During the 2024 Grammy awards ceremony, the worldwide famous singer Taylor Swift was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album for “Midnights”. This was her 13th Grammy award, her lucky number. During her speech, she surprised everyone by announcing the release of her eleventh studio album called “The Tortured Poets Department”. Right after she left the stage her social media accounts posted something huge: the cover of her new album, which shows a black and white image of herself wearing a black tank and shorts, laying on a bed.
Right now, we know that the album will have 16 songs and one bonus track titled “The Manuscript.” Swift is a mastermind, and her fifth track is always a really personal song, with usually a revelation about her past like a relationship or a huge emotion. On “The Tortured Poets Department”, the fifth track is called “So Long, London”. Everyone thinks this song is about Joe Alwyn, her ex-boyfriend who she lived with in the famous English city, London.
This album also features artists Post Malone and Florence+ the Machine, neither of whom have never collaborated with Swift before. Which makes us wonder if the album will be containing multiple different music genres. When we asked Groves Swifties what they thought the album would sound like, Leah Kutinsky gave us a popular answer.
“I think it is going to be ‘Folklore’ and ‘Midnights’ combined,” Kutinsky said, in reference to two of Swift’s recent popular albums.
The whole announcement did not come as a complete surprise to everyone, because some people suspected something was coming. Why? Because some obvious easter eggs were dropped. Firstly, a couple of hours before the announcement, Swift changed her profile picture to black and white. Her website also went down just before the ceremony, with an error code that said “red herring.”Additionally, she also showed up to the Grammys wearing a black and white dress. All this made Swifties believe that Taylor was going to announce “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)”. I asked some Groves students if they knew she was going to announce a new album and they all shared the same exact answer.
“Oh yeah, I knew there was going to be a new album coming, a hundred percent. I could tell, I just thought it was going to be [Reputation (Taylor’s Version)]”, Hannah Grey said.
On February 15, Swift made a new very exciting announcement during the first night of her concert series in Melbourne. She announced a new bonus track called “The Bolter”. You can pre-order all the collections now on her store until April 19, also known as “National Cat Lady Day”— because Swift is a very proud cat lady! Again, Taylor is very attentive to detail…. as soon as it is out, go stream the album!
