Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’: All 31 Tracks Ranked

Swift spends “I Hate It Here” looking for the escape hatch from a spoiled situation, her voice rung out with desire for something more — and while “I Hate It Here” requires a bit more percussive oomph to get off the ground and suffers from a time-traveling detour that doesn’t connect, the song deserves props for the line “All you’ll ever be is my eternal consolation prize,” one of the sickest burns in an album full of them.

The capitalization choice in “thanK you aIMee” is not subtle — yes, the one that was “throwin’ punches” while Taylor was “buildin’ something” seems to be named Kim — and Swift invites us into the squabbling, strumming a guitar while reiterating that the shots she suffered won’t make a dent in her legacy. The backhanded gratitude that Swift expresses on “thanK you aIMee” is deliciously delivered, and the song benefits from a sparkly arrangement that places the pettiness in a more positive light.

No one can have it all, and for Swift, that means sacrificing a relationship’s stability for professional enormity — and later understanding this apparent fate to be a raw deal (“Don’t want money/ Just someone who wants my company”). Although “The Prophecy” features some of Dessner’s typical indie-folk work, the song opens up during an instrumental break, as the beats and guitar strings dance around each other while a pining Swift simply coos in the background.

With sentiments that directly recall Olivia Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back!,” Swift uses “Imgonnagetyouback” to muse on either reconnecting with an ex or seeking revenge upon him — either way, she’s going to win this battle. On a song with such pointed declarative sentences, though, Swift defers to the pretty, shuddering production, communicating her intentions gracefully: “Whether I’m gonna be your wife or / Gonna smash up your bike, I haven’t decided yet / But I’m gonna get you back.”

Swift spends the majority of The Tortured Poets Department demonstrating that the biggest pop superstar in the world is actually feeling small and messed-up… so on “I Look in People’s Windows,” it makes sense when she cops to feeling like “some deranged weirdo” while obsessing over missed opportunities. The production simmers but never boils over, and the percussion barely registers as Swift’s tries to understand what the tiniest gestures might have meant in the grand scheme.

The strings, horns and bass clarinet on “The Bolter” add heft to a tale about a woman who has fallen through the cracked ice once, so she’s ready to abandon ship at the sign of the tiniest leak. Swift has worked with Dessner for years, and at times their collaborations have directly recalled his work with his band The National — but “The Bolter” sounds straight out of an album like that outfit’s I Am Easy to Find, with Swift’s voice finding equilibrium with the indie-rock arrangement.

The Tortured Poets Department naturally includes some impressive bridges, but the four-line passage in the middle of “The Albatross” helps the song reach a new level, as Swift indoctrinates a romantic partner into a life of scrutiny and moments when “you’re persona non grata.” Musically, “The Albatross” wanders back into the Folklore/Evermore woods, with wistful melodies constructed around finger-picking and the same type of rustic lyricism that highlighted that two-album era.

Because “Robin” is aimed at a child and relies on simplistic language, the song immediately evokes the sweetness of “Innocent,” as Swift encourages her listener to keep roaring and avoiding the complexities of adult life. “Robin” arrives like a breath of unspoiled air near the end of The Tortured Poets Department, letting go of the relationship turmoil to speak to someone who has yet to experience those trappings, and root them on as they progress.

Compared to the expansive storytelling found across the rest of the album, “Fresh Out the Slammer” features more free-association writing and clipped phrasings, eventually rearranging its molecules in the final stretch to become more reflective. With crashing cymbals and guitars straight out of a spaghetti Western sliding into a shimmery wobble, “Fresh Out the Slammer” exists more as connective tissue on The Tortured Poets Department, a falsetto-heavy breather in between towering moments.

While referencing the mythological priestess Cassandra, who would provide correct prophecies but never be believed, Swift sheds some insight into the period pre-Reputation, when her back-and-forth with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West turned a large swath of pop culture vultures against her. “They knew, they knew, they knew the whole time/ That I was onto something,” she pleads, reflecting on a painful personal moment as well as the supposed supporters who didn’t take her side.

Considering that this glittering love song includes phrases like “touchdown,” “winning streak” and “the league,” the inspiration for “The Alchemy” won’t be a huge secret — but nothing is ham-fisted, either, as a new love story starts to unfold above a tender arrangement of echoing drums and layered vocals. Thoughts of destiny buzz around “The Alchemy,” and chest-thumping becomes a form of attraction: “Baby, I’m the one to beat,” Swift sings, before dismissing the “blokes,” natch, that came before.

