April 24, 2024 • 20 mins
Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, on April 19, 2024. It wasn’t just a regular album, it was a double album (with The Anthology), spanning 31 songs and over two hours. As a Swiftie herself, Julia Landauer was really looking forward to this album and gives her opinions on TTPD on this week’s episode of If I’m Honest with Julia Landauer. Julia explains what she particularly loves about Taylor Swift’s songwriting, the pivotal song that broke down the fourth wall for her, and her ritual for listening to a new Taylor Swift album. Julia then dives into three songs that caught her attention on TTPD, one thing she really doesn’t like about Taylor Swift’s songwriting, and a specific lyric that marries Swifties and motorsports fans. Julia ends with some final thoughts on the album, including where TTPD lands on her Taylor Swift Album Hierarchy List.
Patti Smith’s “Just Kids,” which Julia mentions: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Kids-Patti-Smith/dp/0060936223
Danielle Trotta’s episode with the quote, “don’t let people’s outsides affect your insides”: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/id1686900834?i=1000652706947
Learn more about Julia Landauer at https://julialandauer.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If
I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I hope you're doing well.
I got back from a bachelorette trip in Miami this weekend,
and let me tell you, it was exactly what the
doctor ordered. We had a beautiful rooftop dinner on Friday
that just had immaculate vibes and the weather was delightful.
(00:27):
The food was delicious. The entertainment was very cool. It
involved flame and dancers and we danced on stage. It
was really cool. And then we went to the beach
on Saturday, which was so needed. My skin needed to
feel the warmth of the sun. I needed to have
an attempt to not be so blinding with my bare
(00:47):
belly because that has not seen sun in a very
long time and my natural state is fairly fair skin.
So all good there. And if I'm so honest with you,
I don't typically love going to Florida, but this was
just so perfect. It was such a great weekend. Really
grateful I got to do it. And yeah, I think
(01:08):
that's probably my last bachelorette for a while. At this point.
I've got one or two other people who, if they
get married I will probably be on their bachelorette trips,
but otherwise I think I might be rounding out this
very short chapter of my life. Not many of my
besties had bachelorette parties, at least not that I'm aware of. No,
(01:29):
but they didn't, partially due to COVID and all that stuff.
But yeah, it's done. And this timing was particularly perfect
for this bachelorette because the bride to be is also
a fellow Swifty, and we did not listen to her
new album on this trip. They were not the same vibes.
Not sure if she's listened to it yet. But since
(01:50):
we are several days out from the release of The
Tortured Poet's Department and the Anthology, which is a double
album thirty one songs, several hours, it was a lot
I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to give
a quick, fun, punchy assessment because I am a diehard Swifty.
(02:10):
I'm not at the level where I think she can
do no wrong like that's not I like to keep
people honest, obviously, And with that being said, I was
really looking forward to this album. I had heard the
murmurings of reasons for the breakup with Joe Alwan involving cheating,
other women, other priorities, and I've recognized that part of
(02:35):
the reason I relate to Taylor Swift on some level.
Obviously very different, but she's also a woman in her
early mid thirties and we are of the same generation,
and so when she's going through something, I feel like
I can put myself in those shoes to a certain extent.
For example, she and Joe were together for six years
before they broke up, and at this point I have
(02:58):
known and been with Ben for almost six years, and
it is a really substantial time in a woman's life
in her late twenties, early thirties, and town I can
only imagine kind of some of the feelings when thinking
you might be spending forever with this person and you're
in prime, you know, having kid years and all of that,
(03:22):
and if that's something that you want it like, obviously
a lot of us feel that pressure, and so I
can appreciate the toughness of going through a breakup regardless,
like a breakup is tough, and then especially in this
time of life. So with all of that, back to
the album, I've been looking forward to the storytelling part
(03:42):
of what I appreciate most about Taylor Swift is her storytelling.
I do enjoy a lot of the music. I don't,
you know, love absolutely every single song, but I do
really love her storytelling. I love her word play. I
love how she twists traditional little sayings and make them
her own. And so with this one is like, all right,
(04:04):
we've got this personal drama, we've got this really incredible storytelling,
and so how's the album going to be? So we
have it now, we're ready to dissect it. Since Red
came out, I have a process for listening to a
new Taylor Swift album. I have never listened to them
right on release at midnight. I don't stay up for them.
