Taylor Swift is Making Erudite Art

The Tortured Poets Department is a concept album that most people are missing because they're too preoccupied with her personal life.

May 04, 2024

I’m finally posting my first essay, please be gentle with me!

I’ve felt increasingly compelled to respond to many uneducated, misogynistic, and uncultured opinions on Swift’s new album, Taylor the person, and her relationships; most often from men, but “women like hunting witches too”.

Since The Tortured Poets Department dropped there has been a torrent of hot takes and toxic obsession trying to figure out exactly which individual person each song is about. One of the statements Swift is making metaphorically with this album is about the harmful intrusions into her personal life and relationships.

“You wouldn’t last a day in the asylum where they raised me.”

Celebrity and fandom are the asylum.

If Swift is doing what I hypothesize, she is the most ingenious art monster who ever lived. I say that with utmost admiration.

Full disclosure, I didn’t love it after the first listen. I put it on in the background and didn’t completely engage with the music. I wasn’t present with, or even listening to, the lyrics. Then I remembered the title and went back for a full immersive experience, several times.

The Tortured Poets Department is an erudite concept album in which Swift is telling the stories of tortured artists and “scandalous” women while making an absolute mockery of her detractors and those who want to gossip about her personal life.

My ever evolving theory is that Swift has been using Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes lives and poetry as muses for many years, their story is the overarching concept for TTPD, and potentially much of her body of work. I wonder if she’s even recreating Plath's poems and writing metaphorically as songs?

“I enter into evidence…”

Plath was American, Hughes was British, they lived in London, and the English countryside for a time. They were married within four months of meeting (“you and I go from one kiss to getting married”, “loml”). They were together a total of six years. Plath wrote about loving London and not wanting to leave ("So Long London"). Plath lived with depression and spent time in a mental hospital (“Fresh Out The Slammer”). Hughes cheated on Plath (“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”). They had been separated for six months before she committed suicide by sticking her head in the oven (after ensuring her two kids were safe). In the liner notes of the physical version of TTPD Swift states she is, “out of the oven”. Plath claimed Hughes was abusive, but no one would listen (“Cassandra”). People still refuse to believe it even though Hughes second wife also committed suicide by putting her head in the oven (“My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys”). The two months prior to her death Plath was (obvs) deeply depressed, yet this was the most productive she’d ever been (“I cry a lot, but I am so productive, it’s an art”) . She wrote her mother, she knew she was writing the poems that would make her name (“I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”). Plath had prophesied Hughes would be the death of her in a letter to her mother (“The Prophecy”) and referred to Hughes as a “lion” when they met (“loml”). Hughes (quite unbelievably when I came across it) wrote a poem about football, “Football at Slack”. Songs making this reference could be inspired by a Hughes poem and not solely about her new beau.

Referencing Swift’s past work, Hughes wrote a poem titled “Red”. I believe Plath's poem "Lady Lazarus" was the inspiration for “All Too Well”, and LWYMMD (Look What You Made Me Do for non-Swifties, I don’t even know all the abbreviations). Read the poem then watch the “All Too Well” short film and the LWYMMD music video. This is the ending of “Lady Lazarus”:

“Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.”

Like many powerful women Swift is constantly accused of being a “man eater”, serial dater, slut, etc.

Swift admires Plath, Plath admired Dylan Thomas, so does Patti Smith … do you see where this is going? You can continue connecting these invisible strings throughout Swift’s work that have absolutely nothing to do with her personal life. What I’ve mentioned here are simply the most obvious connections stringing this theory together. I watched an interview where Swift says no one will ever figure out all her Easter eggs, I believe it. If that’s not considered high art, I don’t know what is.

This is part of Swift’s brilliance. While you could engage with her previous music as stand-alone albums and songs I do not believe you can do so with TTPD and fully appreciate it’s depths. The understanding of TTPD may shed light on her entire body of work when it all unfolds (only as Swift has orchestrated it, naturally), and inform her immediate future projects.

I think Swift made this art with sweeping statements about celebrity, patriarchy, and misogyny based on historical figures because our toxic culture keeps doing the same thing to women (“You look like … Clara Bow, Stevie Nicks, Taylor Swift). She made it for the fans who truly understand her work, respect her, and aren’t looking for salacious gossip. She made it for the forgotten tortured artists and “scandalous” women who were never truly scandalous. She’s bringing them back to life. She made it to make fools of the people who call her silly or unimportant. She is making history.

