Taylor Swift latest: Patti Smith responds to Tortured Poets mention in song that hits out at Matty Healy
Godmother of punk responds to mention on Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ as pop titan smashes Spotify records on day of album release
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Taylor Swift has released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, and fans are busy unpacking everything from lyrics to her “Fortnight” music video.
The pop titan’s latest record, announced earlier this year when she won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album (Midnights), was released overnight on Friday 19 April and has already broken two Spotify records.
In a five-star review of the album, The Independent’s critic Helen Brown praised the “playful narratives” and “hooks like anchors”.
Fans have been surprised that many songs on the album seem to take aim at Swift’s ex Matty Healy, whom she briefly dated last year, instead of Joe Alwyn, her boyfriend of six years, whom she was reported to have parted ways with around April 2023.
Patti Smith has responded after she was namechecked on the title track, writing: “This is saying I was moved to be mentioned in the company of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Thank you Taylor.”
Taylor Swift easter eggs: All the clues so far from The Tortured Poets Department
Ahead of the record’s release, Swift partnered with streaming service Spotify to create an open-air library at The Grove in Los Angeles.
The surprise pop-up led to fans scrambling to decipher clues left behind. She also shared a video teaser that follows the camera as it exits the Midnights room and enters the Tortured Poets Department, a stark office with bright white lights.
Here are the clues fans have deciphered (or think they’ve worked out) so far, from an artist with a notorious love of easter eggs.
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Pop star teased fans with clues ahead of her new album
All of the famous names dropped in Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets album
Taylor Swift’s new record, The Tortured Poets Department, name-drops a handful of famous names, some expected and some (very much) not.
Swift does much of her name-checking in the album’s title track.
“I laughed in your face and said, ‘You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith,’” she sings, referring to the famous poets. “This ain't the Chelsea Hotel, we'rе modern idiots.”
She then surprised fans when she celebrated fellow artist Charlie Puth, singing: “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.”
Elsewhere in the song, she appears to mention her frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff and Boygenius’s Lucy Dacus.
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re gonna screw this up with me / But you told Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave / And I had said that to Jack about you, so I felt seen,” she sings.
Finally, in her “Clara Bow” song, titled after the late Twenties actor, she also names singer Stevie Nicks. “You look like Stevie Nicks in '75 / The hair and lips / The crowd goes wild at her fingertips / Half moonshinе, a full eclipse.”
Matt Healy ‘still thinks very highly’ of Taylor Swift even after new album release, source claims
Swift’s ex, The 1975 frontman Matt Healy, has reacted to her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.
Following the release of her album, fans were left surprised that Swift seemed to spend more time dissecting her brief fling with Healy rather than her six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn.
“Matty still thinks very highly of Taylor but we were all nervous about what she might have said on the album,” an insider told US Weekly. They also claimed that Healy “couldn’t be happier” with how Swift’s record turned out.
“Matty’s family knew about the relationship,” the insider said. “And they were worried that Taylor was going to rip him apart. Matty has struggled with life in the public eye, and he’s been doing really well, but the last thing that he needs is for every Swiftie in the world to think he’s a villain.”
Read more:
Fans expecting a post-mortem of the musician’s six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn have been left surprised, as Swift seems to spend more time dissecting her brief fling with The 1975 frontman
The New York Times thinks Taylor Swift’s album could’ve done with an editor
While many early reviews of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department have been quite laudatory, The New York Times’s music critic Lindsay Zoladz declared that the album could “use an editor”.
“Over 16 songs (and a second LP), the pop superstar litigates her recent romances,” Zoladz writes. “But the themes, and familiar sonic backdrops, generate diminishing returns.”
Calling it a “curiously insular album”, she adds that it is “often cradled in the familiar, amniotic throb of Jack Antonoff’s production”.
“As the album goes on, Swift’s lyricism starts to feel unrestrained, imprecise and unnecessarily verbose.”
Taylor Swift fans sent into frenzy as new album The Tortured Poets Department ‘leaked’
Days before the release of Swift’s 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, it appeared to have been leaked online sparking a frenzy of debate among fans.
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Swifties have branded the leak a ‘slap in the face’ to the artist’s hard work
Taylor Swift ‘thanks’ Kim Kardashian on Tortured Poets song as she reflects on feud
Taylor Swift fans are convinced that the musician alludes to her years-long feud with Kim Kardashian on new album The Tortured Poets Department, as she seemingly makes several references to the reality star in her song “thanK you aIMee”.
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Several signs point towards Kardashian being the topic of song ‘thanK you aIMee’
Taylor Swift’s 10 greatest breakup songs, ranked
Taylor Swift knows how to write about breakups. Her candid, confessional songwriting style has traversed love in all its forms, but among her most adored songs are the ones that delve into the confusion, grief and loss that swirl around a relationship’s end. Others, while still addressing a romantic split, are about acceptance, and the ability to reflect on the past while still pushing forwards.
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The night before the release of Swift’s highly anticipated 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, Roisin O’Connor took a look at the singer’s extensive catalog and ranked the most devastating of the bunch.
Travis Kelce reacts to Taylor Swift singing about ex-partners on new album
Travis Kelce has said he has “has zero concern” about Taylor Swift singing about former boyfriends on her new album, The Tortured Poets Department.
According to a source, Kelce has said he is not concerned about his partner addressing her past relationships on her records.
Swift has released her 11th studio album today (19 April) and seems to have surprised fans by taking aim at Matty Healy, whom she briefly dated last year, instead of her boyfriend of six years Joe Alwyn, whom she was reported to have parted ways with around April 2023.
Read more:
Swift’s new album includes several references to some of her former paramours, including Matty Healy and Joe Alwyn.
Swifties share hilarious reactions to extensive 31-track album
Last night/early this morning (at 2am), Taylor Swift surprised fans with the news that The Tortured Poets Department was actually a secret double album.
So, in addition to the original 16-track album, she also released The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, which includes 15 extra songs.
“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD,” Swift wrote on Instagram.
With 31 songs in total, The Anthology is a whopping two hours and two minutes long.
Here are the best reactions from fans who listened to the entire album at the crack of dawn.
Taylor Swift says new album isn’t about settling scores
When announcing the release of her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, Swift described it as “an anthology of new works that reflect 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,” she wrote on Instagram.
“And upon further reflection, 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,” Swift added.
“And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.”
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