(04:25):
I don't like to stay up till midnight anyway, and
so it's usually a next morning thing. And before I
was working, the way this looked was that kind of
with my coffee. I would listen to the album in full,
once through, no stopping, just listen to it through, and
I would note down which songs particularly caught my attention
or that I really liked on first listen, and then
(04:48):
I go back and re listen to those songs that
I had marked down, and I pay close attention to
the lyrics for the fun lines, and then after I
go back and re listen if there are questions I have,
our references I have. That's when I search, like some
of the meanings behind the lyrics, but for some for
a really clear example of one of these moments that
(05:08):
I was like, Oh my goodness, this woman is clever
was on Folklore and I remember, I believe it came
out July something in twenty twenty. We were getting ready
to move to our current house and I'm listening to
it drinking my coffee, and The Last Great American Dynasty
came on, and she's talking about how Rebecca Harkness was
(05:29):
the heroine of that story and how she was the
rule breaker, And on my second time listening more closely,
the bridge really knocks me off my feet because she's
singing about Rebecca Harkness and her experience in the town
and at that house, and the way that the bridge
goes is they say she was seen on occasion pacing
(05:50):
the rock, staring out at the midnight sea, and in
a feud with her neighbor. She's still his dog and
died a key lyme green fifty years is a long
time holiday house sat quietly on that beach, free of
women with madness, they're men in bad habits. And then
it was bought by me and I was like, Oh,
(06:11):
my goodness, Taylor, You're so clever. It was so fun
to be going through this historical play by play of
how this house came to be and this woman in
history who's a very real figure. And then Taylor Swift
owns that house. I mean, that was so cool, and
it was just kind of putting together all these pieces.
I thought it was incredibly clever and brought in this
(06:33):
modern cultural relevance to this historical house. And I really
feel like Taylor broke the fourth wall with listeners with that.
It was my first real feeling of that. And then
the other little bit that's a fun change throughout the
song is she changes the last line of the chorus
from she had a marvelous time ruining everything to I
(06:54):
had a marvelous time ruining everything. It's so clever. So anyway,
after listening more closely to the lyrics of any given album,
I then add those songs into my playlist rotations. So
this year and this album release was a little harder
because it was over two hours I was working, and
(07:16):
so I had to wait later into Friday till when
I could listen to it. But for a very quick summary,
I really enjoyed a lot of it. I really enjoyed
a lot of the Tortured Poet's Department. There are a
few songs that I really loved. I felt pretty emotionally
heavy at the end of listening to it. It is.
It is sad, it is melancholy, and I wouldn't say
(07:40):
that musically it's my favorite album. It's done really nicely
with a lot of songs, but I do kind of
feel like some of them become a little indistinguishable, and
I don't know if I feel like thirty one songs
felt like thirty one songs. It's just so tough, because like,
damn you do damned if you don't. At the end
(08:01):
of a normal length album, I feel like, oh, it
would be so cool to get some more songs, and
then we get some more songs, and it's you know,
not feeling as satisfied as I kind of hoped I was,
but that's okay. In the end, I do feel that
I got the lyrical storytelling that I had hoped for.
So that's a quick synopsis. But there were three songs
that I really loved, and that's what I want to
(08:22):
talk about in a little more depth today, and they
are the Tortured Poet's Department. So long, London, and I
can do it with a broken heart with the Tortured
Poet's Department. My first thing that I noticed was that
there were so many names dropped from Patti Smith, who
I became a fan of after reading her book Just Kids,
(08:44):
which is her perspective on her love story with Robert Mapplethorpe.
