Adam Elayan ’24 is a journalist, leader of the Big Blue Sports Network, and a regular contributor to The Flex. His popular column, often focusing on music, and life, can be enjoyed here. This time, he shares a new Op-Ed, Too Big to Fail, and elevates sarcasm and disappointment to new levels in his brilliantly sharp review of Taylor Swift's new album, while we quietly wonder if he will need a Travis Kelce-like bodyguard from those Swiftie fans.

 

Last winter, I made the time to listen to Hole’s supposedly classic grunge album, Live Through This. For 38 painful minutes, I allowed my ears to be terrorized by screaming guitars and Courtney Love’s off-key wail. Still, I would rather sit through that album 10 more times than ever listen to The Tortured Poet’s Department again. 

In each of Taylor Swift’s first 10 studio albums, even when she has fallen short, she has at least provided something. Her first five albums have pop classic after pop classic. Reputation, though it fails in some areas, is charged by fluid transitions from vengeful to love-stricken. ME! and other cringe-worthy tracks notwithstanding, Lover might have some of her best pop songs to date. Folklore boasts its famous trilogy, while evermore, despite being one of her weaker showings, is one of her most aesthetically vivid albums. Even Midnights has a few moments of pop excellence that measure up to her work from the first 10 years of her career. The Tortured Poet’s Department, however, provides nothing. 

Despite being one of her longer projects, this most recent record might just be her least ambitious. For the past decade, Taylor Swift has been reinventing her sound with nearly every new release. The Tortured Poet’s Department, by comparison, is a disappointing step back. The album, whose 65-minute runtime feels more like 650 minutes, borrows the stale production from Midnight’s filler tracks and the most wince-inducing lyrics from evermore’s deep cuts to make for a listening experience that can only be described as comatose. Even the catchy tracks, like “Fortnight” and “Down Bad,” are the kind of cheap, radio-bait catchy that becomes annoying after three or four listens. As empty as they are, those songs are welcome respites from the lyrical car crashes that surround them. “Florida!!!”, which is perhaps the most difficult listen of all, contains such thought-provoking meditations as “my friends all smell like weed or little babies,” and “little did you know your home’s only a town you’re just a guest in.” While hilarious to read, the inclusion of these lines is just further proof that the only thing Taylor should be “Down Bad” for is an editor. Or two. Or three. And while these lyrical failings serve to make listening to The Tortured Poet’s Department feel like a chore, her vocal performance makes it truly insipid. Though her voice has never been her appeal, Taylor has been turning in impressive melodies for the better part of two decades. Now, however, she seems to be giving up. On this record, she toggles between the ambling drone that she introduced on her folk-inspired albums and recycled, 1989-era vocal effects. Over the course of 16 songs, the pop icon, whose songs usually live on playback value, is unable to muster a single memorable moment. 

In the music industry, there is such a thing as being too big to fail. Artists get so big that anything they release will turn massive profits, which provides no incentive for them to worry about the quality of their product. These artists also have huge numbers of loyal (delusional) fans who will defend anything they do. Drake, for example, has been falling victim to this phenomenon, releasing bloated album after bloated album, with each entry more derivative than the last. The worst of all was his house experiment, Honestly, Nevermind, which, despite overwhelmingly negative reviews and no rollout, has been able to rack up over two billion streams since its release in 2022. The Tortured Poet’s Department is Taylor Swift’s Honestly, Nevermind. It doesn’t deserve its 65-minute runtime (I can’t even imagine getting through the 122-minute deluxe version, which I didn’t bother to listen to). It doesn’t deserve the streams it’s getting. It doesn’t deserve praise from fans or critics, and it definitely doesn’t deserve multiple listens. But it will get all of those things. Because it’s Taylor Swift.

 

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For all Taylor Swift fanmail correspondence, kindly take a deep breath and contact the brave author: Adam Elayan '24

Portrait by Flex photographer Aiden de Asla '24