Fans speak about Taylor Swift's album The Tortured Poets Department at the Auckland release party. Video / Alyse Wright
Joe Alwyn can finally breathe a sigh of relief. After spending the past year being terrorised by Swifties, the British actor – who dated Taylor Swift for six years, until early 2023 – will be tentatively tuning into her double album, The Tortured Poets Department, to find he’s not actually the album’s focus at all. In fact, Matty Healy, the bad-boy frontman of The 1975 whom she dated for little over a month last summer, is the project’s true villain.
As any fan of Swift will know, her albums are always saturated with “Easter eggs” – hidden clues and secret codes to who, what and where the tracks are really about. So, from falling out of love with the UK (on So Long, London) to feeling sick of being pop’s resident ingénue (Clara Bow), to her surprising fondness for cult Scottish band The Blue Nile (Guilty as Sin?), we’ve deciphered each one of the two-part album’s 31 songs below. Ready for it?
The Tortured Poets Department
Fortnight(featuring Post Malone)
The album kicks off with what one hopes is a metaphorical tale about having a two week affair with a married man: “Turn into good neighbours / Your wife waters flowers / I wanna kill her”. But it refers to her break-up with Alwyn, too: two weeks (or a fortnight) before their split became public knowledge, Swift swapped break-up track The 1, from Folklore, for Invisible String, which follows soulmates as they accept they’re destined to be together. It was a desperate attempt to manifest they’d make it through the other side – but it wasn’t to be.
Swift has long deplored her tendency to date pretentious indie music-lovers: from actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who earned a vicious 10-minute takedown on All Too Well as well as her scratching summary of his tastes on We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (“You would hide away and find your peace of mind / With some indie record that’s much cooler than mine”), to singer John Mayer, who, she sings on Dear John, leaves girls with “tired lifeless eyes”.
Swift uses TTPD’stitle track to rip into Healy’s illusions of intelligence and grandeur: “You’re not Dylan Thomas / I’m not Patti Smith / This ain’t the Chelsea hotel / We’re modern idiots”. The track’s villain, caught up in “self-sabotage mode”, whiles away his days writing pseudo-poetic lyrics on a vintage typewriter and smoking cigarettes – so far, so Healy (he’s known to write The 1975′s songs on a battered Olivetti model).
Karlie Kloss, Ellie Goulding, Taylor Swift, Nick Grimshaw and Matt Healy attend the Universal Music Brits party in 2015. Photo / Getty Images
Fans’ trepidations about their relationship – Swift was criticised for not acknowledging racist and offensive remarks Healy had made in the past, including to Boygenius’ Lucy Dacus, whom she references here – apparently didn’t stop her from sharing how obsessed she was with her closest friends, including long-term producer Jack Antonoff (“I had said that to Jack about you so I felt seen / Everyone we know understands why it’s meant to be / Because we’re crazy”).
Even the title provoked mass debate when it was announced. Fans originally thought it referred to a group chat Alwyn shared with Irish actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott called “the Tortured Man Club”, but never mind. Turns out Healy is the only tortured poet she cares about – unless you’re counting 32-year-old New Jersey singer-songwriter Charlie Puth, who the pair “declared should be a bigger artist” around the world.
My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys
One of two self-written tracks on the album (along with Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?) sees Swift lay into a self-destructive man who would rather destroy his own happiness than open himself up and address his issues head-on. Healy, surely?
For the non-Gen Zers among us, “down bad” means to be head over heels, enraptured, infatuated. Healy’s controversial status gets rehashed again as she takes on the fans who’ll “say I’m nuts if I talk about the existence of you” even though she’s so in love she spends all her time dreaming about him at the gym.
So Long, London
When Swift dropped the tracklist back in February, this was the song fans (and the internet) were most excited about. Over her six-year relationship with Alwyn, Swift spent considerable time living with him in North London – including during the pandemic and after the release of 2017′s Reputation, which responded to the furore over her public spat with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian – resulting in the songs London Boy, Come Back, Be Here and Message in a Bottle.
Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn. Photo / Getty Images
Now, the city is cursed in her eyes: a remnant of a past romance with an achingly melancholy man who couldn’t be bothered to fight for her continued affection. “How much sad did you think I had in me?” she asks Alwyn, before laying into him for leaving her “at the house by the Heath” while he went out and had fun with his hometown friends. Her wasted years hiding away with him have given way to resentment – “I’m p***** off that you let me give you all that youth for free” – culminating in pure fury at his refusal to ever properly commit. Swift’s desire to get married and start a family has been covered before (on Midnights bonus track You’re Losing Me, she sings: “I wouldn’t marry me either / Pathological people pleaser / Who only wanted you to see her”) and she addresses it again here, telling Alwyn she “died on the altar waiting for the clues”. Ouch.
But Daddy I Love Him
Finally, Swift returns to country! Denouncing her position as the good girl of US pop, she faces those who criticised her for dating Healy – well-known for making controversial remarks and having personal battles with alcohol and drug dependency – head-on, apparently including her father Scott. Keen fans will remember, though, that Swift snr and Healy were photographed together (in good spirits) numerous times at the Eras tour dates Healy attended last summer, so her pleading must have worked. “I’m having his baby / No I’m not, but you should see your faces,” she jokes.
Good-girl appeals to her wholesome parents is a familiar theme of Swift’s early music – see Our Song, from her 2006 debut, or Mine, from Speak Now – so this proves she doesn’t want to move away from that image too much.
Scott Kingsley Swift and his daughter, honoree Taylor Swift, attend the 50th Academy of Country Music Awards at AT&T Stadium on April 19, 2015 in Arlington, Texas. Photo / Getty Images
Fresh Out the Slammer
During their long relationship, Swift and Alwyn spent most of their time holed up in Hampstead, going on wholesome walks around the Heath and meeting his friends in cosy pubs. It was a far cry from the fancy parties and awards ceremonies Swift was used to – and she lets rip at her essential house arrest here, regaling us with their break-up finally signalling her freedom (and permission to run into the arms of a previous love affair, aka Healy).
Florida!!! (featuring Florence and the Machine)
“They said I was a cheat / I guess it must be true” Swift declares off the bat, before Florence Welch joins proceedings. Finally free from Alwyn’s self-imposed boredom, Swift explains how she shamelessly went wild once single again, hanging around with people who reeked of weed, getting drunk and going to parties. Her first Eras show post-break-up just happened to be in Tampa, Florida, so it could also refer to that.
Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner perform during the Eras Tour at Raymond James Stadium on April 14 last year in Tampa, Florida. Photo / Getty Images
Guilty as Sin?
Social media has long been awash with rumours that both Swift and Alwyn were unfaithful during their relationship, and here Swift fans the flames, singing about “longing” for an ex-love interest who offers respite from the monotony of her everyday life. Healy, you’re up. The inkling that the track is about him is bolstered by a subtle reference to the cult Scottish band The Blue Nile, as she sings “He sent me Downtown Lights / I haven’t heard it in a while / Am I allowed to cry?” He’s an indie musician prone to la-di-da speeches about art and culture, so one imagines him to know his way around a jukebox.
Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?
There are two possibilities here: might Swift be laying into Alwyn’s fear of her huge fame – cited in the tabloids as a reason for their break-up – or is she unleashing Bad Blood Part II on the world, taking on the critics who say she shouldn’t write about her exes, use private jets, spill her innermost secrets for cash, etc? It’s a fine line Swift has walked for most of her career, which has been built on sharing uber-personal lyrics about her life (“I’m always drunk on my own tears / Isn’t that what they all said”). She even seems to address a recent tussle with Florida college student Jack Sweeney, who set up an X account tracking her private jet use before it was removed by her attorneys (“That I’ll sue you if you step on my lawn”).
I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)
The shortest song on the album at just over 2 minutes and 30 seconds is another ode to Healy – or should we say takedown. All signs point to his controversies and loud mouth: “The smoke cloud billows out his mouth like a freight train through a small town / The jokes that he told across the bar were revolting and far too loud”. Adamant that she could turn this bad-boy good, Swift defended Healy to her family, friends and fans – but ultimately gave in to the realisation he just wouldn’t change.
Love of My Life or Loss of My Life? The “holy ghost” in his suit and tie is surely Healy, who Swift was friends with for more than a decade, having attended multiple 1975 gigs – at London’s O2 Arena in January 2023, she even joined them on stage to cover The City – before they started officially dating. At one show by The 1975 she attended in March of that year, Healy took a break from singing the ballad About You to mouth “This is about you. You know who you are, you know. I love you” in Swift’s direction, where she stood in the VIP section of the crowd.
a fortnight is 14 days … 14 days after april 19 (release of ttpd) is may 3rd … on that day last year this happened … pic.twitter.com/qZqxOen7LK
LOML flips this previous adoration on its head, resulting in one of her most devastating bridges – that echoes the innocent heartbreaking of 2008 album Fearless’s White Horse – as she ruefully sings: “You said I’m the love of your life, about a million times [...] Talking rings and talking cradles / I wish I could unrecall / How we almost had it all”.