These songs are dazzlingly inter-textual drawing from multiple people and story lines for each song. “Robin” could be an ode to her younger self, to Aaron Dessner's son Robin, or Robin Williams, another tortured artist who suffered with depression and died by suicide (the lyrics weave in themes from his movies), or it could simply be about a bird. “Robin” could be all these, or none. Of course Swift weaves (braids) in details from her own life and experiences to make them relevant, modern, fun, or mess with fans. This is the magic of Swift’s song writing and poetic mastery, why she's greatly admired among her peers.

Each song could potentially weave in the story of another writer within the Romantic era, from 1800 to 1850 (“I’d say the 1830’s”). She may sneakily reference Dickinson, whom she's related to. While Hemingway was a Modernist writer he was heavily influenced by the Romantics and quite famously spent time in Florida in a drunken stupor along with many other now famous writers. Seriously, they all got soused in “Florida!!!” If you know this, you get the song and it’s humor. "The Bolter" is undeniably about Lady Idina Sackville, an English aristocrat who scandalized high society then went to live hedonistically in Kenya (good for her!), Clara Bow speaks for herself. On Folklore, Swift wrote "The Last Great American Dynasty" about Rebekah Harkness, another scandalous "troubled" woman who refused to live by patriarchy’s rules.

With Plath, Bow, Sackville, Harkness, etc. Swift is not only showing us parallels to her own life but other women artists, women’s lives in general, and how our work and art are routinely dismissed as foolish, trivial, or not as good as … insert male artist here. She’s further pointing out how women are pathologized as crazy when we don’t conform to “polite” (patriarchal misogynistic) society’s rules or we “behave like men”.

Swift could also be making commentary on how men steal and financially benefit from women’s work. Even though Plath and Hughes were separated at the time, and he was with the woman who would become his second wife to gas herself (possibly because of his abuse), Hughes became the benefactor of Plath’s estate because they were still technically married. Hughes famously edited Plath’s collection of poems posthumously (the ones she had been furiously writing the last few months of her life and knew were her best work), he published his version in 1965. Some say he butchered the collection to absolve himself of claims of abuse. Plath’s daughter, Frieda Hughes, put Plath’s collection back in its original order, with the selection of poems as intended and Plath’s handwritten notes, along with notes from Frieda. It was published in 2004.

“And when you can’t sleep at night, you hear my stolen lullabies”, from “My Tears Ricochet”, takes on a whole new meaning doesn’t it?

Those who’ve suffered from depression or any kind of oppression understand, “I Hate It Here”. Women like Swift and Clara Bow who are hunted like animals feel that way. They tell us, they write songs we sing happily to, “they are the hunters, we are the foxes, and we run”! They ask people to stop, they beg. But media and many “fans” ignore their pleas.

That’s not love, it’s abuse.

Who owns most media outlets? Men. It could stop, they don’t want it to.

Everyone who isn’t a white man under colonial patriarchy understands “hating it here” at times. Our rights are currently being taken away. Women, BIPOC, LGBTQAI, and unhoused people are being socially murdered because they can’t access healthcare. Multiple genocides and democides are occurring around the world, and fascism is rising. Yet, male critics just can’t identify with the idea anyone would “hate it here”. It oozes privilege and entitlement.

“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me”, I view this song as a call to arms as our human rights are being stripped away. Some states have already been dragged back to 1800’s laws governing women’s bodies. I think we all need to “leap from the gallows”, and “levitate down your street” to take our rights back. Listen to this song as you think about nothing else but the white supremacist fuckery everyone who isn’t a white man is subjected to. These men are afraid, that’s what all the backlash is about …

“You should be.”

These are messages many men don’t want to hear. It’s no wonder they don’t like her music, or her.

Those who criticize TTPD as fluffy pop or unimportant are potentially revealing themselves as not having lived rich interior emotional lives, lack empathy, or aren’t emotionally intelligent or cultured enough to engage with the art at the level it is.

The irony of people proclaiming Swift is not a poet could be seen as part of the artistic story she's telling about how women are gate-kept from serious academia and artistic spaces. I now view the negative responses as part of this evolving piece of work. It’s sheer genius.

