#ttpd reaction

[that-was-a-bit-stupid-of-you]

the issue with ttpd personally is that I love some of the songs but sadly I've been force-fed her personal life so much, these details keep coming and leaves a bad taste in my mouth

You can't say "1830s without the racist" after writing an album about matty healy

"So high school" is a cute love song, but it's about our xenophobic racist king tk

"I can fix him" have some elements I like but it's about mh and her getting offended she's being held responsible for her problematic actions

"guilty as sin?" is one of my favs, but it reads very different when you know (unfortunately) the context

"so long, london" is amazing, but just like "renegade" she blames joe alwyn for having mental health issues, but also out them to the world which is the worst part of it all

wishing I didn't know the context, but it is practically impossible to engage in any taylor swift space without knowing

[octaviasdread]

I hereby conduct this tortured poets society album meeting in all of its mania and sorrowful blues as I move from unhinged impressions to unhinged first-listen analysis because I am incapable of saying less.

(and to all the Aimees i’m so sorry but that’s on Kim)

This Anthology is taking me so long to process, but nothing feels like the first jarring moments of I Can Do It With a Broken Heart - the cacophony and flashes of a birthday breakdown bopping to 80s arcade game synth. It's crumbled cake and mascara streaks when Bejewelled is actually a delusional Mirrorball,

and The Secret Garden reference in I Hate It Here, oh god, she’s so me:

I hate it here so I will go to / secret gardens in my mind / people need a key to get to / the only one is mine / i read about it in a book when I was a precocious child

I need to come back to that. But the whirlwind of Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? Plans cancelled. IM THE ONE barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine, actually. It's me chained-up in that poor things victorian mourning dress shrieking elegies in my tortured nightingale screams.

She's Grammys Taylor looking at the crowd of her peers rolling their eyes, she's the litany of snide jokes diminishing her success, and the children, sisters, friends, and girlfriends of those who wronged her loudly singing her songs.

so i leap from the gallows and i levitate down your street / crash the party like a record scratch as I scream / who’s afraid of little old me

i was tame i was gentle til the circus made me mean / don’t you worry folks we took out all her teeth

ohhh, the throwback to Speak Now and the significance of MEAN. The song and its titular word show how childish language encapsulates that pointless spite and the bone deep hurt mean behaviour breeds - but now she’s a phoenix risen, and they hurl her youth and her downfall back in her face - word for word, surprised face - its the dark side the The Lucky One, of not escaping the cage of fame games.

you lured me and you hurt me and you taught me / you caged me and then you called me crazy

i wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me / you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me / so all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs / i’m always drunk on my own tears isn’t that what they all said?

PUT NARCOTICS IN MY SONG took me out. This album is funny in the most sardonic and absurdly humorous ways,

like the classic cowboy western guitar strings in her crime songs (I Can Fix Him, No Really I Can - pistols drawn), but especially the ones leading into Fresh Out The Slammer. Fucking genius, and to follow on with static sounds at 2:26ish to the house where you still wait up, is exactly the kinda detail I adore.

Naively, I thought Florence was done with me after Florida!!! It's a lyrical meme for single 20 & 30 somethings who moved away from home,

my friends all smell of like weed or little babies / and the city reeks of driving myself crazy / little did you know your home’s really only / a town you’re just a guest in

and the haunting morphs from the ghost of your girlhood into the catalogue of decisions and delusions which get you through adulthood. Yet it feels almost like an interlude within the song when

me and my ghosts we’ve had a hell of a time / yes i’m haunted but i’m feeling fine / all my girls got their lace and their crimes / and your cheating husband disappeared/ well no one asks questions here

appears like an alternative pov for No Body, No Crime with the girls and their ghosts and their pacts made over wine. Every Action has an Equal Reaction. Run away to Florida, or Texas, and lose yourself to lose the heartbreak. Its self-destruction, it's trauma-healing, bonding, and its breaking.

(what a song for an angsty girl collab, problematic girl in hand with problematic girl, lyrically and thematically, maybe the real love story is the friends we make along the way.)

And that wasn't even the last of it. It's Florence 2.0 with B side Cassandra, but instead of Dance Fever, its Taylor’s glorious mythology with all the allusions, parallels, intertextual and lyrical ruining of my mind:

when the first stone’s thrown they’re screaming / when its burn the bitch they’re shrieking / when the truth comes out its quiet

so they killed cassandra first cus she feared the worst / and tried to tell the town / so they filled my cell with snakes i regret to say / do you believe me now?

