Taylor Swift shocked her fans early Friday morning by adding more songs to The Tortured Poets Department in a secret “double album” release. The expansion, which came out two hours after the first record, has 15 more songs and is called The Anthology.
Swift wrote on Instagram, “It’s a surprise at 2 am: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album.” “Over the past two years, I’ve written a lot of tortured poems that I wanted to share with you. So, here’s the second part of TTPD: The collection of stories. 15 more songs. “The story is no longer mine; it’s all yours now.”
The singer-songwriter released her first record with 16 songs on Friday at midnight ET. Post Malone and Florence + The Machine worked together on two songs. This album has four extra tracks, called “The Manuscript,” “The Bolter,” “The Albatross,” and “The Black Dog.” These songs are only available on certain vinyl versions of the album. The four tracks are in The Anthology, along with 11 other brand-new songs.
Swift wrote about the record on Instagram, calling it “an anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions, and feelings from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time—one that was both shocking and sad in equal measure.”
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“This part of the author’s life is now over; the chapter is closed and locked,” she said. “Once the scars have healed, there is nothing to get back at someone. A lot of them were self-inflicted, too, when they were thought about more. This author is sure that when our tears turn into ink on a page, they become holy. We can be free of our saddest stories once we’ve told them. After that, the tortured writing is all that’s left.
On the LP gatefolds or CD booklets of physical copies of the new record, there is said to be a handwritten poem that Stevie Nicks wrote for Swift.
“For T—and me…” is written at the beginning of the poem, and Nicks seems to be setting the stage for songs about sadness throughout the poem.
“She thought he loved her; he did.” She had a broken heart. Maybe he did too, but neither of them knew. She was too hot for him to handle, and he was too high to even try. He wouldn’t open his eyes to see her. The song says, “She was going to the stars, but he didn’t say goodbye.”
“He really can’t answer her,” the September 13 song says next. He’s hiding from her because he’s scared of her, and he knows he’s hurting her. She tells the truth and writes about it; she’s an informant; he’s an x-lover; there’s nothing there for her; she’s already gone.
We asked Nicks’s agent for a reaction, and they replied.
Swift also praises Nicks in her song “Clara Bow,” which has the line “You look like Stevie Nicks in ’75, the hair and lips.”
Swift & Posty Team Up: “Fortnight” Set to Drop as First Single
She said “Fortnight” with Post Malone will be the first single from the album before its release. Post has always been one of my favorite writers, musicians, and composers because his songs stick in my head. “When we worked together on ‘Fortnight,’ I saw that magic come to life,” Swift captioned a photo of herself and Post Malone on Instagram.
Thursday, Spotify also said that the album’s Countdown Page had been saved more times than any other album page in the service’s history.
