Taylor Swift explains the meaning of The Tortured Poets Department and provides brief comments on its five songs.
Taylor Swift thinks there are some things she will never say, but she explains The Tortured Poets Department well.
A few days after releasing her eleventh studio album, the “Fortnight” singer provides insights into some of the more complex songs on her record—including previously mentioned singles “Clara Bow” and “Florida!!!”—in her exclusive commentary on Amazon Music.
Streaming platform users can declare, “I am a member of The Tortured Poets Department,” on their Amazon devices and activate a special feature, where Taylor provides insights into five songs, including the album opener featuring Post Malone.
“‘Fortnight‘ is a song that encompasses many common themes running throughout this album,” she explains. “One of them is fatalism—longing, yearning, lost dreams. It’s a very fatalistic album because there are a lot of dramatic lines about life or death. ‘I love you, it ruins my life.’ These are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say. It’s that kind of album.”
Then, Taylor delves into “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” a song produced with her longtime collaborator, Jack Antonoff. Taylor explains, as suggested by its title, the song is about “being someone’s favorite toy until they break you and then don’t want to play with you anymore.”
“Like a lot of us in relationships where we are very valued by someone initially, and then suddenly, they break us or they devalue us in their minds,” she adds. “We’re still holding on like ‘No no, no. You were supposed to see them the way you first saw me. They’ll go back there.'”
And the “Florida!!!” singer even delves deeper into her duet with Florence Welch, a song actually inspired by her love for Dateline.
“People commit these crimes; where do they go right after and leave? They go to Florida,” Taylor states. “They try to recreate themselves, have a new identity, blend in. When you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks, ‘I want a new name. I want a new life. I don’t want anyone to know where I’m from or know me at all.’ And that’s the starting point.”
Other songs like “Clara Bow” and “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” explore the difficulties that arise from living under the public spotlight.
As she said, Taylor wrote the latter song “alone, sitting at the piano in one of those moments when I felt bitter about all the things we do to our artists as a society and culture.”
“A lot about these concepts in The Tortured Poets Department,” the 34-year-old woman continues. “What do we do to our writers, and our artists, and our creatives? We make them suffer. We watch what they create, and then we judge it. We like watching artists in pain, often to the point where I think sometimes as a society we provoke that pain and we just watch what happens.”
And why dedicate an entire song to a 1920s film star? Reflecting on nearly two decades of fame, Taylor calls the song a comment on “what I see in the industry where I exist from time to time.”
Ultimately, the song is a message to women in the industry paving the way for young artists.
“That’s how we teach women to see themselves, as like, you could be the new version of this woman who did something great before you,” she adds. “I chose women who have done great things in the past and have become archetypes of greatness in the entertainment industry. Clara Bow was the first ‘it girl.’ Stevie Nicks is an icon and an amazing example for anyone who wants to write songs and make music.”
But that’s just the beginning of all the hidden meanings in the 14-time Grammy winner’s new album. Keep going for all the explanations about The Tortured Poets Department.
“Fortnight” (featuring Post Malone): In the first TTPD track, Taylor Swift and Post Malone join forces to sing about a “temporary” romance lasting for two weeks.
“And I love you, it ruins my life,” the lyrics tease. “I touch you, just for two weeks.”
It seems the song is a reference to Taylor’s rekindled romance with Matty Healy from The 1975, which first began in 2014 and was reignited a decade later in spring 2023 after her breakup with Joe Alwyn.
And despite the short-lived revival of Taylor and Matty’s relationship, it’s full of emotion, according to these lyrics.
She told iHeartRadio that this opening song is “fatalistic” like the whole “tragic” album.
“The Tortured Poets Department”: While fans previously pointed out the connection between the album name TTPD and Joe’s WhatsApp group chat named “The Tortured Man Club,” the actual title track song includes references to Matty.
Even the opening lyrics of the song, “You left your typewriter at my apartment,” signal to Matty, who noted he “really” likes typewriters in a 2019 interview with GQ.
Later in the song, its lyrics provide further insight into Taylor and Matty’s strong bond. Taylor even recalls, “At dinner, you slipped my ring off my middle finger and put it on the finger people usually wear wedding rings. And that was the closest I’ve ever felt my heart explode.”
Taylor’s lyrics also include nods to poet Dylan Thomas—”you’re not Dylan Thomas”—and singer-songwriter Patti Smith—”I’m not Patti Smith.” As well as Charlie Puth. “You smoked then ate seven chocolate bars / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.”
“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”: “I’m the queen of the sandcastle he’s tearing down,” Taylor sings on the third track of this album, where she reminisces about a couple escaping from their relationship.
“Because I know too much / There’s danger in my touch,” the lyrics note. “Seeing forever so he breaks it.”
The Grammy winner told iHeartRadio that the song is a “metaphor from a child’s toy perspective,” where the child breaks the toy and doesn’t want to play with it anymore—like in relationships, where “we’re very valued initially.” It’s about rejecting the idea that romance can’t return to what it once was.
She previously compared her lover to a toy on the 2019 song “Cruel Summer,” where she sings, “Bad, bad boy, shiny toy with a price / You know that I bought it.”
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