\n<\/p>\n
Taylor Swift was already the most ubiquitous pop star in the galaxy, her presence dominating the music charts, the concert calendar, the Super Bowl, the Grammys.<\/p>\n
Then it came time for her to promote a new album.<\/p>\n
In the days leading up to the release of \u201cThe Tortured Poets Department\u201d on Friday, Swift became all but inescapable, online and seemingly everywhere else. Her lyrics were the basis for an Apple Music word game<\/a>. A Spotify-sponsored, Swift-branded \u201clibrary installation<\/a>,\u201d in muted pink and gray, popped up in a shopping complex in Los Angeles. In Chicago, a QR code<\/a> painted on a brick wall directed fans to another Easter egg on YouTube. Videos<\/a> on Swift\u2019s social media accounts, showing antique typewriters and globes with pins, were dissected for clues about her music. SiriusXM added a Swift radio station; of course it\u2019s called Channel 13 (Taylor\u2019s Version).<\/p>\n About the only thing Swift didn\u2019t do was an interview with a journalist.<\/p>\n At this stage in Swift\u2019s career, an album release is more than just a moment to sell music; it\u2019s all but a given that \u201cThe Tortured Poets Department\u201d will open with gigantic sales numbers, many of them for \u201cghost white,\u201d \u201cphantom clear\u201d and other collector-ready vinyl variants<\/a>. More than that, the album\u2019s arrival is a test of the celebrity-industrial complex overall, with tech platforms and media outlets racing to capture whatever piece of the fan frenzy they can get.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Threads, the newish social media platform from Meta, primed Swifties for their idol\u2019s arrival there, and offered fans who shared Swift\u2019s first Threads post a custom badge. Swift stunned the music industry last week by breaking ranks<\/a> with her record label, Universal, and returning her music to TikTok, which Universal and other industry groups have said pays far too little in royalties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Swift also revealed that her first music video for the album \u2014 for \u201cFortnight,\u201d the first single, featuring Post Malone \u2014 would arrive on Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern time.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Tortured Poets Department,\u201d which Swift, 34, announced<\/a> in a Grammy acceptance speech in February \u2014 she had the Instagram post ready to go \u2014 lands as Swift\u2019s profile continues to rise to ever-higher levels of cultural saturation.<\/p>\n Her Eras Tour<\/a>, begun last year, has been a global phenomenon, crashing Ticketmaster and lifting local economies<\/a>; by some estimates, it might bring in as much as $2 billion in ticket sales \u2014 by far a new record \u2014 before it ends later this year. Swift\u2019s romance with the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has been breathlessly tracked from its first flirtations last summer to their smooch on the Super Bowl field in February. The mere thought that Swift might endorse a presidential candidate this year sent conspiracy-minded politicos reeling<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Tortured Poets Department\u201d \u2014 don\u2019t even ask about the missing apostrophe<\/a> \u2014 arrives accompanied by a poem written by Stevie Nicks that begins, \u201cHe was in love with her\/Or at least she thought so.\u201d That establishes what many fans correctly anticipated as the album\u2019s theme of heartbreak and relationship rot, Swift\u2019s signature topic. \u201cI love you\/It\u2019s ruining my life,\u201d she sings on \u201cFortnight.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Fans were especially primed for the fifth track, \u201cSo Long, London,\u201d given that (1) Swift has said<\/a> she often sequences her most vulnerable and emotionally intense songs fifth on an LP, and (2) the title suggested it may be about Joe Alwyn, the English actor who was Swift\u2019s boyfriend for about six years, reportedly until early 2023<\/a>. Indeed, \u201cSo Long\u201d is an epic breakup tune, with lines like \u201cYou left me at the house by the heath\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free.\u201d Tracks from the album leaked<\/a> on Wednesday, and fans have also interpreted some songs as being about Matty Healy<\/a>, the frontman of the band the 1975, whom Swift was briefly linked to last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The album\u2019s title song starts with a classic Swift detail of a memento from a lost love: \u201cYou left your typewriter at my apartment\/Straight from the tortured poets department.\u201d It also name-drops Dylan Thomas, Patti Smith and, somewhat surprisingly given that company, Charlie Puth, the singer-songwriter who crooned the hook on Wiz Khalifa\u2019s \u201cSee You Again,\u201d a No. 1 hit in 2015. (Swift has praised Wiz Khalifa<\/a> and that song in the past.)<\/p>\n Other big moments include \u201cFlorida!!!,\u201d featuring Florence Welch<\/a> of Florence + the Machine, in which Swift declares \u2014 after seven big percussive bangs \u2014 that the state \u201cis one hell of a drug.\u201d Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, the producers and songwriters who have been Swift\u2019s primary collaborators in recent years, both worked on \u201cTortured Poets,\u201d bringing their signature mix of moody, pulsating electronic tracks and delicate acoustic moments, like a bare piano on \u201cLoml\u201d (as in \u201clove of my life\u201d).<\/p>\n As the ninth LP Swift has released in five years, \u201cTortured Poets\u201d is the latest entry in a remarkable creative streak. That includes five new studio albums and four rerecordings of her old music \u2014 each of which sailed to No. 1. When Swift played SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles in August, she spoke from the stage about her recording spurt, saying that the forced break from touring during the Covid-19 pandemic had spurred her to connect with fans by releasing more music.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so I decided, in order to keep that connection going,\u201d she said<\/a>, \u201cif I couldn\u2019t play live shows with you, I was going to make and release as many albums as humanly possible.\u201d<\/p>\n That was two albums ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n