Who is Taylor Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department about?

Who is Taylor Swift's new album about? Photos / Getty Images, @taylorswift

Taylor Swift is set to release her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, on April 19 - after infamously announcing it at the 2024 Grammy Awards as she accepted the win for Best Pop Vocal Album for 2022′s Midnights.

Ever since, speculation has swirled over who the songs on the new album are about, and who the titular “tortured poets” might be.

On social media, fans have shared their theories that the album is about Swift’s break-up with actor Joe Alwyn. The pair dated for six years, announcing their split in April 2023.

Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn broke up a year ago. Photo / Getty Images

After Swift released the album’s tracklist, fans found possible references to Alwyn and the ill-fated relationship within the song titles. However, Swift herself has simply implied the record is all about heartbreak in general.

She recently shared five playlists with Apple Music, with a press release revealing that the songs on the album fall into one of five stages of a break-up, from denial to anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Before the total solar eclipse on April 8, the pop star dropped the first lyric from the album, sharing a video of a typewriter forming the words: “Crowd goes wild at her fingertips/Half moonshine, full eclipse.”

The Tortured Poets’ Department tracklist

Side A

Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)

The Tortured Poets Department

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

Down Bad

Side B

So Long, London

But Daddy I Love Him

Fresh Out the Slammer

Florida!!! (feat. Florence + the Machine)

Side C

Guilty as Sin?

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?

I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

loml

Side D

I Can Do It With a Broken Heart

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

The Alchemy

Clara Bow

Bonus track: The Manuscript

Who is the album about?

Shortly after Swift announced the album, fans connected its title with her most recent ex-boyfriend, Alwyn.

In a December 2022 interview with fellow actor Paul Mescal for Variety, Alwyn referenced a group chat the pair are in, along with Fleabag star Andrew Scott. The title of the group chat? “The Tortured Man Club”.

During the interview, Mescal asks Alwyn to remind him, “what’s the name of the WhatsApp group we’re in?”

Alwyn responds, “It’s either the ‘tortured’ or the ‘lonely’ - ‘Tortured Man Club,’ I think. Me, you and Andrew. It hasn’t had much use recently.”

“No, I feel like we’re less tortured now,” Mescal jokes in response.

Swifties were quick to dredge up the video clip to support their theories that the new songs are about Alwyn, with one writing: “Joe Alwyn are you ready for your tape?”

It’s not the first time Alwyn has featured on one of Swift’s albums. The pair were together for six years, and the actor was often referenced throughout Swift’s albums Reputation, Lover, Folklore, and Evermore - think songs like London Boy and Lover. Alwyn even had some creative input into Folklore and Evermore, under the nom de plume William Bowery.

Recently, fans suggested that Swift’s 2023 single You’re Losing Me was inspired by the break-up, as it was released shortly after news broke of the split.

Ahead of the album’s release, The Tortured Poets Department will get its own “library installation” in Los Angeles, according to Spotify.

The installation promoting the album will include an outdoor “poetry library” that has reportedly been “highly curated to represent the direction of the new record”, according to People magazine.