I Can Do It With a Broken Heart
In Chicago last June, just a few months after Swift and Alwyn’s break-up was made public, came a rare signal that she wasn’t a robotic, emotionless machine, capable of brushing heartbreak under the carpet to best perform her songs. While singing a slowed-down version of I Don’t Wanna Live Forever on the piano, Swift’s voice broke and mouth quivered, as she asked: “Wondering if I dodged a bullet or just lost the love of my life?” At the time, fans unanimously thought it was about Alwyn – but after listening to TTPD, could Healy be the one who got away?
I Can Do It With a Broken Heart is the clearest reference to the Eras tour, which saw her swap being lovelorn for being at the top of her professional game – even if it meant capitalising on people she used to love. When she was named Time’s Person of the Year earlier this year, she told the magazine: “I know I’m going on that stage whether I’m sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable or stressed”.
The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
As soon as Swift describes a man in his “Jehovah’s Witness suit” you picture Healy, scrawny and slender with his characteristic black hair and oversized attire. She really lets loose here, criticising him for using her to increase his fame and profile: “In public you showed me off / Then sank in stoned oblivion”. His emotional manipulation deserves prison time, she sings, but “you won’t get time / You’ll just slide into inboxes and slip through the bars”. A striking element of the song is just how similar it is to Halsey’s 2015 revenge-anthem Colors – also penned about a short-lived, ill-fated relationship with Healy.
The Alchemy
Healy’s struggle with addiction issues is well-known – he was hooked on heroin for years but is now clean – which makes The Alchemy seem even more brutal. “He jokes that it’s heroin but this time with an ‘e’”, Swift sings. She will be aware people will infer it to be a dig at Healy, especially as the rest of the song serves as an ode to new boyfriend Travis Kelce – the squeaky clean NFL star who is essentially Healy’s opposite.
Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs celebrates with Taylor Swift after a Chiefs victory over the Baltimore Ravens in an AFC Championship game in Baltimore, Maryland on January 28 this year. Photo / Getty Images
But there’s a tantalising link to Alwyn, too, offering further proof she considers her relationship with both men to be of equal significance despite their widely varying time spans. On multiple past songs (Invisible String, Daylight, Gold Rush) she links Alwyn with the colour gold – and alchemy is the ancient science of turning precious metals into gold. Could the song be telling us that regardless of how shiny and perfect their relationship looked from the outside, it was anything but?
Clara Bow
The 1920s silent film star Clara Bow seems like an unlikely inspiration for the 21st century’s shiniest pop star, but as Swift lays into the curse of beauty and fame – and how they result in nothing but comparison and criticism for women – you understand her affinity for the original “It girl’”. “Beauty is a beast that roars / Down on all fours / demanding more,” she sings, describing how Bow gave way to generations of pin-ups, ready to be dissected and damaged by public attention.
Clara Bow was the epitome of Jazz Age celebrity, receiving 8000 fan letters a week during Hollywood's silent era and becoming the foremost box office attraction in America in the late 1920s. Photo / Getty Images
There was Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks (a vocal fan of Swift, Nicks said the former’s song You’re On Your Own, Kid helped her to grieve for Christine McVie) and now, she’s here to fill that position: “You look like Taylor Swift in this light, we’re loving it / You’ve got edge, she never did,” she imagines a future star being told, as she fades into irrelevance.
The Anthology
It turns out record-breaking streaming numbers and viral discussion weren’t enough to satisfy Swift’s songwriting-machine. At 2am on April 19, she announced a bumper edition of the album called The Anthology – complete with an extra 15 songs – on X. From reigniting her feud with Kim Kardashian on ThanK You aIMee to going full pop-punk on So High School, her love letter to Travis Kelce, we’ve dug into every track.
