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Behind the Meaning of Taylor Swift’s Sports-Themed “End Game”

by Alex Hopper November 25, 2023, 1:30 pm

I wanna be your endgame / I wanna be your first string , Taylor Swift sings in her Reputation cut “End Game.” Swift has never shied away from a cleverly coded metaphor and this track is no different. Given her recent uptick in football associations, this song hits even harder. Uncover the meaning behind this sports-themed anthem, below.

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[RELATED: AI Writes a Pop Duet of Epic Proportions for Taylor Swift and Beyoncé]

Behind the Meaning

Big reputation, big reputation Ooh, you and me, we got big reputations, ah

When Swift released “End Game” back in 2017, she couldn’t have known that it would later become the theme song for her relationship with Travis Kelce. Many fan edits have cropped up of the pair in their respective natural habitats (i.e. a concert stage and a football game) with this song as the backing track. Indeed, both of them have big reputations , making this song a swooning ode to their power couple status. Moreover, the sports allusions (i.e. endgame, first string, A-team) seem almost prescient.

Not looking at this song through the Kelce lens, it seems Swift is singing about her general fear that her public persona will become an issue in her relationships. I know what they all say / But I ain’t tryna play , the lyrics read. Swift has long been called a “serial dater.” While she’s pushed back at that notion a number of times, it still follows her around no matter how unwarranted it may be.

Reputation precedes me, they told you I’m crazy I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me

Despite any potential setbacks, Swift wants the relationship to last–like, forever. The line I wanna be your endgame is a pretty clear-cut idea. Swift wants the partner she is singing about in this song to be her last. I can’t let you go, your handprint’s on my soul , she sings.

The song also features verses from Future and Ed Sheeran . Their contributions help to further flush out the story. I got a reputation, girl, that don’t precede me / I’m one call away whenever you need me , Future raps in the first verse. Similarly, Sheeran sings about an enduring love: This end game is the one .

Revisit the track, below.

Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images

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Feat. Ed Sheeran & Future | Single | reputation (2017)

Table of contents, lyrical theme, guest verses.

«I actually wrote [my verse] in, I remember where it was, I was in a hotel room in New York, in bed at about eight o'clock in the morning. I woke up ‘cause for some reason I, like, dreamed it in my head what I was gonna do. […] I woke up and then, like, typed it all out and then recorded it like a day later and sent it to [Taylor]. And I remember [she] liked it, which is good, positive. […] I’ve never really featured like this, maybe I’ve done, like, two tracks where I’ve featured. […] Well, you see, [the 'Fourth of July' line] is kind of a play on words. Not really a play on words, it’s kind of…there’s a film with Tom Cruise called Born on the Fourth of July …my relationship started on the fourth of July.» Ed Sheeran

Live Performances

Music video, critical reception, commercial performance.

[Chorus:  Taylor Swift & Future] I wanna be your end game I wanna be your first string I wanna be your A Team I wanna be your end game End game

[Post-Chorus:  Taylor Swift & Future ] Big reputation Big reputation Ooh, you and me we got big reputations Ah, and you heard about me Ooh, I got some big enemies (Yeah) Big reputation Big reputation Ooh, you and me would be a big conversation Ah, and I heard about you (Yeah) Ooh, you like the bad ones too?

[Verse 1: Future] You so dope Don’t overdose I’m so stoked I need a toast We do the most I’m in the Ghost Like I’m whippin’ a boat I got a reputation, girl That don’t precede me (Yeah) I’m one call away whenever you need me (Yeah) I’m in a G5 (Yeah) Come to the A-Side (Yeah) I got a bad boy persona That’s what they like (What they like) You love it I love it too ‘Cause you my type (You my type) You hold me down And I protect you with my life

[Pre-Chorus 1: Taylor Swift & Future ] I don’t wanna touch you I don’t wanna be Just another ex love You don’t wanna see I don’t wanna miss you (I don’t wanna miss you) Like the other girls do I don’t wanna hurt you I just wanna be Drinking on a beach with You all over me I know what they all say (I know what they all say) But I ain’t trying to play

[Chorus:  Taylor Swift] I wanna be your end game (End game) I wanna be your first string (First string) I wanna be your A Team (A Team) I wanna be your end game End game

[Verse 2:  Ed Sheeran] Knew her when I was young Reconnected when we were little bit older, both sprung I got issues and chips on both of my shoulders Reputation precedes me In rumors I’m knee-deep The truth is it’s easier to ignore it Believe me Even when we’d argue we’d not do it for long And you understand the good and bad end up in a song For all your beautiful traits and the way you do it with ease For all my flaws, paranoia and insecurities I’ve made mistakes and made some choices That’s hard to deny After the storm Something was born on the 4th of July I’ve passed days without fun This end game is the one With four words on the tip of my tongue I’ll never say it