No apologies anymore. A girl given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, the GOD OF POETRY, is cursed with her prophecy never being believed: Burning all the witches even if you aren't one, indeed. She saw the truth of the Trojan horse, and the Trojans insulted her. Rep snake branding and the current cultural view of KK and Ye. I don't need to say anything else.

i was in the tower weaving nightmares / twisting all my smiles into snarls

the family the pure greed the christian chrous line / bloods thick but nothing like a payroll / bet they never spared a prayer for my soul

I literally played that THREE times before I got over it enough to finish my first listen,

and i’m still thinking about Clara Bow and that Stevie Nicks tambourine we collectively freaked over from the Spotify installation, and all the silent movie speculation from the track title release.

you look like Clara Bow in this light - you look like Stevie Nicks in '75 - you look like Taylor Swift

Three women whose public profession became entangled with their pain. Silver Springs. Boyfriend songs. The jokes. Clara Bow.

Clara feared being left behind by 'talkies.' Miss Americana. The fear of 30 bringing death to a woman's Hollywood/Musical career,

beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours demanding more / only when your girlish glow flickers just so / do they let you know?

Three women who beat the odds - three women whose talent, craft, and popularity carried them through.

But there's something more to unpack here with cycles and patterns - of the past endlessly repeating. It's the transient nature of fame and our fleeting view of beauty mapped out in the untouchable, ever-changing, and culturally worshiped moon.

It's a body of physical craters, a natural body we call discovered, and fight to claim. We project emotions and create rituals of worship - you're the new god we're worshipping. Endless stories are told about her, but we can never fully see the moon with human eyes. Eclipses, shadows, - 'half moonshinе, a full eclipse' - half-truths and half-moons:

this town is fake but you're the real thing / breath of fresh air through smoke rings / take the glory, give everything / promise to be dazzling

There's a play on light and a play on words in the repetition of Dazzling, shining so bright so blindingly bright. Who is dazzled? Who is doing the dazzling? There's an instability between Director - Public - Star. It's Hollywood lights, No one in my small town thought I'd see the lights of Manhattan / No one in my small town thought I'd meet these suits in LA.

She beat the 'War Big Machine' - but for me, there's ambivalence and illusion on all sides of the final lyrics, you've got edge, she never did / the future's bright, dazzling.

(and ‘Edge’ is particularly ironic when you consider the songs on this album…)

Moving again into the B Side, it's Taylor's departure from Invisible string, red strings of fate, and golden threads à la the golden chain of fate in Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities that strikes me.

First, I thought her writing was a complete departure from the themes of destiny and fate, but then, The Prophecy:

cards on thе table / Mine play out like fools in a fablе

it isn't an absent symbol; it transformed. It's the evermore forest amped to the max. Witches, folklore, fairy-tale and fable - a homeric epic. Its the hero's journey distilled as she opens the song with a move from 'full throttle' adventure, to slowing down 'Hand on the Throttle' to appeal for Supernatural aid at the hero's transformative fall.

and it was written / I got cursed like eve got bitten / a greater woman wouldn't beg / but I looked at the sky and said / please I've been on my knees / change the prophecy

Lover asking Traffic Lights becomes spending my last coin so someone will tell me, and this might be the most slept-on heartbreaking line. Her search for reassurance can't be framed as an arbitrary musing anymore. It can't be dismissed as a mere thought on her drive home, or something triggered throughout the day - its intent. It's a quest for answers, a plea, a last-ditch hope difficult to deny.

and I sound like an infant / feeling like the very last drops of an ink pen/ a greater woman stays cool/ but I howl like a wolf at the moon / and I look unstable /

gathered with a coven 'round a sorceress' table / a greater woman has faith But even statues crumble if they're made to wait / i'm so afraid I sealed my fate / no sign of soulmates

She's asking for a gift from the Gods, and when the God's won't answer, she plunges straight down from heaven or Olympus into the self seizure of power in witchcraft. And when it fails, she descends further - Spending my last coin so someone will tell me it'll be okay - paying mortal fortune tellers, even if they lie.

The song leans on figures without redemption, on the Eve's, on the women cursed and punished, and those who scream like infants rather than enduring burdens and pain in silence. She's poisoned, infected like Aurora from the wound of the pricked hand with dreams of him. Is this a punishment?

