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Students reaction to the double album release of The Tortured Poets Department.

Following pop star Taylor Swift’s announcement of her latest project, The Tortured Poets Department Album, during the 2024 Grammy Awards, Harrisites had been anticipating the album’s release date, April 19th, 2024. Featuring a black and white cover, the album highlights Taylor’s sorrows, love-life, and moments of self-awareness.

Immediately after its release, the album was quick to break records reaching one billion streams within the week and receiving the highest single-day and single-week global streams for an album on Spotify. The album was initially released at 12AM and included sixteen songs. However, Taylor Swift surprised her fans with a double album release, with the second part of the album, “The Anthology,” being released at 3 AM of the same day, featuring fifteen new songs. Senior Eileen Wang said, “The double album gave me even more songs to listen to.”

Although the double album came as a surprise for many, other students claimed to have seen it coming. Senior Zarah Masud said, “There were alot of videos showing Taylor Swift holding up two fingers during the Grammy’s during the announcement of the album. I did not know what she was referring to, but I knew that there would be a surprise related to ‘two’ of something. I was anticipating something coming in doubles, but not double albums.”

Zarah described her first impression of the album. She said, “My first impression was that the album was very long and also a lot sadder than I anticipated. The title ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is an extremely interesting title, which hints at themes of sadness, but I was thinking that there would be more revenge rather than overwhelming sadness in the album.”

Eileen said, “My favorite song is The Alchemy because I find the lyrics really sweet and it’s an outlier in the album.” Zarah explained that her favorite song on the album was Fortnight, featuring Post Malone. She said, “The Post Malone feature made the song standout on the album as a whole, as it was an extremely unique blend of artists.” 

Freshman Amelia Zara said, “I enjoyed the new album and even though it wasn’t as happy or [upbeat] as her other albums, it shared a lot of emotion with her audience. It was a heartfelt and emotional journey that she took her listeners through, and I loved the new themes of her music as well. I hope she can make more music similar to these albums in the future.” 

Although there were many songs that stood out on the album for its synthetic-pop and sweetness, there were many other feelings. Senior Gurjot Gill said, “I liked a lot of her older albums better. I just felt that a lot of the songs on this album sounded very similar.” Similarly, Junior Isaac Wong,  said “Some of the songs lack their own character.” However, Eileen said, even despite this, “After a few listens the songs become really catchy.” Many students agreed that the lyrics in the album were extremely well written. Gurjot said, “The songs had stories that Taylor described very well with her lyrics.”

Similarly Junior Joyce Xie said, “The [album] is a comfort for me, despite what people say about her songs being too much and sounding the “same.” In my opinion, I think they all have their own kind of story, so I really enjoyed listening to it and feel that it’s an album that has to grow on you. It’s not like 1989, which is an upbeat pop album that everyone would dance to.”

While speaking to The Classic, many students expressed their desire for more Swift albums that reflect happier moods regarding current experiences in order to capture the catchiness of previous albums. Zarah said, “Although this album was different from her usual music, I do want to see more of her music with her new happy love life reflected.”