The moment Swifties have been waiting for is finally here—The Tortured Poets Department has dropped, and at least one fan theory about the album has turned out to be true.
Taylor Swift announced her 11th studio album while picking up her 13th Grammy award in February. The star is well known for leaving clues and Easter eggs for listeners to find in her promotional materials, so Swifties have spent the past two months coming up with no end of theories.
Fans have long hoped Swift would put out a double album, and this dream has circled the web ahead of her last few releases. The Tortured Poets Department was no exception, but one Swiftie believed she had good reason to expect a “double-album drop.”
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TikToker and Swiftie Emerson (@swiftlyobsessed) believed the QR code that mysteriously appeared in Chicago’s North District on Monday heralded the double album,” linking the design of the mural to Swift’s 2017 album, Reputation.
Fans lined up to scan the code which contained the abbreviation of her latest album title—made from a repetition of “ttpd”—which directed people to a 13-second clip on Swift’s website.
The video featured a blank piece of paper with a typewriter inking “Error 321” and a faint “13.”
“The repetition of the ttpds reminds me so much of the repetition of Taylor Swift on the Reputation album,” Emerson said.
The clip on Swift’s website seemed to reference this year’s Grammys, where fans hoped Swift would announce a re-recording of Reputation. So many people tried to access her website ahead of the show that it crashed, with an error page reading “Error 321” and the muddled up phrase “red herring.”
The 34-year-old singer began re-recording her earlier music in 2021, after an attempt to purchase the rights to her six first albums fell through, with the re-releases dubbed “Taylor’s Versions.”
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Fans suspect that Reputation will be the next Taylor’s Version to be released, and Emerson believed it would drop alongside Tortured Poets on April 19.
It appears that Emerson’s theory was half right. While there is still no sign of Reputation (Taylor’s Version), Tortured Poets is a double album.
Calling it a “2:00am surprise,” Swift announced the second LP on social media on Friday morning.
“The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album,” the VMA winner wrote on her X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram accounts.
“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.”
Swift is famous for using her past romances as inspiration, so fans expected Tortured Poets’ to focus on her relationship with ex-boyfriend, British actor Joe Alwyn. The couple dated for six years before splitting in April 2023, and the Conversations with Friends star helped to write lyrics for her 2022 album, Midnights.
However, Swifties suspect one song to be about the singer’s new love, Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce. Swift began dating the football star in July, and the track “Alchemy” included references to touchdowns, trophies and winning streaks.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.