The New Yorker:

Critics argue that “The Tortured Poets Department” sounds too much like Swift’s previous albums. Fans argue that that’s the whole point.

By Sinéad O’Sullivan

Ask music critics what they think of Taylor Swift’s eleventh studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” and those who aren’t afraid of getting doxed might say something about the interminable length, the repetitive synth overlays, or the uninspired lyrics. Take “imgonnagetyouback,” a track that’s notably similar to Olivia Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back!” In the chorus, Swift sings that she hasn’t yet decided “whether I’m gonna be your wife or gonna smash up your bike.” Perhaps the lyric is meant to be somewhat infantile, but even the most novice editor should have pushed Swift toward the more obvious rhyme: “whether I’m gonna be your wife or gonna smash up your life.”

Ask a Swiftie what they think of the album, though, and they may very well say that it’s her best work yet. Yes, it would have made more sense for her to rhyme “wife” with “life” in “imgonnagetyouback.” But Swift obsessives know to connect “imgonnagetyouback” with “Fallingforyou,” a song by the 1975 that was written by Swift’s ex-boyfriend Matty Healy. In it, Healy sings, “I’m so excited for the night / All we need’s my bike and your enormous house.” Swift’s mention of a bike, in “imgonnagetyouback,” is therefore an intentional creative decision, like the lack of spaces in the song’s title. Some fans have gone even further, claiming that the lack of spaces not only invites a comparison to “Fallingforyou” but to Swift’s own “Blank Space,” a song on her “1989” album. (1975, 1989—there are a lot of years to keep track of here.) “In Blank Space music video, Taylor Swift is smashing things and sings ‘Cause you know I love the players And you love the game,’ ” a YouTube user called Miranda-ry9tf writes in a comment. “In imgonnagetyouback she says ‘We broke all the pieces, but you still wanna play the game.’ ” Perhaps “Blank Space,” released in 2014, was about Healy, too? Those Swifties who have gone far down the rabbit hole might argue that Swift, by leaving out the spaces in her new song’s title, has created a kind of ouroboros—a running theme in the artist’s work since 2016, when Kim Kardashian referred to her as a “snake.” If you write the words “imgonnagetyouback” in a circle, you’ll notice that the “k” and “im” are right next to each other. This might seem like a reach—but, six tracks later, Swift mentions a mysterious rival named Aimee, on a song titled “thanK you aIMee.” It doesn’t take a Swiftie to figure out whose name the capital letters spell.

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