The Black Dog
Having spent her fair share of time in old-fashioned London boozers with her swathe of British exes, including Alwyn and Healy, Swift kicks off the bonus tracks with a ballad about The Black Dog pub (in Vauxhall?). Her ex, she sings, is getting over her with another girl, aided by the droll tones of The Starting Line – now, she doesn’t say who by, but considering Swift’s fondness for naff singalongs and acoustic guitars, one can surmise the “song that was intertwined in the magic fabric of our dreaming” is by Sussex soft-rockers Keane. It’s obviously about famous chain-smoker Healy – she sings “six weeks of breathing clean air / I still miss the smoke” – with the most striking discovery being not his emotional infidelity but his apparent love for Keane. Who knew?
Matt Healy and Taylor Swift. Photo / Getty Images
Imgonnagetyouback
Considering most of The Tortured Poets Department is an ode to Healy’s wild ways, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is another addition to the club. But it sounds so similar to Call It What You Want (from Reputation) and tracks from 2019′s Lover – both famously about how in love she was with Alwyn – that it must be about him. She’s been open about how the British actor didn’t care about her chequered past and famous exes, and here, she sings: “They’re bringing up my history / But you aren’t even listening”. So far, so London Boy – especially when you add in the refrain “Whether I’m gonna be your wife or smash up your bike”. Every Swiftie knows she was desperate to get married, Alwyn’s shyness/emotional unavailability/second thoughts having held him back.
As a distant relation of American poet Emily Dickinson, Swift has long touched on poetry in her songs – from early song The Outside, which contained allusions to Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, to mentioning William Wordsworth in The Lakes – and the title of this album gave a clear indication she was continuing that theme. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner sees the boatsman kill the bird in the title of this song, a clear analogy for the death of Jesus Christ. Idolised and held up as an icon by millions, Swift adds herself into the mix, as she sings about men being warned of her temptress ways and told to stay away from her: “She is here to destroy you / Devils that you know / Raise worse hell than a stranger / She’s the death you chose / You’re in terrible danger”.
Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus?
As a fan, I’ve long defended Swift’s right to write about her personal life and relationships. But she knows her fans dissect every word, every lyric, so her digging into Healy’s past issues with drugs seems ill-advised. Here, she sings that he “needed me / But you needed drugs more”. Her new relationship with NFL star Kelce is also addressed, as she tells Healy: “You saw my bones out with somebody new / Who seemed like he would’ve bullied you in school”. Fair enough, you may think, Healy’s a scrawny guy and Kelce has won the Super Bowl (three times, no less). But it’s worth pointing out that Healy was expelled from the private King’s School, Macclesfield, for setting up a fight club in the changing rooms, so he can throw a punch or two.
How Did It End?
Under constant pressure from her fans to publicly condemn his offensive jokes and past-controversies, Swift and Healy’s break-up seemed inevitable. She was the all-American golden girl, he was a damaged rock star; she was a ruthless businesswoman with a fortune to protect, he was collateral. We learn, again, that outside forces were indeed behind their destruction on this aching ballad: “We were blind to unforeseen circumstances / We learn the right steps to different dances / And fell victims to interlopers glances”.
Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce embraces Taylor Swift after the side's win in the NFL Super Bowl 58 against the San Francisco 49ers on February 11 in Las Vegas. Photo / AP
So High School
One imagines Swift penning this as a consolation prize for Kelce, who’s just had to sit and listen to two hours of her pining after her ex-boyfriend. “Don’t worry, darling, I definitely love you! I promise!” you imagine her telling him. The pair spend their Saturday nights “watching American Pie,” hanging out with squad, drinking and partying, like characters from any 90s teen coming-of-age-drama. How wholesome. She even takes a swipe at his, uh, famously simple tastes-slash-intellect (Kelce’s childlike past tweets, about everything from squirrels to indie band MGMT, have gone viral), as she sings: “You know how to ball, I know Aristotle”. Cue flashbacks to Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola talking about Phil Foden.
I Hate It Here
This extension to The Tortured Poets Department’s So Long, London – the blistering play-by-play of how spending years with Alwyn in the capital, hiding from the public eye and forsaking her fame, robbed her of her youth – is equally brutal. He is the “poet trapped inside the body of a finance guy” while she’s “a debutante in another life / Now I seem scared to go outside”. She spends her days bored and restless, dreaming of secret gardens and transporting herself back to the glamour of the 1930s – “but without all the racists”.
thanK you aIMee
I Hate It Here being followed by thanK you aIMee is perhaps the clearest indication the former is about Alwyn – because this is definitely about Kim Kardashian, who Swift famously feuded with in 2016. Kardashian released a phone call between Swift and her (then husband) Kanye West that suggested Swift had granted permission for West to rap, in his song Famous, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex”. The world turned on Swift, calling her a manipulator and a liar, until it turned out it was doctored and she hadn’t given permission at all.