She's infected, cursed like Eve got bitten, [lyric of all time!!!!] but does a monster always do monstrous things? Who is the monster? Who is the folkloric, the literary Mad Woman? Perhaps she's written from the desperate, the scarred, and the wronged.

and the transition into another tale with Peter? As in Peter losing Wendy? Is it an epilogue to the Betty trilogy? or a different use of the metaphor?

and I didn't wanna hang around / we said it was just goodbye for now /said you were gonna grow up / then you were gonna come find me / words from the mouths of babes / promises oceans deep / but never to keep

The triangle is echoed in love's never lost when perspective is earned, reflecting the different povs of Betty, August, and James, and placing Peter as the new conclusion - the shelf life of those fantasies has expired / lost to the lost boys chapter of your life/ the woman who sits by the window/ has turned out the (porch?) light.

Promises wear out. Wendy's window closes, and so does this chapter in her life.

my lost fearless leader / in closets like cedar / preserved from when we were just kids / is it something I did? / the goddess of timing / once found us beguiling

is also - intentionally or not - Narnia coded. Is the storybook collecting dust in her closet? Or is the closet still holding a portal to another fairytale land accessible only in youth, another home you can't return to (and another folklore parallel with mtr, anywhere I want just not home).

Side B is so harmonious with ttpd being the end of a chapter as the anthology moves through all the seven stages (or Taylor playlists) of grief.

The Manuscript, the signing of the autopsy, is the Death of the Author. It's the Roland Barthes realisation of All Too Well reborn in joy and fan culture, the story isn't mine anymore, of the Eras - 'I hope you hear these songs and think of this night' - Tour. She knew what the agony had been for - art. connection. - and its these things that create the hope lost in ttpd's journey through mania, disorientation, loss and despair. It all leads to healing, nothing left but a manuscript.

So many thoughts from listen no.1 and they’ll probably change, but i’m so exhausted from this 31 song rollercoaster that I'm just gonna let this sit. death of the author, I guess.

[theasylumwheretheyraisedme]

Now that we’ve had a full week to process ttpd, drop some mashup possibilities in the tags I’m so curious

[folkhoax]

i'm at work. just got caught cyring while listening to "who's afraid of little old me?" for the first time. what a song. what a fucking song. chills every fucking note.

[diary-of-a-music-major]

It's been TEN MINUTES and Spotify STILL WON'T PLAY

H E L P

[torturedsideblogdept]

Friday I got to listen to TTPD, exhausted, while wandering hospital hallways, and Saturday I got to experience ICDIWABC playing on loop in my head through a 7.5 hour rehearsal. I’m excited to see how this album can personally attack me today :D

[fearlesslyenchantedinwonderland]

So High School Reaction

wait shes so cute

she's giving 90's/00's, a high school romcom, hilary duff and chad Michael Murray in the classic a cinderella story

i really want a remix of this song, I want to hear what this would be like more pop-a-fied.

taylor truly found her end game, so happy for her.

You know what funny my mom when she started dating again in her 60's she also said she felt like a teenager (so cute)

Again I know they are aiming for a more sonically cohesive album, but I wish she could go harder on the vocals to make it more fun

sooo cute!!

[adoringgays]

why do people think Taylor Swift doesn't actually know Aristotle? Just curious because if it was a different artist I don't think people would question it this much.

[yourheartbeat]

calling all swifties on tumblr, please watch the life out of this video, in the hopes that youtube stops taking away the views on my channel. (also please subscribe if you have a channel. please and thank you.

[opheliacore]

TAYTAY DROPPED A DOUBLE ALBUMMMMM I LOVE YOU TAYTAY❤❤❤❤❤❤

And sorry for judging your situationship with that smeally english junk head, bc your ex almost fiancee was way worse

[that-was-a-bit-stupid-of-you]

Stop. Stop defending taylor swift for things she did. Stop defending her for associating herself with a racist, sexist, antisemitic piece of shit, and CONTINUING to surround herself with people like that. Stop trying to make excuses and put down the feelings of poc fans during that time. Stop blaming people for holding her accountable to the words SHE said.

If you sit at a table with 10 racists, there are 11 racists at that table.

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

Ooh this reminds me of “All Too Well” and “I just wish I could forget when it was magic.”

[theasylumwheretheyraisedme]

I neeed to talk about a lyric for a sec

I AM WHAT I AM ‘CAUSE YOU TRAINED ME!!!