I just it moved me when I read this, and
I got very emotionally invested in her life. And she
is obviously an incredible poet. And Dylan Thomas, who I
had to look up, but he was apparently a pretty
self destructive, romantic poet. And let me tell you, I
(09:04):
had thought this song had been about Joe Allwin throughout
most of it, and then she references Lucy and Jack,
and I assumed that Jack was Jack Antonov, which is
her friend, but I had to look up who Lucy was,
and it turns out that Lucy is Matty Healy's friend,
and so yeah, it was probably not about Joe. I'm
just not entirely sure, But there was a lyric that
(09:27):
really panged my heart, and that was I'm not going
to sing this because I don't fully re memorize it
and I'm not a good singer. So anyway, it says
at dinner, you'd take my ring off my middle finger
and put it on the one that people put wedding
rings on. And that's the closest I've come to my
heart exploding. Oh my god, Taylor. The vulnerability in that
(09:51):
lyric is next level, and I think it's partially impactful
for me because we know that she wants to find
true love, a turn love, she wants to find her
person and truth be told, I agonized for her that,
you know, she thought she was probably gonna get it
and then didn't get it, especially when I thought the
song was about Joe allwen it. It's just it's like, oh,
(10:15):
that's that's so tough and yeah, but I totally get
it that that you get excitement, that you think you're
gonna get engaged and it didn't happen. But one thing
I don't love about this song. I don't love the
I don't love how I feel when I hear these
types of lyrics but I kind of don't love when
(10:37):
she declares that no one else will love or hold
or hug or kiss or cuddle or whatever her exes
the way she does the line in this song is
who's going to hug you as much as me? No one?
It feels a little manipulative to me, and I don't
love that, and I've noticed it in a few other songs,
(10:58):
but I just you know, if don't work out, then
it means that it wasn't meant to be. And so
someone else is gonna love you better than you're ex died.
Someone else is gonna hug you, kiss you, hold you
better than you're exted, and it's probably gonna happen for
them too. So hope that's not too controversial, But that's
kind of how I feel about that one. The next
(11:19):
song that I want to dive into a little bit
is so Long London. Now, first, the beat and the
melody for the song We're excellent. I was bopping around
to it. I thought that it had a really great
and pretty different flow from what I normally hear from her,
and I really appreciated the word play with so Long
Comma London because the emphasis was on different parts of
(11:40):
that phrase with each use, for example, so long London
as in goodbye London, or I've liked you so long
London like I've liked you for a long time. It
was slightly different for each use, and I just thought
that was really cool and clever. But there was a
specific lyric that stood out to me in the second
(12:03):
chorus I Believe, where she says I stopped CPR after all,
it's no use, the spirit was gone. We were never
come to and I'm pissed off you let me give
you all that youth for free. This goes back to
being really impactful for me because again in a similar
(12:23):
time period, like if you realize that someone wronged you
or that it didn't work out and you're a if
you're someone who wants kids and you realize that, okay,
you thought you might have been having kids with this
person and you don't anymore, and you've essentially like given
them some prime years and it's for free because it didn't,
(12:45):
you know, end up the way they wanted. I get it,
like I would be so upset for many many many reasons,
but like so upset if you know, suddenly be and
I didn't work out? Now right, and and it goes
beyond losing the person, it goes beyond losing the life
you were expecting. But just as a woman, it's very
(13:05):
real on the biological time clock. And so that was
how I interpret that it might have been an upset
for giving her youth and fun years in your twenties
or whatever, but that that definitely struck a chord. And
the other thing with this song that I thought was
pretty poignant was that it reminds us that in a breakup,
a lot of times we lose more than just the person.
(13:29):
And I thought about this in particular because she says,
I'm mad as hell because I loved this place and
she had established some roots in London and had to
move on. But it translates into other areas too. You know,
you might love your ex's family or friends, or kind
of some things that you learned with them that are
now going to be forever different. And it's pretty monumentous
(13:51):
when you think about how much of your world gets
disrupted when you go through a breakup. And a breakup
is something category of things that for me are so
interesting because they are so so ordinary, like they happen
all the time to everyone, but they're also so extraordinary
(14:13):
for the person going through it. And I think that's
the case when you get married, when you break up,
when you have kids, when someone you love dies, Like
everyone for the most part, experiences this and it's so normal,
and yet it totally blows up your world, sometimes for
the good, sometimes for the bad. So yeah, that falls
into that category. The third song that I want to
(14:34):
jump into a little bit and the final one that
we'll talk about in more detail is I Can Do
It with a Broken Heart. This song upon listening to it,
like obviously she's kicking butt with a broken heart, and
it really reminded me overall of Bare Naked Lady songs,
because there are quite a few Bare Naked Lady songs
(14:55):
where it feels really upbeat, it feels really positive, the
music is happy, and they are talking about some dark, sad,
scary stuff, and so it's kind of this kind of
juxtaposition of two very different emotions coming across on a song.
