The Tortured Taylor Swift

In the week that Courtney Love called Taylor Swift “not important” (“She might be a safe space for girls,” Love said, “but she’s not interesting as an artist”) comes The Tortured Poets Department, Swift’s 11th album, a self-defence against such critiques. Released alongside monochrome social media posts containing typewritten lyric fragments, this record deliberately positions Swift not as the billion-dollar global pop star of the Eras tour, still making its way around the globe to the UK, but Taylor Swift the prolific songwriter, Taylor Swift the sensitive artiste, Taylor Swift the tortured poet.