This Month In History: TTPD Turns Two
By Trish Rooney
The Grammys. February 2024. Taylor Swift wins her 13th Grammy for Midnights and announces that the start of yet another era is nigh: The Tortured Poets Department, releasing that April.
TTPD is a behemoth project; a 31-song surprise double album recorded and released in the middle of one of the biggest tours of all time, that was, compared to her other albums, barely promoted. It is a magnum opus of songwriting. There is probably a case to be made, in retrospect, that the project receiving no Grammys itself the next year was a mistake. It also, relatedly, was designed to keep Trish up at night.
Why is that, you ask? Oh. Oh I’ll tell you. Picture it: you’re Trish at 16. You have specifically waited to listen to the entirety of the 1975’s self-titled album until you’re alone on your 50-day canoe trip (Ok, this is really specific.) and you do, and you sit alone on a campsite, headphones in, and you know that when you finish the album, you’re really a fan for life. You have a Tumblr wherein you wish you could manic panic your hair some grungy pink colour, but alas your mom is not cool with it, and you would absolutely, and completely, die for Matty Healy.
And then fast forward!! You’re Trish in 2024. You’re recovered from your teenage angst. You’re ready for this new era of Taylor Swift. You’re aware, of course, that she and Matty Healy were linked the previous year before Travis Kelce came and swept her off her feet. Still, you, and most of the world, think that whatever love songs are to be had on TTPD will most likely be about Joe Alwyn, the six-year relationship, instead of the quick three-month fling with Healy. The clock strikes midnight, you’re with your best friend from high school in your adult bedroom in a totally different country, because life is funny like that, and you hit play on Fortnight.
Now, I’m not going to go into detail on the actual, in-depth timeline of the relationship between Taylor Swift and Matty Healy, but if I could interest you in a 116-slide powerpoint that explains it all, that’s linked here. Suffice it to say, it was not just a fling, and suffice it to say, for this fan, who was convinced her first tattoo was going to the famous box on her arm, this album was the closest I’ve come to being a child of divorce.
This was Taylor Swift in the style of the 1975 (Fortnight, The Tortured Poets Department, I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)) this was Taylor putting herself in direct dialogue with the catalogue of the 1975 all the way back to self titled in 2013 (Fallingforyou and my personal favourite off of TTPD, imgonnagetyouback) She references Healy’s heroin addiction. (Yes, I hear you, Travis Kelce defenders. You think The Alchemy is about him. I think it is now with them being together, but at the time it was written? My loves, I do not trust that Travis Kelce knows how to spell “heroine” either way.) She literally compares her previous relationship to being in jail! She flips the mirror on the fans in But Daddy I Love Him, a brutal response to the literal petition her fans sent around to get her to break up with Healy once they’d gone public, and asks if she’s just dumb for wanting someone that badly in Guilty as Sin? She then proceeded, while continuing said largest tour ever, to mockingly mimic Healy’s stage work, while performing a song wherein she critiques his “Jehovah’s Witness suit.” She got Stevie fucking Nicks to write poetry for this album. STEVIE NICKS. That’s how serious it was. It was THAT SERIOUS. And I could go on! That’s really only about the first half of, again, a double album of some of her best songwriting! Healy flew across the world to see her perform Hey Stephen! I’m not even getting into the Charli XCX of it all! There were rumours that the 1975 had recorded a version of her 1989 TV Vault Track Slut!! His Mom said insane shit on Watch What Happens Live!
Taylor Swift has notoriously pushed back on the idea that there should be “paternity tests” for her albums, and I think that that’s a fair thing to ask of us as consumers of the art. Why should the art that women make be associated with and defined by the men in their lives? TTPD is less a baby in the cradle and more of a teenager in dripping eyeliner slamming a door shut: if it walks like a Matty Healy on stage, and it writes like a Matty Healy in its songs……
Listen. Listen. I am glad for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. I am! I think their relationship is wonderful. The romanticism of his pursuit of her is genuinely some shit you can’t write, ironically enough But for me, TTPD is a gigantic, aching project that demands to be seen and acknowledged. 10-year situationship be damned: this is Taylor Swift throwing her cards on the table. It’s about Healy, sure, but at its core it’s Taylor asking questions of herself and of us: namely, “How the hell did I let this get like this? And why, pray tell, do you care so goddamn much?” Honestly, and maybe this says more about me than anything, but I think this is her most relatable project. This is the creative exorcism of the loser you see potential in that all your friends can’t stand. Who hasn’t been there, right guys!