And that's kind of the vibe I got from this song.
And I found the melody really really easy to bop
(15:18):
along too, And there was a lyric where she says
all the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was
chanting more. I was grinning like I'm winning. I was
hitting my marks because I can do it with a
broken heart. And then she continues, I'm so depressed. I
act like it's my birthday every day. I'm so obsessed
with him, but he avoids me like the plague. I
cry a lot, but I am so productive. It's an
(15:40):
art and it's so upbeat, so jolly, and yet she's
being absolutely destroyed and she's depressed, but the show must
literally go on. There are few things came to mind
with this song, so one. Having this context of how
she was feeling when I saw her in concert during
the Airara's tour in May of twenty twenty three makes
(16:02):
the performance even more impressive. And I feel like, you know,
performers will go on regardless of what's going on in
their life for the most part, and it's part of
the job. But it gives you a new appreciation for
how much she was balancing for this great tour. The
other thing that I appreciated is that she referenced hitting
(16:23):
her marks. And I know that that's not a very
unique mantra to have, but it's a mantra that I've
had for my racing and for life. You know, when
things get overwhelming, when things get challenging, to just focus
on hitting your marks. And so I like to think
that she is also incorporating this mentality of when the
shit is hitting the fan and when you are struggling,
(16:46):
it is important to remember to hit your marks. Obviously
she might have mentioned in a totally different way, but
I took that. And the last thing that I appreciated
about this song was that it reminds us that we
never know what's going on below the surface of someone's life, right.
We never know what someone's going through, what they're dealing with,
what their mindset is, how they're doing mentally. And it
(17:09):
reminds me of what Danielle Trada said as my guest
last week on the podcast when she said, don't let
someone's outsides affect your insides. This is a continuation of
that that we only see what we see, and everyone
has their struggles. Maybe some are more tangibly major than others,
(17:30):
but we all struggle from time to time and we
all have to find our way to get through it.
And this was just a very clear and explicit example
of doing just that with a fun upbeat melody. Alrighty,
so I didn't particularly care for the whole song I'm
Going to Get You Back, but I must point out
(17:51):
the random lyric that I loved. She says, I'm an
Aston Martin. You steered straight into a ditch. For those
of you who are not familiar, there were rumors circulating
a little while back that were linking her to Fernando
Alonzo before it was public that she was dating Travis
Kelcey and he Fernando Alonso, drives for the Aston Martin
(18:13):
Formula One team, So obviously we've got our overlap between
Taylor Swift and Motorsports. And I just like that that
was referenced. I would assume it was on purpose, but
maybe not. And then my final random thoughts about the album.
In the song The Black Dog, she opens up by
(18:34):
describing that she can still see her exo's location on
his phone and can't help but watch as it moves
and she sees where he goes. And I just thought
that was a really interesting, very clear reference to the
times that we're living in because so many of us
know that pang to the gut when you kind of
see where they are if you have snippets of information
(18:58):
about their whereabouts or being or you see is there
in the same story, Like we all know so clearly
what that feels like. And it's a very modern reference
that I wonder, you know, would older generations know, or
you know, what will future generations think of those specific references.
I also am curious if Joe Alwin will listen to
any of this album. Another random thought is that so
(19:20):
for Fortnite, which features post Malone, I feel like post
Malone in Fortnite is like Lana del Rey in Snow
on the Beach, which is practically non existent. I do
really like the chorus in down Bad. I'm very impressed
with how much writing she did, and as I weigh
this in kind of my favorite album, so to start,
(19:42):
my favorite Taylor Swift albums right now are Folklore, Midnight's Red,
and nineteen eighty nine, especially with some of those vault tracks,
and I would say that this is underneath those, and
I'm not quite sure entirely where it ranks. I need
to do some more listening, but that is a quick
run through of my debrief on Taylor Swift's The Tortured
(20:03):
Poet's Department. I would love to hear what you think.
