Taylor Swift's surprise double album: an event of 'world-shaking proportions'

The world's biggest pop star delighted fans today with the shock release of a second album just hours after "The Tortured Poets Department" hit streaming services at midnight. 

"It's a 2am surprise," Taylor Swift told her followers in an Instagram post which confirmed that her 11th studio album was actually a "secret" double LP. "I'd written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it with you all."

The much-touted "The Tortured Poets Department" had already broken Spotify records as the most pre-saved album ahead of its release. Now, she has given fans double the number of tracks.

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Taking no prisoners

The hype around Swift is "at fever pitch", said Sky News. The record-breaking star's "unstoppable" rise from teen country singer to "all-round global phenomenon has been – well – swift".  

As well as making Grammy's history in February with her fourth Album of the Year win, for "Midnights", she broke numerous other records last year – including the most No.1 albums by a woman, the most attended concert by a female artist in the US, and the first woman to have four albums in the Billboard chart top 10 at once. 

Swift has "taken a scalpel to her personal life, filleting the details of flings and trysts and heartbreaks" in her past 10 records to write "some of pop's most memorable lyrics", said the BBC. So it comes as "no surprise" that "The Tortured Poets Department" and the accompanying "The Anthology" edition continue the pattern.

But fans were "left reeling" after discovering that her new release "seems to spend more time reflecting on her short-lived romance" with 1975 frontman Matty Healy than her ex-boyfriend of six years, Joe Alwyn, said The Independent. 

As it turns out, Alwyn "will probably be able to sleep just fine" while "the other bloke" might "lose a little", said Variety. A number of the 31 new songs "don't take much in the way of prisoners", like the "eviscerating 'The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived'". On first listen, people may be thinking: "Wait, did she really just say that?"

A soundtrack for tragic rifts

"As breakup albums go, it's a doozy," said Variety. This is an "unapologetically dramatic (if often witty) record" that "feels bracing, and wounded, and cocky, and – not to be undervalued in this age – handmade". No doubt it will "be soundtracking untold millions of tragic rifts" for years to come. 

And though "The Tortured Poets Department" may not "produce the biggest Top 10 hits" across Swift's expansive music catalogue, "it's easily among her most lyrics-forward efforts". The songs are "rife with a language lover's wordplay, tumults of sequential similes and – her best weapon – moments of sheer bluntness". 

"Students of the University of Taylor Swift" are no doubt already discovering the "many secrets" hidden throughout the album and untangling its "hushed world of heartache and melancholia", said Ed Power on the i news site. "Who knew books and sad bangers could go together so well?" 

The release of any new Swift album is an event of "world-shaking proportions". This one is "an aesthetic triumph" that marks a new era in Swift's "quest for pop perfection".