This line absolutely DESTROYS me!!! I will NEVER get over it!!!

That’s it, that’s what trauma disorders are. That’s what my whole personality is from. Thats exactly why I am what I am.

I was trained for survival. There was a time when this was what I needed to do, this was how I needed to be, in order to stay alive. And that time has ended, but the training stays. The survival instincts always stay, holding on for dear life.

This is a post-trauma album. This is an album of breaking into a million pieces, spending every ounce of life you have left processing every piece, and then once you’re completely depleted and lifeless, being faced with the harrowing task of figuring out how to put all your own pieces back together in a way that even remotely resembles any of the things you once liked about yourself.

If you don’t experience the album that way that’s okay, it’s art end everyone is going to process it differently. But so many of these songs feel like snapshots directly from my life and I will never not experience it that way

[mismatchedstars]

you needed me but you needed drugs more.

you needed me but you needed drugs more.

you needed me but you needed drugs more.

[diary-of-a-music-major]

OH ITS A BOP BUT I AM TERRIFIED OF YHESE LYRICS

[thegirlivealwaysbeen]

ttpd initial thoughts (first listen!!) please don't kill me you guys

a lot of the songs remind me of 1989 vault tracks; also please please please jack free us from the synthesizer please i'm begging on my knees

highlights: tortured poets, my boy only breaks his favourite toys, florida!!!, fresh out the slammer, and but daddy i love him

Fortnight - i like it !! i love you it's ruining my life fr??!! it's definitely going to grow on me (also the opening lyrics are likeeee)

Tortured Poets Department - IK I WOULD LIKE THIS THE SECOND IT REMINDED ME OF SUBURBAN LEGENDS idk what it is but!! who else is going to know you if not me!! who's gonna hold you like me??? no-fucking-body!! the charlie puth mention just made me giggle...AND YOU TOLD LUCY YOU WOULD KILL YOURSELF IF YOU EVER LEFT ME??

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys - favourite so far omfg i adore the oh-oh-ohs and the vibe it's actually so good and I CLAIMED IT SO <3 and this one gives even MORE SUBURBAN LEGENDS LIKE IS THIS THE SUBURBAN LEGENDS ALBUM. also ONCE I FIX ME HE'S GONNA MISS ME. that's literally me??

Down Bad - yeahhh this is?? something. least favourite so far i think. but this really is the swearing album damn. fuck it i was in love so fuck you if i can't have us??

So Long, London - PLEASE JACK SPARE ME FROM THE SYNTHESIZER it's killing me anyway this is !!!!!!! also something. i like a lot of the lyrics !! and the repetition!!

But Daddy I Love Him - this one is prettyyyyy omg. they slammed the door on my whole world !!!! AND NOW I THINK I LOVE IT (the song) like okay bet!!!!!!! SCREAMING BUT DADDY I LOVE HIM??? def another favourite! also ohh some of those lyrics again...

Fresh Out The Slammer - also like this one!! anddd probably another favourite now. the way she sings pretty baby?? WEARING IMAGINARY RINGS?

Florida!!! - THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY SO. OH!!!!!!!!! cunty asf. and that's that. florida is one hell of a drug florida can i use you up !! florence sounds so good.

Guilty as Sin? - it was kinda too long and i only liked the outro but yk

Who's Afraid of Little Old Me? - sounds like you're losing me on synthesizers !! i don't mind it though SO TELL ME EVERYTHING IS NOT ABOUT ME BUT WHAT IF IT IS mecore?! jk

I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) - olivia should sue (this is a joke guys please understand it). kinda disappointed me but it'll probably grow on me !!

loml - it made me sleepy and that's all i remember. i love the lyric i wish i could un-recall how we almost had it all

I Can Do It With a Broken Heart - i really ?? don't like most of the lyrics but: I'M SO OBSESSED WITH HIM BUT HE AVOIDS ME LIKE A PLAGUE only real i can do it with a broken heart lyrics bc literally me

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived - no opinions idk i like the lyric 'did you sleep with a gun under our bed?' 'good riddance' gracie should sue (also a joke)

The Alchemy - honestly who are we to fight the alchemy is definitely going to become a tiktok edit lyric i'm calling it but i also like this one its a vibe!!

Clara Bow - pretty !!!!!!! YOU LOOK LIKE TAYLOR SWIFT IN THIS LIGHT.