I would love to hear what songs you like, how
you feel about the lyrics for this one, kind of
what you thought of thirty one songs? Leave a comment
on my social post or leave a comment in a
review on the podcast. If you liked this episode, I
hope that you'll share with a friend. Get that Taylor
Swift conversation started. Let me know if you agree or
(20:23):
disagree with me. You'd love to hear that, And as always,
thank you for letting me be honest with you and
I look forward to seeing you next week.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If
I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I hope you're doing well.
I got back from a bachelorette trip in Miami this weekend,
and let me tell you, it was exactly what the
doctor ordered. We had a beautiful rooftop dinner on Friday
that just had immaculate vibes and the weather was delightful.
(00:27):
The food was delicious. The entertainment was very cool. It
involved flame and dancers and we danced on stage. It
was really cool. And then we went to the beach
on Saturday, which was so needed. My skin needed to
feel the warmth of the sun. I needed to have
an attempt to not be so blinding with my bare
(00:47):
belly because that has not seen sun in a very
long time and my natural state is fairly fair skin.
So all good there. And if I'm so honest with you,
I don't typically love going to Florida, but this was
just so perfect. It was such a great weekend. Really
grateful I got to do it. And yeah, I think
(01:08):
that's probably my last bachelorette for a while. At this point.
I've got one or two other people who, if they
get married I will probably be on their bachelorette trips,
but otherwise I think I might be rounding out this
very short chapter of my life. Not many of my
besties had bachelorette parties, at least not that I'm aware of. No,
(01:29):
but they didn't, partially due to COVID and all that stuff.
But yeah, it's done. And this timing was particularly perfect
for this bachelorette because the bride to be is also
a fellow Swifty, and we did not listen to her
new album on this trip. They were not the same vibes.
Not sure if she's listened to it yet. But since
(01:50):
we are several days out from the release of The
Tortured Poet's Department and the Anthology, which is a double
album thirty one songs, several hours, it was a lot
I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to give
a quick, fun, punchy assessment because I am a diehard Swifty.
(02:10):
I'm not at the level where I think she can
do no wrong like that's not I like to keep
people honest, obviously, And with that being said, I was
really looking forward to this album. I had heard the
murmurings of reasons for the breakup with Joe Alwan involving cheating,
other women, other priorities, and I've recognized that part of
(02:35):
the reason I relate to Taylor Swift on some level.
Obviously very different, but she's also a woman in her
early mid thirties and we are of the same generation,
and so when she's going through something, I feel like
I can put myself in those shoes to a certain extent.
For example, she and Joe were together for six years
before they broke up, and at this point I have
(02:58):
known and been with Ben for almost six years, and
it is a really substantial time in a woman's life
in her late twenties, early thirties, and town I can
only imagine kind of some of the feelings when thinking
you might be spending forever with this person and you're
in prime, you know, having kid years and all of that,
(03:22):
and if that's something that you want it like, obviously
a lot of us feel that pressure, and so I
can appreciate the toughness of going through a breakup regardless,
like a breakup is tough, and then especially in this
time of life. So with all of that, back to
the album, I've been looking forward to the storytelling part
(03:42):
of what I appreciate most about Taylor Swift is her storytelling.
I do enjoy a lot of the music. I don't,
you know, love absolutely every single song, but I do
really love her storytelling. I love her word play. I
love how she twists traditional little sayings and make them
her own. And so with this one is like, all right,
(04:04):
we've got this personal drama, we've got this really incredible storytelling,
and so how's the album going to be? So we
have it now, we're ready to dissect it. Since Red
came out, I have a process for listening to a
new Taylor Swift album. I have never listened to them
right on release at midnight. I don't stay up for them.
