Taylor Swift released her highly anticipated eleventh (and, technically, twelfth!) album — The Tortured Poets Department and the surprise second volume The Anthology — last Friday. And after listening to two hours of sometimes brilliant, sometimes verbose, new songs, I — a Taylor Swift fan (or “Swiftie”) — was underwhelmed. This album is an example of a great idea with poor execution.

Part of the reason fans like Taylor Swift is that we grew up with her. She went through petty breakup songs and then expanded into defending herself with her Reputation album and then started telling other people’s stories in the albums Evermore, Folklore, and most recently, Midnights. The listener followed a character arc, and it seemed like she matured. But now, it seems she is moving backward with a breakup album. Especially as she is now supposedly in a happy relationship. It comes off poorly.

With 108,477,444 monthly listeners just on Spotify, Swift’s fanbase is jaw-dropping. So it would be strange for her seemingly to ostracize her listeners by claiming she has been absolutely miserable throughout her tour and by complaining about being a famous billionaire. Swift has a knack for making her extremely unrelatable life relatable by singing about her breakups, telling stories, and talking about her life as though it is just like yours. Sadly, she breaks this facade with this album. Songs like “I Hate it Here” and “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart” come off whiny and out of touch. Consider these lyrics from the latter:

I can read your mind, ‘she is having the time of her life’ . . .

I can show you lies . . .

They said, ‘Babe, you gotta fake it til you make it.’

and I did

Lights, camera, b**ch smile . . .”

I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday every day

Cause I’m MISERABLE! And nobody even knows! Try and come for my job.”

Taylor (if I may): If the experience of fame makes you depressed, just stop! No one is forcing you to be a pop star. Frankly, if this song was in the third person, it would become much more accessible to listeners.

As it is, half of this album feels like Swift is hating on her listener. “Put narcotics into all of my songs, and that is why you’re still singing along . . .” or, “Who is afraid of little old me? You should be” (from “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”). Again, Taylor: Please stop performing if you hate this so much.

Aside from petulance, there is disappointing shallowness. One song, titled, “Florida!!!” sounds exactly like you would expect it to. The main chorus sounds like an unhinged travel to Florida advertisement: “Florida!!! Is one hell of a drug. Florida!!!” Another song, “The Prophecy” has potential, but cripples itself with lines such as, “A greater woman stays cool, but I howl like a wolf at the moon,” and, “I’m just a paperweight in shades of greige” (gray-beige?). Now, Swift can have her moments of superficiality; songs like “Shake It Off” and “We are Never Getting Back Together” have never been praised for their depth. But one would expect more of an album called The Tortured Poets Department.

As someone who defended Swift’s Eras tour against baseless accusations that it promoted witchcraft, I did not like the anti-Christian messaging on this album. At best, the lines come off as incredibly ignorant. In “The Prophecy,” Swift sings about the Fall: “I got cursed like Eve got bitten.” I’m sorry, what? In “Guilty as Sin,” She sings, “How can I be guilty as sin? What if I roll the stone away? They’re gonna crucify me anyway.” This line sounds like someone heard a story about Jesus once and is desperately trying to remember what happened. “Did Jesus break out of the tomb? People hated him, so they crucified him when he got out . . . right? That is so me.”

In the song entitled “The Black Dog,” she says she wants to “hire a priest to come and exorcize my demons,” which just shows she has a fundamental misunderstanding of the priesthood (you do not “hire” a priest for an exorcism).

This album desperately needed someone saying “no.” We could have done without the overly personal diatribes about her stardom, ex-lovers, and feuds with Kim Kardashian. Yes, there are still thing Swifties can gladly say “yes” to. “So Long, London” is about having a “forever boyfriend” and never a husband, a common and relatable experience for many young women. “Fortnight” sounds like a poetic ballad about an affair. Both come closer to the poetry the album title seems to promise. Those are the songs for which fans listen to Taylor Swift. They are about common experiences and tell fascinating stories.

So I hope future albums have more of the art and less of the artist. In the meantime, I will listen to a playlist entitled: “The Tortured Poets Department . . . with an editor.”