[Pre-chorus 2:  Taylor Swift] I don’t wanna touch you I don’t wanna be Just another ex love You don’t wanna see I don’t wanna miss you (I don’t wanna miss you) Like the other girls do I don’t wanna hurt you I just wanna be Drinking on a beach with You all over me I know what they all say (Yeah) But I ain’t trying to play

[Chorus:  Taylor Swift] I wanna be your end game (End game) I wanna be your first string (Wanna be your first string) I wanna be your A Team (A Team) I wanna be your end game End game

[Post-Chorus:  Taylor Swift] Big reputation Big reputation Ooh, you and me we got big reputations Ah, and you heard about me Ooh, I got some big enemies Big reputation Big reputation Ooh, you and me would be a big conversation Ah, and I heard about you Ooh, you like the bad ones too?

[Verse 3:  Taylor Swift] I hit you like BANG We tried to forget it, but we just couldn’t And I bury hatchets, but I keep maps of where I put ’em Reputation precedes me They told you I’m crazy I swear I don’t love the drama It loves me And I can’t let you go Your hand print’s on my soul It’s like your eyes are liquor It’s like your body is gold You’ve been calling my bluff On all my usual tricks So here’s the truth from my red lips

[Chorus:  Taylor Swift, Future & Ed Sheeran ] I wanna be your end game End game I wanna be your first string ( Me and you ) First string I wanna be your A Team ( Be your A Team now ) A Team I wanna be your end game End game I wanna be your end game Oh, I do I wanna be your first string First string I wanna be your A Team A Team I wanna be your end game End game

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Taylor Swift Shares ‘Reputation’ Tracklist, Confirms Ed Sheeran & Future Collab

The 15-track album include "End Game," a rumored collaboration with Ed Sheeran and Future.

By Lars Brandle

Lars Brandle

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Swifties, you have some homework to do. 

If you’re counting down the days until Reputation arrives (it’s three, in case you’ve been living under a boulder), Taylor Swift has given fans a full tracklist to study. The 15 songs include “End Game,” a rumored collaboration with Ed Sheeran and Future ,  and the three previously-released numbers, “…Ready For It” (track 1), “Look What You Made Me Do” (track 6) and “Gorgeous” (track 8). 

The tracklist, which Swift posted on Instagram just hours after it was leaked, is accompanied with a handful of production credits. Taylor is tagged as executive producer and she co-produced the studio LP, her sixth, along with Jack Antonoff, Max Martin and Shellback, while eight-time Grammy and triple Latin Grammy-winning sound engineer Serban Ghenea mixed the project.

Taylor Swift

See latest videos, charts and news

Taylor Swift Shares an Intimate Peek Into 'Reputation' Secret Sessions

The followup to 2014’s global hit 1989 , Reputation should enjoy an explosive launch. According to the Associated Press, pre-orders exceeded 400,000 units — doubling the pre-order numbers for its predecessor a week before its release — while it became Target’s most pre-ordered album of all time.

Reputation is out Friday (Nov. 10). See the tracklist below. 

  3 days until #reputation A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Nov 7, 2017 at 6:52pm PST

Reputation tracklist in full:

?1. “…Ready for It?”  2. “End Game” (featuring Ed Sheeran and Future)       3. “I Did Something Bad”       4. “Don’t Blame Me”       5. “Delicate”       6. “Look What You Made Me Do”  7. “So It Goes…”       8. “Gorgeous”  9. “Getaway Car”       10. “King of My Heart”       11. “Dancing With Our Hands Tied”       12. “Dress”       13. “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”       14. “Call It What You Want”  15. “New Years Day”

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• 1 Background
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• 4 Critical reception
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Background [ ]

This star-studded track is the sole collaboration on  reputation . Before it was announced, “Eddie” and “Future” were written in graffiti in certain shots of the " …Ready For It? ” music video.

Taylor previously worked with Ed Sheeran on her 2012 track “ Everything Has Changed ,” on which Ed sang the second verse. This is her first collaboration with Future and her overall third collaboration with a rapper, following the remix of her track “ Bad Blood ,” which featured Kendrick Lamar and she also appeared on B.O.B track " Both of Us ".

On November 14, 2017, the week Reputation was released, this song was release on contemporary hit radio in France. On January 11, 2018, Swift announced that the music video of "End Game" will release in midnight. 'End Game' was then released on contemporary hit radio in the United Kingdom radio on January 26, 2018.

Music video [ ]

In early December 2017, Sheeran confirmed that a music video for the song would be released. [1]

On January 10, 2018, Swift revealed through her social media app " The Swift Life " that the music video for the song would be released on January 12 and that the video's teaser would premiere on Good Morning America . She also posted a few pictures from the video as well. The next day, Swift posted the teaser for the video on social media.