(04:25):
I don't like to stay up till midnight anyway, and
so it's usually a next morning thing. And before I
was working, the way this looked was that kind of
with my coffee. I would listen to the album in full,
once through, no stopping, just listen to it through, and
I would note down which songs particularly caught my attention
or that I really liked on first listen, and then
(04:48):
I go back and re listen to those songs that
I had marked down, and I pay close attention to
the lyrics for the fun lines, and then after I
go back and re listen if there are questions I have,
our references I have. That's when I search, like some
of the meanings behind the lyrics, but for some for
a really clear example of one of these moments that
(05:08):
I was like, Oh my goodness, this woman is clever
was on Folklore and I remember, I believe it came
out July something in twenty twenty. We were getting ready
to move to our current house and I'm listening to
it drinking my coffee, and The Last Great American Dynasty
came on, and she's talking about how Rebecca Harkness was
(05:29):
the heroine of that story and how she was the
rule breaker, And on my second time listening more closely,
the bridge really knocks me off my feet because she's
singing about Rebecca Harkness and her experience in the town
and at that house, and the way that the bridge
goes is they say she was seen on occasion pacing
(05:50):
the rock, staring out at the midnight sea, and in
a feud with her neighbor. She's still his dog and
died a key lyme green fifty years is a long
time holiday house sat quietly on that beach, free of
women with madness, they're men in bad habits. And then
it was bought by me and I was like, Oh,
(06:11):
my goodness, Taylor, You're so clever. It was so fun
to be going through this historical play by play of
how this house came to be and this woman in
history who's a very real figure. And then Taylor Swift
owns that house. I mean, that was so cool, and
it was just kind of putting together all these pieces.
I thought it was incredibly clever and brought in this
(06:33):
modern cultural relevance to this historical house. And I really
feel like Taylor broke the fourth wall with listeners with that.
It was my first real feeling of that. And then
the other little bit that's a fun change throughout the
song is she changes the last line of the chorus
from she had a marvelous time ruining everything to I
(06:54):
had a marvelous time ruining everything. It's so clever. So anyway,
after listening more closely to the lyrics of any given album,
I then add those songs into my playlist rotations. So
this year and this album release was a little harder
because it was over two hours I was working, and
(07:16):
so I had to wait later into Friday till when
I could listen to it. But for a very quick summary,
I really enjoyed a lot of it. I really enjoyed
a lot of the Tortured Poet's Department. There are a
few songs that I really loved. I felt pretty emotionally
heavy at the end of listening to it. It is.
It is sad, it is melancholy, and I wouldn't say
(07:40):
that musically it's my favorite album. It's done really nicely
with a lot of songs, but I do kind of
feel like some of them become a little indistinguishable, and
I don't know if I feel like thirty one songs
felt like thirty one songs. It's just so tough, because like,
damn you do damned if you don't. At the end
(08:01):
of a normal length album, I feel like, oh, it
would be so cool to get some more songs, and
then we get some more songs, and it's you know,
not feeling as satisfied as I kind of hoped I was,
but that's okay. In the end, I do feel that
I got the lyrical storytelling that I had hoped for.
So that's a quick synopsis. But there were three songs
that I really loved, and that's what I want to
(08:22):
talk about in a little more depth today, and they
are the Tortured Poet's Department. So long, London, and I
can do it with a broken heart with the Tortured
Poet's Department. My first thing that I noticed was that
there were so many names dropped from Patti Smith, who
I became a fan of after reading her book Just Kids,
(08:44):
which is her perspective on her love story with Robert Mapplethorpe.
I just it moved me when I read this, and
I got very emotionally invested in her life. And she
is obviously an incredible poet. And Dylan Thomas, who I
had to look up, but he was apparently a pretty
self destructive, romantic poet. And let me tell you, I
(09:04):
had thought this song had been about Joe Allwin throughout
most of it, and then she references Lucy and Jack,
and I assumed that Jack was Jack Antonov, which is
her friend, but I had to look up who Lucy was,
and it turns out that Lucy is Matty Healy's friend,
and so yeah, it was probably not about Joe. I'm
just not entirely sure, But there was a lyric that
(09:27):
really panged my heart, and that was I'm not going
to sing this because I don't fully re memorize it
and I'm not a good singer. So anyway, it says
at dinner, you'd take my ring off my middle finger
and put it on the one that people put wedding
rings on. And that's the closest I've come to my
heart exploding. Oh my god, Taylor. The vulnerability in that
(09:51):
lyric is next level, and I think it's partially impactful
for me because we know that she wants to find
true love, a turn love, she wants to find her
person and truth be told, I agonized for her that,
you know, she thought she was probably gonna get it
and then didn't get it, especially when I thought the
song was about Joe allwen it. It's just it's like, oh,
(10:15):
that's that's so tough and yeah, but I totally get
it that that you get excitement, that you think you're
gonna get engaged and it didn't happen. But one thing
I don't love about this song. I don't love the
I don't love how I feel when I hear these
types of lyrics but I kind of don't love when
(10:37):
she declares that no one else will love or hold
or hug or kiss or cuddle or whatever her exes
the way she does the line in this song is
who's going to hug you as much as me? No one?