Stylised ‘thanK you aIMee’ (the capital letters spelling out KIM) Swift throws the knife in, singing: “I wrote a thousand songs that you find uncool / I built a legacy which you can’t undo / But when I count the scars, there’s a moment of truth / That there wouldn’t be this, if there hadn’t been you”. The most brutal line, though, is when she knowingly laughs at her own fame – and the impossibility of Kardashian avoiding it. “One day, your kid comes home singing / A song that only us two know is about you” – a pointed callback to when Karashian and West’s daughter North posted a TikTok of her dancing to Shake It Off in early 2023. Although the track was from the 2014 album 1989, released prior to the feud, the later record Reputation (2017) covered the beef in detail, on the songs Look What You Made Me Do and I Did Something Bad.
I Look in People’s Windows
A sonic and lyrical extension of Swiftie favourite Death By A Thousand Cuts, from 2019′s Lover, this could be about Alwyn or Healy, as Swift peers into the windows of strangers hoping to catch a glimpse of a life unlived, friends not yet met.
The Prophecy
After 11 albums (if we’re counting The Tortured Poets Department and The Anthology as a double edition, of the same) Swift is all too aware of what critics say about her: she dates too much, she must be a nightmare to live with, she spills too many secrets – and all of this leads to men leaving her, refusing to commit to a woman who could embarrass them in public. She imagines this to be curse, or prophecy, and begs the universe to reconsider her fate: “I’ve been on my knees / Change the prophecy / Don’t want money / Just someone who wants my company / Let it once be me”.
Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour. Photo / AP
Cassandra
There you go – The Prophecy, confirmed. The beautiful, tempting Cassandra, daughter of Priam and Hecuba of Troy, entangled men and led them to their tragic downfalls. The god Apollo, madly in love with her, granted her the power of prophecy, only to snatch it away when she rejected him – cursing her to a life where no one would believe her. Swift, who has endured public battles with Kardashian and West, her exes, Karlie Kloss, Katy Perry and more, welcomes “the first stone’s thrown” and “the raging riot” in the streets, as people (the media, haters, past loves and friends) arrive at her door trying to “burn the b****”.
Peter
Having explored the lives and stories of fairy-tale (and Disney) characters in the past, from The Little Mermaid’s Ariel (on Speak Now’s Mine, or TTPD’s But Daddy I Love Him, as well as dressing up as the mermaid princess on Halloween in 2019) to Lewis Carroll’s Alice on 1989′s Wonderland, Swift returns to Peter Pan. On Cardigan, from 2020′s Folklore, she sang of “Peter losing Wendy”; now, she sings that the “shelf life of those fantasies has expired / Lost to the Lost Boys chapter of your life”.
The Bolter
Ten years of friendship culminating in an ill-fated, short-lived relationship – Swift and Healy was hardly a fairy tale. She continues the album’s overarching theme, of him disappointing her, on this vicious takedown of his emotional unavailability. He is a “trophy hunter” wanting to parade her in front of the world’s cameras, while she’s “taming a bear / Making him care”. Soon enough, though, the kisses, the sex, the excitement all give way to reality, and she’s in Central Park in New York City in a boat, watching the “littlest leaks / Down in the floorboards / And she just knows / She must bolt”.
The most underdeveloped and unnecessary addition to the album is another takedown of Healy’s emotional immaturity. He’s a roaring tiger intent on capturing his prey; she obliges, then manages to escape.
The Manuscript
Released as a bonus track on the physical releases of The Tortured Poets Department, The Manuscript is a highlight: her most articulate depiction of how it felt to fall, fast, for Healy; how their heady romance helped her to get over six years of mundanity with Alwyn. “He said that if the sex was half as good as the conversation was / Soon they’d be pushing strollers,” she sings – another admission she wanted a serious future with Healy that involved children. Her heartbreak is the “one last souvenir from my trip to your shores”, surely meaning England, but the story – the manuscript – “isn’t mine anymore”, having been taken over by fans, critics, the media. It’s a self-defeating close to an album that, most of all, serves as an exhausted request to the world to leave her to make her own mistakes.
