Taylor Swift releases her 11th album, ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ leaked two days earlier, in the middle of her tour, amid enormous expectation and secrecy (2024)

For a month and a half, April 19 has been marked on the calendars of pop fans and, in particular, the millions of followers of Taylor Swift. The day has come. On Friday, the 34-year-old singer from Pennsylvania released The Tortured Poets Department (already known as TTPD), her 11th studio album with 16 songs, including two collaborations, one with Florence+The Machine and another with Post Malone. In fact, the song with the latter, Fortnight, has become the first single of the album — news that was announced just a few hours before all the songs on the album were released. With this highly anticipated record, Swift has tried to maintain near-absolute secrecy: she has been giving details in dribs and drabs, has barely shared the lyrics of the songs and has not even released a single. But a couple of days before the explosive release date, the entire album was leaked on the internet.

It happened on Wednesday afternoon. What is considered the most anticipated album of 2024 began to be leaked two days before its official release. Despite the 34-year-old American artist’s tight control of her career and narrative, the 16 songs on TTPD began to appear on Telegram groups, and their links were shamelessly shared on Twitter. EL PAÍS had access to them, and they were complete songs (not fragments) and of very high quality. Neither Swift nor her team commented on the matter.

However, there were questions about the leaked songs. Firstly, because it may not have been the real record from Swift, but rather the work of someone else, keen on sabotaging the artist, who put together the songs using other music and voices. Secondly, because it could have been a product of artificial intelligence, one of the most popular theories. And lastly, because it could even have been part of Swift’s strategy. In the lead-up to the release, the singer has offered clues about the album (in short videos, through QR codes placed in different cities around the world, and in a temporary installation resembling a small bookstore in a shopping center in Los Angeles, where fans queued for hours), and in the messages, the number two has been a constant feature. This sparked speculation that Swift could be releasing a second album, with some believing the leaked record was the first.

The mystery could only be solved when TTPD was released on Friday. And the result was clear: the leaked album was the real album. But once released, the world has forgotten the controversy (partly thanks to the fact that the Swift team did not discuss the issue) and focused on the songs. The 16 tracks are, as always with Swift, very personal. Two are written entirely by her, five with Aaron Dessner, a member of The National, who also co-wrote songs for Folklore, and eight with Jack Antonoff, from the group Bleachers, her longtime producer. As is typical of the singer, the songs are about her life, her best material. Specifically, the breakup of her six-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn (in the fifth song, So Long, London, she sings: “Just how low did you think I’d go/Before I’d self implode” and “You swore that you loved me but where were the clues? / I died on the altar waiting for the proof”) her brief romance with musician Matty Healy and her current relationship with the American football player Travis Kelce will be key to deciphering her lyrics. As for curious details, Stevie Nicks writes a poem to start the album and the actress Emma Stone has a credit in the song Florida!!! (which Swift sings with Florence+The Machine).

In a message published on her social media accounts, two minutes after the release of the album, Swift finally gave more information about it: “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. 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.”

Swift is not the first major artist to have their music leaked. It’s happened to Radiohead, Madonna in 2015, to Bjork that same year, with what was her first album in four years; and Wilco, whose album in 2002 was leaked eight months before its planned release, which also happened to the group in 2004, 2007 and 2009. But the rise of music streaming platforms had led people to think that leaks were a thing of the past, until now. In a year in which big names like Dua Lipa, SZA, Ariana Grande, Katy and Lana Del Rey are also releasing new music, leaks of such highly anticipated albums — which are kept under lock and key for months — further shield the industry. In Swift’s case, how her followers responded was important. The singer’s very loyal fans are very respectful of the artist from Pennsylvania. On social media, many debated whether to listen to the leaked album and spoil the launch for their idol, or whether to wait until Friday at 00:01 to hit the play button. The latter have won.

In any case, it is unlikely that the leak will affect sales or streams. The people who listened to the leaked album are Swift fans, who will continue buying her CDs and vinyls (many of them have done so in advance, so that the record arrives at their home on the first day, something that has become increasingly common in the U.S.) and who will stream the album thousands of times on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

And it’s unlikely that Swift’s fortune will be affected either. She is in the middle of The Eras Tour, a global tour that started in March last year that has been seen by millions of people across the world. She will return to the stage in May and end the tour in December in Canada. Thanks to the tour, the singer has a fortune of more than $1.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine. She may be angry about the leak, but she won’t lose a cent; quite the opposite: the expectation will only continue to build.

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