Taylor Swift live: Pop star shares The Tortured Poets Department as fans scramble to unearth meaning behind lyrics

LIVE – Updated at 05:53

Taylor Swift has released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Society.

The pop titan’s latest record, announced earlier this year when she won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album (Midnights),was released overnight on Friday 19 April.

Physical copies of the LP feature a prologue/poem written by legendary Fleetwood Mac star and solo singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks, a longtime champion of Swift, and an epilogue written by Swift herself.

In a five-star review of the album, The Independent’s critic Helen Brown praised the “playful narratives” and “hooks like anchors”.

The album seems to be a reflection on some of Swift’s most significant relationships. Sharing a “treasure hunt” for fans before the album’s release, Swift offered clues that eventually unearthed the sentence: “We hereby conduct this post-mortem.”

Follow live updates for reactions, reviews and revelations from the album so far.

Taylor Swift releases ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ – key points

• Read The Independent’s review of Taylor Swift’s 11th album, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’
• RIP to “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”
• Stevie Nicks contributes moving poem for Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department

Read an excerpt of Helen Brown’s five-star review

05:53 , Roisin O’Connor

In keeping with the literary (if ungrammatical) album title, Swift is on her most piercingly polysyllabic form here. In a year when pop music has been slammed by academics for dumbing down the youth, Swift will be charting words like “rivulets” and “litany”, as she eye-rolls at her own “teenage petulance”. She’s not claiming any grand titles for herself. On the title track she dismisses all pretensions – “You’re not Dylan Thomas/ I’m not Patti Smith/ This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel… We’re modern idiots” – before undercutting that self-awareness with a genuine plea for love and connection. Her ability to put her lines over is as compelling as ever. I defy anyone not to lean into Swift’s concisely charged storytelling.

Her conversational tone is given dramatic ballast by the mighty Florence Welch on “Florida!!!”. Drums come pounding through the soft, synth beds and the English singer howls of being “barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine/ Me and my ghosts had a hell of a time”. Welch can yowl threats where Swift’s thinner voice could ever only hiss – but that doesn’t mean Swift isn’t a woman in full command of her powers. The force she brings to “But Daddy I Love Him” is thrilling, as she lassos a few country tropes to charge her horses at online trolls. “I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empath’s clothing,” she warns, reminding fans that her “good name” is hers to “disgrace” with a “wild boy” if she so chooses. Their “sanctimonious soliloquies” are “white noise to me”, she sings. Swift is equally uncompromising on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” – a track on which she assures listeners she is more than capable of standing up for herself. On piano ballad “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, she sneers at a lover who appeared to roar like a lion and left her with the blandest goodbye.

Read the full review here:

Taylor Swift’s country-hued tales of bad boys & good girls are irresistible – review

Stevie Nicks contributes moving poem for Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department

05:45 , Roisin O’Connor

Stevie Nicks has written a poem to accompany Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Society.

The legendary singer-songwriter’s words are included as a prologue for the pop star’s 11th studio album, which is already receiving early rave reviews from critics.

The poem reads, in part: “He was in love with her / Or at least she thought so / She was broken hearted / Maybe he was too / Neither of them knew,” Nicks writes.

“She was way too hot to handle / He was way too high to try…

“He really can’t answer her / He’s afraid of her / He’s hiding from her / And he knows that he’s hurting her / She tells the truth / She writes about it / She’s an informer / He’s an ex-lover…”

Stevie Nicks contributes moving poem for Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department

RIP to “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”

05:23 , Roisin O’Connor

I imagine for a long time, fans were expecting that The Tortured Poets Department would be, for the most part, a post-mortem on Swift’s longterm relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn.

While some songs certainly do delve into that (”So Long, London,” most devastatingly), plenty of other songs have closer ties to her brief dalliance with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy.

She heaves a weary sigh at the opening of “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, referring to a man in his “Jehovah’s Witness suit… who the f*** was that guy?”

“You tried to buy some pills from a friend of friends of mine / They just ghosted you,” she sings. “Now you know what it feels like…”

‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ appears to address Swift’s brief relationship with Matty Healy (AP)

Taylor Swift shares message with fans as she releases ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

05:10 , Roisin O’Connor

Swift has posted to Instagram as she releases her 11th album…

“The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure,” she wrote.

“This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.“And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.“THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is out now.”

05:04 , Roisin O’Connor

Hello and welcome to The Independent’s Taylor Swift liveblog, where we’ll be bringing you all the latest updates, news, reviews and reactions to the pop titan’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.

We already have a five-star review from our critic Helen Brown, which you can read below:

Taylor Swift’s country-hued tales of bad boys & good girls are irresistible – review