-producer and writer on the new album alongside Swift and Aaron Dessner, and has worked closely with Swift on several of her albums. One of their earliest moments working together was in 2013 when they co-wrote and produced “Sweeter Than Fiction” from the soundtrack of the film One Chance. Antonoff then co-wrote and co-produced several songs from Swift’s 1989 album, which won best pop vocal album and album of the year at the 2016 Grammy Awards.
Following the success of 1989, Antonoff has been involved in co-writing and co-producing Swift’s albums including Reputation, Lover, Folklore, Evermore and Midnights, as well as working on many of the “From the Vault” tracks on Swift’s re-recorded (“Taylor’s Version”) albums. He has also worked with artists including Lana Del Rey, The Chicks, Lorde, Pink and Sia.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times earlier this year, Antonoff praised Swift’s songwriting prowess, saying that the prospect of questioning Swift’s songwriting abilities “is like challenging someone’s faith in God. You just don’t go there.”
Taylor Swift had a number of surprises in store for fans when she dropped her anticipated 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, on Friday (April 19). Among them the late night bombshell that it is actually a double album, coming in at a heft 31 tracks over two hours.
But it was frequent collaborator Aaron Dessner of The National who provided one of the biggest reveals about the roiling, emotional collection in an Instagram post just hours after the album dropped. “I’m so excited and honored to share that I have contributed to my dear friend and collaborator @taylorswift‘s brilliant 11th album — a 31 song double album / anthology called The Tortured Poets Department,” he wrote in the post that also featured a snap of a smiling Swift in the studio and images of the album’s moody black and white cover.
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Dessner revealed that he and Swift began working on the songs back in 2022, after they dropped their two 2020 pandemic albums, Folklore and Evermore, and seemingly after she recorded her 2022 album Midnights. “We started working on these songs over two years ago and it feels like they have kept us company and evolved in beautiful and unexpected ways through so much life lived during this process,” Dessner wrote, marveling at the fact that the duo have now recorded more than 60 songs together over the past four years, including 17 on the new album.
“I am forever grateful to Taylor for sharing her insane talents with and trusting me with her music. I believe these songs are some of the most lyrically acute, intricate, vulnerable and cathartic Taylor has ever written and I am continually astonished by her skills as a songwriter and performer,” he wrote. Dessner also thanked another one of Swift’s most stalwart collaborators, Jack Antonoff, giving him kudos for his “open hearted and open door collaboration with me through all these many projects”; Dessner and Antonoff roughly split co-producing duties with Swift on the album.
The multi-talented songwriter/producer/composer also thanked his twin brother and fellow National bandmember, Aaron Dessner, engineers Laura Sisk, Jonathan Low, James McAlister, Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman) and Bella Blasko and musicians Glenn Kotche (Wilco drummer), Benjamin Lanz (synths, trombone) and Rob Moose (viola, violin), among many others.
“It’s not lost on me how lucky I am that this is my job and I feel so grateful to be a part of creating this vast, magically detailed and symbolic world of songs Taylor has crafted that we all get to inhabit and enjoy,” Dessner wrote. “Keep searching and you’ll find some new detail, layer or sliver of meaning with each listen.”
Check out Dessner’s post below.
Fans weren’t sure if Taylor Swift would feature a song about Travis Kelce on her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, which the pop star has been working on since well before their romance began mid-2023. However, many listeners are convinced that one track on the LP’s expansive two-part tracklist is definitely about the Kansas […]
Between Kendrick Lamar, Drake and even J. Cole, rap fans have been devouring their favorite flavors of beef all month long. But now, pop fans think Taylor Swift is serving up her own heaping helping of piping hot conflict with her old rival, Kim Kardashian.
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With the surprise, 2 a.m. release of The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, a complete, double-album version of the Swift’s long awaited eleventh studio album, fans seem to think that her song “Thank You Aimee” is aimed at the reality star she’s been feuding with since 2016.
For starters, fans pointed to the strange capitalization of the song’s title across all streaming services. Billed as “thanK you aIMee,” Swifties clocked that the three capitalized letters in the title spell out “KIM.”
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That trend continued when the Taylor Nation X account tweeted the chorus’ lyrics “Screamed, ‘f–K you aIMee’ to the night sky,” alongside a GIF of Swift performing during the Reputation portion of her Eras Tour set. Not only did fans latch onto the continued spelling of “KIM” through capitalized letters, but they also glommed onto the fact that Reputation was inspired, in part, by Swift’s ongoing feud with Kardashian and her then-husband Ye (formerly known as Kanye West).
Fans also pointed to a number of the excoriating lyrics throughout the song, which sees Swift apparently reminiscing on a high-school bully (the titular Aimee) and the impact she had on the pop star’s life. With the opening line, “When I picture my hometown/ There’s a bronze spray-tanned statue of you,” Swifties quickly pointed out the use of the words “spray-tanned,” potentially referencing Kardashian’s famous tan.
In the song’s third verse, Swift sings that she “wrote a thousand songs that you find uncool,” and “built a legacy which you can’t undo,” while adding that “there wouldn’t be this, if there hadn’t been you.” Fans theorized that the lyric referenced the infamous leaked phone call and subsequent snake emoji tweet that Kardashian shared in 2016, instances that fans believe deeply influenced Swift’s writing on Reputation.
Perhaps the most talked-about lyric on “Thank You Aimee” comes during the bridge, when Swift goes after her bully’s lack of development. “I don’t think you’ve changed much. And so I changed your name, and any real defining clues,” she sings, with fans pointing at the obfuscated name throughout the song’s lyrics. Swifties then pointed to a video of Kardashian and her daughter North West dancing to Swift’s “Shake It Off” as evidence for the bridge’s final lyric: “And one day, your kid comes home singin’/ A song that only us two is gonna know is about you.”
Swift last spoke about her feud with both Kardashian and Ye during her wide-ranging interview as TIME’s Person of the Year in December 2023. “You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” Swift said during the interview. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
Listen to “Thank You Aimee” and see just a few fan reactions to the new track below:
I love that in thank you Aimee Taylor’s like “no one’s ever gonna know it’s about you” and then she put KIM in the title in an extremely unsubtle way— clara 🎀 (@thenerve2adore) April 19, 2024