It feels a little manipulative to me, and I don't
love that, and I've noticed it in a few other songs,
(10:58):
but I just you know, if don't work out, then
it means that it wasn't meant to be. And so
someone else is gonna love you better than you're ex died.
Someone else is gonna hug you, kiss you, hold you
better than you're exted, and it's probably gonna happen for
them too. So hope that's not too controversial, But that's
kind of how I feel about that one. The next
(11:19):
song that I want to dive into a little bit
is so Long London. Now, first, the beat and the
melody for the song We're excellent. I was bopping around
to it. I thought that it had a really great
and pretty different flow from what I normally hear from her,
and I really appreciated the word play with so Long
Comma London because the emphasis was on different parts of
(11:40):
that phrase with each use, for example, so long London
as in goodbye London, or I've liked you so long
London like I've liked you for a long time. It
was slightly different for each use, and I just thought
that was really cool and clever. But there was a
specific lyric that stood out to me in the second
(12:03):
chorus I Believe, where she says I stopped CPR after all,
it's no use, the spirit was gone. We were never
come to and I'm pissed off you let me give
you all that youth for free. This goes back to
being really impactful for me because again in a similar
(12:23):
time period, like if you realize that someone wronged you
or that it didn't work out and you're a if
you're someone who wants kids and you realize that, okay,
you thought you might have been having kids with this
person and you don't anymore, and you've essentially like given
them some prime years and it's for free because it didn't,
(12:45):
you know, end up the way they wanted. I get it,
like I would be so upset for many many many reasons,
but like so upset if you know, suddenly be and
I didn't work out? Now right, and and it goes
beyond losing the person, it goes beyond losing the life
you were expecting. But just as a woman, it's very
(13:05):
real on the biological time clock. And so that was
how I interpret that it might have been an upset
for giving her youth and fun years in your twenties
or whatever, but that that definitely struck a chord. And
the other thing with this song that I thought was
pretty poignant was that it reminds us that in a breakup,
a lot of times we lose more than just the person.
(13:29):
And I thought about this in particular because she says,
I'm mad as hell because I loved this place and
she had established some roots in London and had to
move on. But it translates into other areas too. You know,
you might love your ex's family or friends, or kind
of some things that you learned with them that are
now going to be forever different. And it's pretty monumentous
(13:51):
when you think about how much of your world gets
disrupted when you go through a breakup. And a breakup
is something category of things that for me are so
interesting because they are so so ordinary, like they happen
all the time to everyone, but they're also so extraordinary
(14:13):
for the person going through it. And I think that's
the case when you get married, when you break up,
when you have kids, when someone you love dies, Like
everyone for the most part, experiences this and it's so normal,
and yet it totally blows up your world, sometimes for
the good, sometimes for the bad. So yeah, that falls
into that category. The third song that I want to
(14:34):
jump into a little bit and the final one that
we'll talk about in more detail is I Can Do
It with a Broken Heart. This song upon listening to it,
like obviously she's kicking butt with a broken heart, and
it really reminded me overall of Bare Naked Lady songs,
because there are quite a few Bare Naked Lady songs
(14:55):
where it feels really upbeat, it feels really positive, the
music is happy, and they are talking about some dark, sad,
scary stuff, and so it's kind of this kind of
juxtaposition of two very different emotions coming across on a song.
And that's kind of the vibe I got from this song.