Professor Jonathan Bate, former head of Worcester College, Oxford, and academic authority on Shakespeare, compares Swift to the Bard.

There are other scholars and academics who have been studying Swifts lyricism for years, I found some information through Swifterature.

For those who balk at calling Swift a Poet; in 2008, Bob Dylan, a singer-songwriter, won The Pulitzer Prize, “For his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” (states the Pulitzer Prize organization). From my perspective, that’s exactly what Swift has done. She is breathing new life into our tortured poets, and potentially brings entirely new audiences to the romantics of literature, while calling attention to society’s harmful treatment of women.

Those are Queen moves.

Plath left two things behind when she died, a manuscript, and the previously mentioned collection of poems, of which there are 40.

Swift has confirmed she is directing a film she wrote after the Eras tour.

Plath titled the collection of poetry she left, that she considered her most important work, Ariel. Ariel The Restored Edition is the complete original collection in the intended order published by Frieda in 2004.

For a New Years party in 2019 Swift dressed as Ariel from “The Little Mermaid”. In the Disney movie, Ariel famously states, “But Daddy, I Love Him”.

I’m curious to see if Swift releases a third album with 9 more songs (or poems?), for a total of 40 (Ariel). A third album would complete a trilogy and technically be her 13th. Taylor does care about breaking records (there is not a thing wrong with that) and there are only a few other artists who've put out trilogies. The Beatles are one. She's friends with Paul McCartney.

I wonder if the Eras tour is her farewell tour. Two years, touring one show covering her entire catalogue, which looks like it’s evolving to include TTPD? That would be a dazzling way to go out. This could be her magnum opus, it would explain (almost) everything, it may all trace back to “All Too Well”. She could leave the pop world with 13 albums, owning all her work, and with the highest grossing stadium tour of all time (likely several times over by the time she’s completely done). She could live a more peaceful life out of the direct spotlight, directing and writing movies, maybe even writing movie scores. Who knows, the woman deserves some peace.

I don’t believe she will ever not write music. I think music is part of Taylor Swift’s stream of consciousness, why she can churn it out at the pace she does. Her detractors reek of envy.

If my hypotheses hold, The Tortured Poets Department is legendary erudite art while trolling and revealing her simpleton haters and misogynistic men (“dads, Brads, and Chads”) at the same time. It could not be more genius.

I hope she’ll put out a book detailing all her Easter eggs; it would read like the thriller of a mastermind, an instant classic creative text. That being said, I don’t think many, if not most, of the marketing tactics she has employed would work on other audiences. Swift is truly one of a kind because she grew her fan-base organically, slowly from such a young age. She deserves every single award she wins.

I cannot wait to see how TTPD plays out, and the film. I have more theories.

And …

I hereby acknowledge I could be wrong about all of it!

I was not previously a "Swiftie"; I'm 13 years her senior, I didn't love country music, and had not engaged with her "Easter eggs" before. I started listening to her music when she released 1989, I’ve loved every album since. Folklore & Evermore being my favourites; TTPD is coming in hot because of the artistry of it all. I haven’t seen her in concert, although I would love to in a perfect world.

I say in a perfect world because I also agree with constructively criticizing Swift’s, and any of our idols, billionaire status and fossil fuel over-consumptive lifestyles, but that’s for later.

Swifties, don’t come at me, no one is never without fault. Swift’s own words:

“The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflects events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time - one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further inspection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.”

From my perspective she’s bluntly telling everyone (her fans, media outlets, haters, etc.) she takes her share of the responsibility in her relationships. She knows she’s to blame too. So are you, me, us, everyone, patriarchy, misogyny, all of it. Society needs to take accountability. Men need to take accountability!

Throughout TTPD Swift is firmly, yet politely, telling her fans they do not know the real Taylor. She puts on a show, she smiles even though she’s dying inside, that’s not friendship lovers. I believe her true friends remain mostly unbothered because they know what her art is truly about. However, they put up with a tremendous amount of stalking and abuse from people who claim to “love” Swift. The very harmful behaviours that have hurt her and many women. She’s clearly telling people to stop harassing her ex’s and friends.

Engage with the art, leave her personal life alone.