On January 12, 2018, the video debuted on Swift's Vevo channel. It is Swift's seventh video directed by Joseph Kahn. The video shows Swift partying in various locales - with Future on a yacht in Miami, Florida, with Sheeran at a nightclub in Tokyo, Japan, and with various friends on a double decker bus in London, England. In a Miami scene, Future is seen driving a Lamborghini Aventador worth $500,000. In one of the London scenes, Swift is seen sitting on a bar playing Snake on a handheld game console, riding a motorcycle through Tokyo while wearing a snakeskin suit, and sipping drinks through a snake straw, all references to her "snake" reputation. [2] The video gained 14.4 million views within 24 hours of upload on YouTube. As of January 2019, the video has over 190 million views.

Behind the scenes [ ]

End Game - Behind the scenes

[Chorus: Taylor Swift & Future ] I wanna be your end game I wanna be your first string I wanna be your A-Team (Whoa, whoa, whoa) I wanna be your end game, end game [Post-Chorus: Taylor Swift, Future ] Big reputation, big reputation Ooh, you and me, we got big reputations Ah and you heard about me Ooh, I got some big enemies (Yeah) Big reputation, big reputation Ooh, you and me would be a big conversation, ah (Git, git) And I heard about you, ooh (Yeah) You like the bad ones, too [Verse 1: Future] You so dope, don't overdose I’m so stoked, I need a toast We do the most, I'm in the Ghost, like, I'm whippin’ a boat I got a reputation, girl, that don't precede me (Yeah) I'm a call away whenever you need me (Yeah) I'm in a G5 (Yeah) , come to the A-Side (Yeah) I got a bad boy persona, that's what they like (What they like) You love it, I love it, too, 'cause you my type (You my type) You hold me down and I protect you with my life [Pre-Chorus: Taylor Swift, Future ] I don't wanna touch you, I don't wanna be (I don't wanna be) Just another ex-love you don’t wanna see (You don't wanna see) I don’t wanna miss you (I don't wanna miss you) Like the other girls do I don’t wanna hurt you, I just wanna be (I just wanna be) Drinking on a beach with (You all over me) I know what they all say (I know what they all say) But I ain't tryna play [Chorus: Taylor Swift] I wanna be your end game (End game) I wanna be your first string (First string) I wanna be your A-Team (A-Team) I wanna be your end game, end game [Verse 2: Ed Sheeran] Now, well, when I was young, we connected When we were little bit older, both sprung I got issues and chips on both of my shoulders Reputation precedes me and rumors are knee-deep The truth is, it's easier to ignore it, believe me Even when we'd argue, we’d not do it for long And you understand the good and bad end up in a song For all your beautiful traits and the way you do it with ease For all my flaws, paranoia and insecurities I've made mistakes and made some choices, that's hard to deny After the storm, something was born on the 4th of July I've passed days without fun, this end game is the one With four words on the tip of my tongue, I'll never say it [Pre-Chorus: Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift & Future ] I don't wanna touch you (I don't wanna be) Just another ex-love (You don't wanna see) I don't wanna miss you (I don't wanna miss you) Like the other girls do I don't wanna hurt you (I just wanna be) Drinking on a beach with (You all over me) I know what they all say (Yeah) But I ain't tryna play [Chorus: Taylor Swift] I wanna be your end game (End game) I wanna be your first string (Wanna be your first string) I wanna be your A-Team (A-Team) I wanna be your end game, end game [Post-Chorus: Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift & Future ] Big reputation, big reputation Ooh, you and me, we got big reputations, ah And you heard about me, ooh I got some big enemies, hey Big reputation, big reputation , yeah Ooh, you and me would be a big conversation, ah And I heard about you, ooh You like the bad ones, too [Verse 3: Taylor Swift] I hit you like bang, we tried to forget it, but we just couldn't And I bury hatchets, but I keep maps of where I put 'em Reputation precedes me, they told you I'm crazy I swear I don't love the drama, it loves me And I can't let you go, your handprints on my soul It's like your eyes are liquor, it's like your body is gold You've been callin' my bluff on all my usual tricks (Ooh) So, here's the truth from my red lips (Ah) [Chorus: Taylor Swift, Future , ' Ed Sheeran' ] I wanna be your end game (End game) I wanna be your first string ( Me and you ; First string) I wanna be your A-Team (' Be your A-Team now' ; A-Team) I wanna be your end game, end game I wanna be your end game (Oh, I do) I wanna be your first string (First string) I wanna be your A-Team (A-Team) I wanna be your end game, end game

Critical reception [ ]

