The 2025 Grammy Award nominations were released earlier this month with huge “pop-girl" names like Billie Eilish, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter making appearances in the Best Album category.
2024 has been an impressive year for women in music. Almost all of them went on global stadium tours, drawing in millions of fans every night. “Cowboy Carter,” “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” “Short n’ Sweet,” “Hit Me Hard and Soft” and “Brat” all did great in the charts.
But there is one project nominated that feels different from the rest: Swift’s 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Despite doing better numbers-wise than other nominations, I do not think it should be on the list at all. It is the worst thing Swift has released in her career thus far, and its success is a product of a brainwashed fan base and uninspired song writing. If it wins Album of the Year, it could halt the creativity Swifites love their mother for.
It doesn’t bring me joy to denounce a beloved artists’ work — Swift appears in my Spotify Wrapped year after year despite me trying to look indie. But I think it is a more impressive feat as a fan to acknowledge their weak moments, their duds, their skips. “The Tortured Poets Department” is unfortunately that.
Many of Swift’s diehard fans weaponize the mode of poetry as an excuse for lackluster melodies. But many of her lyrics throughout the album come across as melodramatic and whiney or infused with cringey millennial-isms.
Titles like “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “Down Bad,” “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” and “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” will age like milk. I already can’t look at them without wincing. She also repeats metaphors to the point of cliche. Take “The Black Dog” and the line, “That was intertwined in the fabric of our dreaming” compared to the line “We embroidered the memories of the time I was away” in “loml.”
Her poetry doesn’t work in this album because I don’t care about a billionaire’s plights. Why should we sob about her bad breakup when gas is $4 per gallon?
Obviously, not everyone experiences heartbreak the same, but song titles like “I Hate It Here” saying she’s “scared to go outside,” and that she wishes she could live in the 1830s “but without all the racists” come across as inaccessible to non-billionaires.
In “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me,” Swift sings, “You don’t get to tell me about ‘sad.’” There are wars happening right now, girl. What are you talking about?
And what if I don’t care about lyrics? What if I listen to music for the instruments and singing and not whatever deep message I can glean from its Genius website? Then “The Tortured Poets Department” loses all its impact, it does not compare to her earlier works like “Red,” “1989,” “Fearless” or “Speak Now.”
This monotonous sound in the whopping 31 tracks of Swift’s deluxe edition blend together like a haze, connected by the droning synth producer Jack Antonof holds so tightly to his chest.
Consider the cultural phenomena that have emerged from some of the other albums nominated for Album of the Year. “Espresso” by Carpenter, “HOT TO GO!” by Chappell Roan and literally all of “Brat” by Charli XCX will be looked back on as defining the summer of 2024.
These releases and their mass success mark a new era in music, with new faces in the pop-girl category. Many of the 2010s familiar faces like Katy Perry or Rihanna have taken a back seat in the charts, giving newcomers the opportunity to take the spotlight.
Swift and Beyoncé occupy a similar space, with each existing in both old and new eras of pop. But where Beyoncé has evolved, pushing her creativity and mastering new genres in “Renaissance” and “Cowboy Carter,” Swift is nesting in the grossly familiar synth-pop.
Hitting a plateau this late in your career is embarrassing, especially after the release of two masterpieces like “folklore” and “evermore.” This is the core of what bothers me about Swift’s 2025 Album of the Year nomination — she’s won (and lost) for work that was 10 times better.
Maybe Swift’s loss in 2014 for “Red” is the reason for “The Tortured Poets Department’s” dullness. The main criticism against “Red” was that it lacked cohesion, and the sway between pop radio hits and country ballads was discouraged by critics.
Swift would be better off ignoring the critics. The sonic variety of “Red” has been haunting her, lurking in the back of her mind for the last 10 years. Its result is over 30 tracks of the same stuff.
If she wins in February, I'm afraid the positive feedback loop will never allow her to change.
After almost 20 years in the music industry, Swift probably isn’t taking any advice from lowly arts desk writers like me. But as a fan, I really hope she goes in a different direction for future albums, and a fifth Album of the Year win might prevent that.