I do consider myself a “Swiftie” now, a low key kinda’ admirer though. I want to engage with the art she puts out, not what paparazzi and “hunters with cell phones” post. She gives her fans everything with such joy, even when she’s crushed. The woman deserves to set some boundaries.

Show her respect for heaven’s sake, she could not be more gracious. People harassing her ex’s are not people she would ever want to spend time with. Showing up at a wedding or private event where Swift is a guest, just to see her, is stalking. Going anywhere she is not doing a scheduled public event is stalking! She invited people into her damn house and baked!! She puts on a 3+ hour show!!! Let her have dinner with her friends without a good portion of other guests trying to “sneekily” take a photo. You think she doesn’t know? She was raised in the asylum. These are her torturers.

Give her peace. “ … all that’s left is the tortured poetry”.

For those who would say there are more important things to discuss, to a degree you’re right, there are. I engage on this platform generally with serious topics because we are at a place in human history where we are teetering on the brink and mainstream news media is failing us, I get it. I do. We can hold many things, even opposing things, at the same time.

I do feel what Swift is doing is important. I believe one of her messages (there are many) is to stop gossiping and start engaging with things in our lives in a more meaningful way. Rather than obsessing over harmful, sometimes life altering, social media platforms which have real world consequences that can include suicide and the death of democracy.

We also need spaces and activities that are fun and playful that help us recharge from the trauma we are living through so we can continue to engage with the world.

I refuel with solitude, yoga, meditation, reading, writing, music, and nature. I’ve always found beauty and comfort in seclusiveness and the melancholy. I’ve lived with depression most of my life. My nickname as a kid was “mouse” because I love reading by myself in cozy nooks. On school breaks I would read cover to cover, not sleeping until I finished. I still stay up too late reading at times, “old habits die screaming”. I read Plath’s “The Bell Jar” as a teenager. A kindly nurse recommended it to me during a hospital stay and was wise enough to tell me not to ask my parents for it. Then empathetically explained why to a scared teenage girl without being weird or creepy.

The literature and poetic puzzles Swift has created for us are thrilling! You want to spill some tea? The scandal over the Hughes edited edition of Ariel (the poems he removed, the ones he added, why?) is a fascinating story to delve into. If you truly love Taylor this is how she wants you to engage with her. She’s telling you, she’s setting her boundaries, are you listening?

Because, “I’ll tell you something right now”, if people don’t start respecting her private life, and those of her friends, she deserves to go dark and put her metaphorical head in the oven forever. That would be our loss, a true Romantic Tragedy.

For the men who “just don’t get it”, it’s okay, you don’t have to like her music, or her, but don’t criticize things you don’t understand. Just move along without comment, because the person you end up calling out as basic, fluffy, or simplistic could be yourself. Emotional intelligence can be learned, you can create a rich emotional life, you just may need some help. The patriarchy harms men too.

Ms. Swift,

You are a true Queen, my humblest admiration.

“It was legendary” …

… “you have no idea” … do we.

Aaaand…

Can we please “be on the right side of history” as US fascism grows and the climate catastrophe worsens? Pretty Kitty please? There won’t be many fans left if the planet continues to simultaneously burn and flood, and people die because they can’t get healthcare, or even afford groceries. You won’t be able to fly anymore if it becomes too hot for planes to take off and land.

One fan already died because of the increasing heat of the climate crisis and it looked like you were going to pass out during several shows. That’s not admirable love, that’s extractive capitalism.

No one should be a billionaire, many of your fans feel this way. It’s not a personal critique. It’s a critique of our social structures, political institutions, and capitalism. You earned yours genuinely through extremely hard work and talent with your music alone, an admirable feat. I’m also certain your accountants ensure you pay as little tax as possible, herein lies part of the problem. It’s great you treat and pay your people really well (maybe you do pay your fair share of taxes), but you won’t make lasting change by simply looking after your own and charitable giving. Capitalism is a white supremacist structure. In social justice, capitalism and slavery are known as the “conjoined twins”, there is not one without the other. The only way to change inequitable systems is through policy, not philanthropy.

You’re a billionaire, you won capitalism, you’ve cleared your good name, you’re practically untouchable in the entertainment (potentially any) industry writ large, heads of state beg you to come to their country, you never have to worry about money, you could do anything you want almost anywhere you want.

What are you going to do with all that white feminist capitalistic power?

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