There’s a reason why the titular phrase is screamed upon its first uttering — and followed up with, “You should be.” Swift is at the end of her rope and taking names post-scandal on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” portraying herself as an underestimated force whose reported demise was greatly exaggerated. The production simply clears out of Swift’s war path here, and she raises hell way harder than the drums beneath her; take it as a spiritual sequel to “Vigilante Shit,” or perhaps a swing back to Reputation, Swift’s snake re-emerging with newfound purpose.

Within a run of songs late on the Tortured Poets Department track list that make allusions to famous characters, “Peter” uses the idea of a Peter Pan as a starting point for a song about a disparity in maturity, and winds up with one of the album’s most direct and striking hooks: “You said you were gonna grow up / Then you were gonna come find me,” she repeats three times. While the rest of “Peter” nicely fills out into a piano ballad that could become a concert tearjerker, that chorus distinguishes the song as replay-worthy.

Yes, he tells off-color jokes and drives too fast; that doesn’t mean Swift isn’t going to adopt him as a project. Over a skeletal production that’s primarily defined by forlorn guitar strums, Swift makes “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” sound like a late night, convincing herself to reject others’ disapproval before many hours of tossing and turning. Swift nicely operates in her lower register at points here, letting syllables lilt in the half-convinced feelings behind them.

As Swift returns to the road on her Eras tour following this album release, a big, booming song like “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” deserves the stadium treatment — imagine the galloping pace of the chorus’ second half being experienced by tens of thousands in unison. In its studio version, the track is more sharpened synth-pop, finding Swift so vexed by missed potential and miscommunication that she finally throws her hands up and declares, “I know I’m just repeating myself.”

They are natural questions for bystanders to ask when a relationship dissolves: what happened, when did it go wrong, and who was ultimately to blame? “How Did It End?” invites the world into the spectacle, not only letting friends into an intimate situation but the millions tracking a celebrity romance. Swift sounds exhausted by the drama, eventually rising above the chatter to imbue the headlines with a sense of personal pain, all while the backing melody slowly drifts out of frame.

Far more Taylor Swift songs focus on relatable human experiences rather than gargantuan professional successes, but on “Clara Bow,” she reflects on the realities of being the hero that gets the worship, having lived out so many of her fantasies that she can parse what they have meant to her to this point. “It’s hell on earth to be heavenly,” Swift breathes in between guitar rumbles, capturing classic beauty and concepts of achievement alongside careful pop-rock, then turning self-referential at the end.

“Your hologram stumbled into my apartment,” Swift offers over sparse keys to open “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” “Hands in the hair of somebody in darkness.” She nails the feeling of pre-breakup murkiness on the track, guessing the harsh words she’s about to hear and wondering where else her partner’s focus has actually been; Dessner’s piano once again plays backbone, but a rising and falling lick adeptly captures her restlessness on the track.

This piano ballad about location stalking — The Black Dog is a bar that a certain someone didn’t want anyone to know they were swinging by — ratchets up its volume as Swift, heartbroken and deceived, loses her cool after realizing that she’s been misled. “Old habits die screaming,” she concludes, down so bad that she’s considering hiring a priest to perform an exorcism on her relationship demons. “The Black Dog” squeezes in some distinct lyrical details, but its foundation is universal: who hasn’t wondered if they can trust their own memories, once someone else breaks that trust?

On this piercing what-if, an early love gets re-assessed, warts and all, and Swift imagines a happy outcome that separated itself from reality (“What we thought was for all time was momentary,” she offers). There’s little window dressing besides Swift’s voice and some wandering keys, with this Dessner collaboration recalling the most straightforward stories of the Folklore/Evermore two-pack; the 11th hour plot twist (spoiler: “LOML” doesn’t stand for what you think it does) sticks the landing, elevating this piano ballad.

Amidst the striking non-sequiturs, typewriter eye-rolls and Charlie Puth shout-out on the title track, a yearning slices through: “Who else decodes you?” Swift asks. “And who’s gonna hold you like me?” The drums sound light and unobtrusive as her voice sways and bends, and Swift references mutual friends and collaborators amidst the pretty synth noodling and “whoa-oh” rejoinders, leaving bread crumbs for expert listeners while walking deeper into the synth fantasia.

Following all the big-picture anger of The Tortured Poets Department, Swift ends up focusing on the minuscule moments she can’t let go, trying and failing to script life’s remarkable spontaneity on “The Manuscript.” A few stray memories contain quiet exchanges that ultimately don’t lead to some grand future, and become more wrenching in their intimacy; the final lines land in a way that causes a lump in your throat. “The Manuscript” was written for anyone who’s parted ways with someone they thought would be in their lives forever, only to arrive at the last page too soon.

