By Lisa Richwine and Marie-Louise Gumuchian
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Taylor Swift surprised fans with her new record “The Tortured Poets Department” on Friday, revealing it was a double album featuring songs about heartbreak and a period described as “the saddest story” of the singer’s life.
Swift’s 11th studio album, featuring 16 tracks, was officially released at midnight EDT (0400 GMT). Two hours later she revealed a second installment with 15 more songs.
“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you,” Swift wrote on Instagram.
“Poets” comes 18 months after 2022’s “Midnights.” Swift will also release a video for the new album’s first single, a collaboration with Post Malone called “Fortnight,” on Friday.
The 34-year-old has been crossing music industry milestones and boosting local economies with her record-breaking Eras Tour, which resumes in Paris in May.
Time magazine named Swift its 2023 Person of the Year, citing her musical accomplishments and influence on everything from pop culture to voter registration.
A description of “Poets” on Instagram said it was “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,” it added.
“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.”
The post also suggested that Swift used the writing process to heal.
“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,” it said.
The Instagram post did not say which events Swift was referring to. Fans have speculated she was writing about her relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn. The pair split in April 2023 after six years of dating.
A representative for Alwyn could not immediately be reached for comment.
Reviews of “Poets” were mostly positive, with Rolling Stone calling the music “wildly ambitious and gloriously chaotic.”
Billboard said the album was “extreme in its emotions and uninterested in traditional hits; not everyone will love it, but the ones who get it will adore it fiercely.”
Other critics were not as impressed. Britain’s NME described it as “surprisingly flat and, at times, cringeworthy.”
New York Times critic Lindsay Zoladz praised several tracks but said the best ones may be obscured by the volume of new songs.
“Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit,” Zoladz said, adding that the album’s sharpest moments “would be even more piercing in the absence of excess.”
Swift stoked excitement earlier in the week by releasing clues such as a word of the day on Apple Music.
Fans dissected each tidbit of the new album, even noting that avowed cat lover Swift chose to release it on National Cat Lady Day.
Swift announced “Poets” in February on stage at the Grammys, where she won a fourth album of the year prize for “Midnights.”
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine in Los AngelesAdditional reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian in LondonEditing by Alexander Smith, Jan Harvey and Matthew Lewis)
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