Like I Said: Joe Alwyn

Tortured Poets Department head meeting.

And these were my live reactions when I saw that this album wasn’t 16 tracks but 31. Photo: Screenshots.

Thirty-one tracks is too many, but you knew that already. Last week Taylor Swift released “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” her 11th studio album. It’s a breakup album, a makeup album, a wellness check album: Swift’s songs cover her doomed relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn, her more-doomed relationship with the musician Matty Healy, her rebound with the athlete Travis Kelce. “ThanK you aIMee” reframes her ongoing feud with Kim Kardashian (two billionaires) as Kim’s mean popular girl versus Swift’s smart and pretty-but-wears-glasses hero. “Clara Bow” speaks to (or warns?) her next gen imitators. 

The album is fairly downcast and downbeat, a moody status update. There are a few exceptions: The outlaw-themed “Florida!!!” careens between rage and lust and hedonism. This song screams and soars, as welcome in a tent revival as it will be in a stadium. (“‘Florida!!!’ is the best song on the album, primarily because it should have been on a Florence + The Machine album,” Rose wrote on Mall Goth.) I don’t know what the hell is going on with “Guilty as Sin?” — “What if he's written 'mine' on my upper thigh/Only in my mind?” — but it has tested positive for Clay-from-Love Is Blind disease (will cheat). She did put in that narcotics in this song actually.