Taylor Swift reveals some of the deep and mysterious aspects of her most recent album “The Tortured Poets Department,” released Friday, with commentary for each track on Amazon Music. She talks about the inspiration behind songs like “Fortnight,” “Clara Bow,” “Florida!!!,” and more.
“‘Fortnight’ showcases the common themes of this album, including fatalism, longing, and lost dreams,” Swift says of the album’s first track, featuring Post Malone. She describes the album as very fatalistic with dramatic lines about life or death. It's that kind of album.
Swift premiered the music video for “Fortnight,” the album’s first single, at 5 p.m. PT on Friday. The video refers to the album title by featuring Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles, who starred in the beloved 1989 film “The Dead Poets Society.”
The other collaboration on the album, “Florida!!!” featuring Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine, came from Swift’s interest in true crime.
“I’m always watching ‘Dateline.’ People commit crimes and immediately skip town to go to Florida,” she says. “They try to reinvent themselves and blend in. When you go through heartbreak, there's a part of you that wants a new name and a new life. And so that was the jumping-off point. Where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? Florida!”
Swift describes the last song on the first half of the album, “Clara Bow,” as a commentary on her observations of the music industry throughout her career. “I used to sit in record labels trying to get a record deal when I was a little kid,” she says. “And they’d say, ‘You remind us of’ and then they’d name an artist, and then they’d kind of say something negative about her, ‘but you’re this, you’re so much better in this way or that way.’ And that’s how we teach women to see themselves, as could be the new replacement for this woman who’s done something great before you.”After mentioning “the first It Girl” Clara Bow, Swift also names Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks as a model of songwriting for her before she predicts what people might say about herself in the future to an up-and-coming artist.
Additionally, Swift further delves into “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” and “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”
Find the full playlist and commentary
The singer breaks down “what I’ve seen in the industry that I’ve been in over time” track-by-track
Find the full playlist and commentary here.
