Taylor Swift has always been, first and foremost, a songwriter. But with a title like The Tortured Poets Department, the pop star’s new album calls even more attention to her lyricism than usual, inviting listeners to dissect, interpret and intellectualize each track just as a scholar might pore over the works of Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson (whom the singer just so happens to be distantly related to, as we learned shortly before the record’s release).
Adding to the already impossibly high levels of intrigue surrounding the project, Swift is famously at her best when writing autobiographically about her own personal life and heartbreaks — and an innately complicated breakup from a boyfriend of six years (ahem, Joe Alwyn), a rumored situationship with the 1975’s Matty Healy and the trials of embarking on a colossal global tour while dealing with such earth-shattering life changes certainly offered up plenty of inspiration in that department (no pun intended).
Plus, fans knew going in that Tortured Poets would find Swift delivering some of her most vulnerable lyrics yet. The musician told them so herself. “It kind of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life,” she said of the record during one of her Melbourne Eras Tour performances. “I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it on Tortured Poets.”
What they didn’t know was that two hours after the release of the album, the star would immediately drop 15 additional tracks under a package dubbed The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. Some of her rawest moments as Department Chairman come on these bonus songs, with Swift writing on Instagram, “I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you.”
Between the 16 main tracks on The Tortured Poets Department and the 15 extra ones, Swift covers a lot of ground. Keep reading to see the 13 best instances of lyrical genius on her sweeping new project, in tracklist order, below.
