Having been dissected as a social phenomenon for months now, breaking records for awards and popular acclaim, and influencing both US politics and the economies of the cities she has visited on her latest "Eras" tour, Taylor Swift regularly reminds listeners that she is also a musician. "The Eras Tour" will include a sold-out stop at Paris' La Défense Arena from May 9 to 12, followed by Lyon's Groupama Stadium on June 2 and 3.
The Tortured Poets Department (featuring 16 tracks, with a further 15 in The Anthology, available as a download) is the fruit of an unprecedented level of productivity, and her 11th album, the 5th in the space of five years – not counting, in the meantime, the re-recordings of four of her previous opuses. This productivity contrasts with the media circus surrounding the singer, who vies for the title of "Queen of Pop" with Beyoncé and Billie Eilish.
This is no steamroller of flashy hits, no overkill of glitzy rhythms. Just like "Fortnight," the album's first single and introduction, slowed by a pared-down synthesizer under a hazy and melancholy duet with rapper Post Malone, the track is dominated by an instrumental finesse in keeping with the emotional authenticity of what the star has described as her "most cathartic record."
The album is an aesthetic evolution rather than a revolution. Indeed, after slumming it on the side of urban grooves (with hits like "Shake It Off," "Bad Blood," "Blank Space," etc.), the former country-pop wunderkind has become a singer-songwriter in search of depth and maturity. Conceived during the Covid-19 crisis, two albums, Folklore and Evermore, released in 2020, flirted with the intimacy of folk songs and the stripped-back Americana of the indie scene.
This influence persisted in the more pop-oriented Midnights (2022), and continues here, under the guidance of producers Aaron Dessner (founding member of rock band The National) and Jack Antonoff (Bleachers), who kicked off this mutation. Their way of playing with electronic material, which was here more tempted by cinematic atmospheres than by dancing, plunges many of the songs ("Down Bad," "The Tortured Poets Department," "I Can Fix Him [No Really I Can]," etc.) into a subtle torpor, often imbued with the melancholy intensity of Lana Del Rey (whose faithful accomplice is Antonoff). We were also reminded of the synthesizers that Kavinsky arranged for the film Drive's soundtrack; or the contemplative keyboards of The Blue Nile, a little-known English band of the 1980s, literally cited by the singer in "Guilty as Sin" ("Drowning in the Blue Nile / He sent me 'Downtown Lights'").
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