A beautifully rendered song about adult desire, “Guilty as Sin?” features Swift extrapolating her self-doubt across a series of unfinished acts, with small gestures turning into pivotal decisions. The pop-rock arrangement is unfussy, the shout-out of The Blue Nile’s “Downtown Lights” is well-placed, but the real fireworks come from Swift’s vocal nuances — listen to how she sings the word “die” on the chorus, packing a complex world into a melisma.

Gesturing towards performing the Eras Tour night after night during a period of personal devastation, Swift makes the “it” in “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” mean “dazzle the world while feeling completely awful,” at one point exclaiming with fake pep, “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday!” The percolating synthesizer harkens back to “Mastermind,” but the songwriting most resembles “Blank Space” in its wild-eyed self-assessment. Rollicking, snarky and strikingly funny, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” will soundtrack a million posts from heartbroken masses trying to act like everything is fine.

After a handful of piano ballads on the track list, the electric guitar riff of “So High School” arrives with a wallop, and proceeds to guide Swift through a return to the innocence of teenage romance (all while comparing her current relationship to that of a prom-dominating power couple). The lyrical details are worth getting lost in — silly games, backseat trysts and watching American Pie all send some of us way back — but the pop-rock arrangement makes “So High School” an obvious back-half highlight, simply by flexing a little muscle amidst the nostalgia trip.

After a run of more opulent productions to open the album, “Down Bad” serves as one of the album’s purest pop pleasures: Antonoff’s zapped beat winds itself up, the melody chimes, and Swift’s voice quivers through the exasperation. Here, “cosmic love” turns into “teenage petulance,” the joyful highs leading back down to gym-session weeping — although a cry of “F–k it, I was in love!” shrugs off any potential regret from the whole ordeal. The most minimalist moments of Midnights have led to “Down Bad,” one of its follow-up’s easiest wins.

As the first single and opening track on The Tortured Poets Department, “Fortnight” immediately introduces the album’s chillier tones, blurted-out feelings and violent extremes beneath the casual pleasantries — and while the opening minute might not resemble Swift’s standard radio offerings, the song leaves the ground as it continues, morphing into an undeniable pop track with a self-lacerating sheen. While Swift sings in a dulled monotone that flares up with the stabs of emotion, Post Malone swirls around her upon arrival, delivering a showy bridge with subtle power and hangdog charm; together, they make a natural pairing and help the album hit the ground running.

Every line of “So Long, London” drips with such a raw honesty that, by its conclusion, Swift sounds like she’s been slightly healed from the act of catharsis. She tosses out angry observations in quick succession to keep up with the tempo, then pulls back and utters the titular phrase as a grim kiss-off; meanwhile, the elastic synths sound like a shaking tightrope, occasionally making room for understated piano and ghostly harmonies. Feeling defensive and deceived, Swift shoves her darkest insecurities out into the light, and the result is breathtaking.

Okay, how many of you had Taylor declaring “F–k me up, Florida!” on their lyrical bingo card? “Florida!!!” earns every titular exclamation point by barging into the album as a brash song of escape, with Swift and Florence + The Machine leader Florence Welch trading lines about the inability to find solid ground in any state (literally and figuratively). There are cheating husbands, rotting timeshares, regrets and swamps; there are also arena-rock drums, which crash down like lightning strikes. And maybe it’s partially to match one of the more celebrated pop-rock singers of this century, but “Florida!!!” arguably features Swift’s strongest vocal performance on the album — fiery and icy in equal parts, collapsing in some moments and spitting venom in others.

“I’ll tell you something right now,” Swift spits on “But Daddy I Love Him,” “I’d rather burn my whole life down/ Than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning.” As one of the most famous people on the planet whose every relationship is endlessly pored over, Swift rails against expectations on the track, embracing her missteps and need for free will on this unapologetic album centerpiece. The finger-picked guitar luck is slightly reminiscent of “Invisible String,” but unlike that hushed Folklore highlight, the low-key verses bloom into a large, open-hearted chorus that’s much closer to Swift’s early country-pop anthems.

After Swift asks someone to deliver a message to “the smallest man who ever lived” early on, she lets out a depleted sigh; at that point, the track is all broken feelings and atmospheric hum, suggesting another rumination soundtracked by piano and blinking programming. But then, the minor annoyances are balled up, Swift’s emotions boil over to rage, and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” becomes a wildfire that torches everything in its path, with Swift’s voice turning rivetingly unsteady as she declares, “You kicked out the stage lights, but you’re still performing!”

The spiteful provocations and spat-out accusations convey an anger that is proudly unbridled, and deeply felt. “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is another Taylor Swift post-breakup takedown for the ages, but it’s also the beating heart of The Tortured Poets Department, the sound of a larger-than-life personality prodding at her wounded humanity.