And I found the melody really really easy to bop
(15:18):
along too, And there was a lyric where she says
all the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was
chanting more. I was grinning like I'm winning. I was
hitting my marks because I can do it with a
broken heart. And then she continues, I'm so depressed. I
act like it's my birthday every day. I'm so obsessed
with him, but he avoids me like the plague. I
cry a lot, but I am so productive. It's an
(15:40):
art and it's so upbeat, so jolly, and yet she's
being absolutely destroyed and she's depressed, but the show must
literally go on. There are few things came to mind
with this song, so one. Having this context of how
she was feeling when I saw her in concert during
the Airara's tour in May of twenty twenty three makes
(16:02):
the performance even more impressive. And I feel like, you know,
performers will go on regardless of what's going on in
their life for the most part, and it's part of
the job. But it gives you a new appreciation for
how much she was balancing for this great tour. The
other thing that I appreciated is that she referenced hitting
(16:23):
her marks. And I know that that's not a very
unique mantra to have, but it's a mantra that I've
had for my racing and for life. You know, when
things get overwhelming, when things get challenging, to just focus
on hitting your marks. And so I like to think
that she is also incorporating this mentality of when the
shit is hitting the fan and when you are struggling,
(16:46):
it is important to remember to hit your marks. Obviously
she might have mentioned in a totally different way, but
I took that. And the last thing that I appreciated
about this song was that it reminds us that we
never know what's going on below the surface of someone's life, right.
We never know what someone's going through, what they're dealing with,
what their mindset is, how they're doing mentally. And it
(17:09):
reminds me of what Danielle Trada said as my guest
last week on the podcast when she said, don't let
someone's outsides affect your insides. This is a continuation of
that that we only see what we see, and everyone
has their struggles. Maybe some are more tangibly major than others,
(17:30):
but we all struggle from time to time and we
all have to find our way to get through it.
And this was just a very clear and explicit example
of doing just that with a fun upbeat melody. Alrighty,
so I didn't particularly care for the whole song I'm
Going to Get You Back, but I must point out
(17:51):
the random lyric that I loved. She says, I'm an
Aston Martin. You steered straight into a ditch. For those
of you who are not familiar, there were rumors circulating
a little while back that were linking her to Fernando
Alonzo before it was public that she was dating Travis
Kelcey and he Fernando Alonso, drives for the Aston Martin
(18:13):
Formula One team, So obviously we've got our overlap between
Taylor Swift and Motorsports. And I just like that that
was referenced. I would assume it was on purpose, but
maybe not. And then my final random thoughts about the album.
In the song The Black Dog, she opens up by
(18:34):
describing that she can still see her exo's location on
his phone and can't help but watch as it moves
and she sees where he goes. And I just thought
that was a really interesting, very clear reference to the
times that we're living in because so many of us
know that pang to the gut when you kind of
see where they are if you have snippets of information
(18:58):
about their whereabouts or being or you see is there
in the same story, Like we all know so clearly
what that feels like. And it's a very modern reference
that I wonder, you know, would older generations know, or
you know, what will future generations think of those specific references.
I also am curious if Joe Alwin will listen to
any of this album. Another random thought is that so
(19:20):
for Fortnite, which features post Malone, I feel like post
Malone in Fortnite is like Lana del Rey in Snow
on the Beach, which is practically non existent. I do
really like the chorus in down Bad. I'm very impressed
with how much writing she did, and as I weigh
this in kind of my favorite album, so to start,
(19:42):
my favorite Taylor Swift albums right now are Folklore, Midnight's Red,
and nineteen eighty nine, especially with some of those vault tracks,
and I would say that this is underneath those, and
I'm not quite sure entirely where it ranks. I need
to do some more listening, but that is a quick
run through of my debrief on Taylor Swift's The Tortured
(20:03):
Poet's Department. I would love to hear what you think.
I would love to hear what songs you like, how
you feel about the lyrics for this one, kind of
what you thought of thirty one songs? Leave a comment
on my social post or leave a comment in a
review on the podcast. If you liked this episode, I
hope that you'll share with a friend. Get that Taylor
Swift conversation started. Let me know if you agree or
(20:23):
disagree with me. You'd love to hear that, And as always,
thank you for letting me be honest with you and
I look forward to seeing you next week.
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