Welp, celebrity gossip fans. We were wrong.
As it turns out, we did not know everything there is to know about The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift’s brand new studio album.
Because Swift dropped a bombshell very early on Friday morning.
She has not actually released a brand new studio album, you see…
Taylor Swift is Down Under, performing here for fans in Australia. (Photo by DAVID GRAY/AFP via Getty Images)
… she has released TWO brand new studio albums.
“It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album,” wrote the global superstar at, well, 2 a.m. on Instagram.
“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you.”
To be clear, there had been speculation that Swift might be releasing two albums at the same time.
But now we have confirmation — oh, and we also have A LOT of new Taylor Swift music!
“So here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs,” concluded Swift on social media.
‘And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.”
Swift had often held up two fingers in the past during public appearance, doing so, for example, on stage at the Grammy Awards in February.
Astute followers knew this wasn’t a mere peace sign from the artist; they suspected that she was leaving them a clue as to what she had planned.
It begins! This is a photo from the first night of the Eras Tour. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
The first part of The Tortured Poets Department features references to Lucy Dacus, along with tracks that were seemingly written about her brief romance last year with The 1975 musician Matty Healy.
“It was really a lifeline for me — just the things that I was going through, the things that I was writing about … it kind of reminded me why songwriting actually gets me through my life,” she told fans about her new music at a tour stop earlier this year.
“I’ve never had an album that I needed songwriting more than I needed it on Tortured Poets.”
Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
Elsewhere, via the single “So Long, London,” Swift makes apparent nod her split from Joe Alwyn, including the following raw and candid lyrics:
“You swore that you loved me but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof. You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days…
“And I’m just getting color back into my face… I’m just mad as hell ’cause I loved this place for so long, London/Had a good run/Moment of warm sun/But I’m not the one.”
Taylor, of course, has since moved all the way on with Travis Kelce.
Taylor Swift is simply the best. That’s our caption here. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
Swift isn’t yearning for the past, as fans know well. She’s making it clear how she’s looking to the future.
“The Tortured Poets Department. 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,” she previously wrote. “This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up.”
In conclusion at the time?
There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. 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.
And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.
Taylor Swift Shocks the World, Announces DOUBLE Album was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.