In a review by Pitchfork , one critic wrote that "End Game" is "a song that capably absorbs and regurgitates the hybridized sounds of 2017 rap and R&B." but also noted "there's something deeply uninspired in tasking Martin with assembling a bland composite, rather than going straight to the source—who wouldn't be at least a little curious as to what a Taylor Swift and Metro Boomin track would sound like?" [3] Vulture predicted it to be one of the more successful singles that album would produce because of its catchy rhythm, especially because of the verses contributed by Future. [4]

In a positive review written by Time , it says that "End Game" is a "self-reflective, slow-jam style track." [5] A review from Spin suggested that although the song was "fine" in its depiction of finding love despite opposition, it had been bettered by previous songs, verses and albums by Future. [6]

Chart performance [ ]

The song debuted at number 86 on the Billboard Hot 100 on the date ending December 9, 2017 due to its strong digital sales. [7] The following week it moved up to number 83 and then in its third week it reached number 36 giving Swift her 55th top forty entry. Two weeks later it peaked at number 18 becoming the third consecutive single from "Reputation" reach the top 20. [8] The following week the song dropped to number 30. The song has since peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 giving Swift her 15th top ten entry on the chart. It has also peaked at number 16 on the Adult Top 40 and number 25 on the Rhythmic Songs.

In Canada the song reached number 53 but after the release of its official music video the song moved to number 11 on the Canadian Hot 100. It also peaked at number 17 on the US Mainstream Top 40 chart. In Australia the song debuted at number 38 and peaked at number 36. The next week it dropped to number 40. In the UK, the song debuted at number 87 and later peaked at number 49.

Awards and nominations [ ]

Live performances [ ].

Swift and Sheeran performed "End Game" for the first time during the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball on December 2, 2017. [12] A solo version of the song is also a regular part of her setlist for the Reputation Stadium Tour . [13] Swift also performed the song solo as a surprise song for the Eras Tour in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 11, 2023,

End Game (Reputation Stadium Tour)

References [ ]

• ↑ Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran Are BFF Goals While Performing 'End Game' at Jingle Ball -- Watch!
• ↑ Taylor Swift Made a Ton of Snake References in the "End Game" Video
• ↑ “End Game” [ft. Future & Ed Sheeran by Taylor Swift Review | Pitchfork]
• ↑ The Best Songs on Taylor Swift’s Reputation Are the Least Aggrieved
• ↑ Analyzing Every Song on Taylor Swift's 'Reputation'
• ↑ Review: Taylor Swift – "End Game" ft. Future and Ed Sheeran
• ↑ The Hot 100 (December 9, 2017)
• ↑ Camila Cabello Earns First Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 With 'Havana,' Featuring Young Thug
• ↑ Teen Choice Awards 2018: Avengers: Infinity War , Black Panther and Riverdale Among Top Nominees
• ↑ https://www.bmi.com/news/entry/2019-bmi-pop-awards
• ↑ https://www.bmi.com/news/entry/2019-bmi-london-awards
• ↑ Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran rock Jingle Ball with first live performance of 'End Game'
• ↑ Here Are All the Songs Taylor Swift Played on the Opening Night of the Reputation Tour
• 1 List of Taylor Swift's ex-boyfriends
• 2 The Tortured Poets Department photoshoot
• 3 The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

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With new album announcement, Taylor Swift fans are in shambles over the ‘Reputation’ rerecording

A few months have passed since Taylor Swift released "1989 (Taylor's Version)," so Swifties have been convinced that the pop icon is carefully dropping hints that she will reclaim her "Reputation" next.

The singer subtly changed her social media profile picture ahead of the 2024 Grammys . The original image is now in black and white, prompting fans to initially connect the change to the album cover of "Reputation." 2024 also marks the 66th annual Grammy Awards. Fans thought the reoccurring number "6" could also predict an impending announcement as "Reputation" is the singer's sixth studio album.

But, it turns out that the all the clues were red herrings leading to a more shocking announcement.

When Swift won the award for best pop vocal album for "Midnights," it marked her 13th Grammy. So, she used the opportunity to reference her famous lucky number and announce that she is releasing a new album, titled "The Tortured Poets Department."

"My brand new album comes out April 19. It’s called ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’” she said. She also revealed that she has been keeping the album a secret for the past two years.

She left the stage and immediately posted the album cover on Instagram . "All's fair in love and poetry," she captioned the black-and-white album art.

It's understandable that Swifties thought a "Reputation" rerecording announcement was incoming. Swift's latest outfits, and more specifically, the color green, also sparked theories about the highly anticipated album.

Starting with the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 7, Swift has been wearing a bold green hue, reminiscent of the "Reputation" album's signature snake imagery, out and about.

At the ceremony in Beverly Hills, Swift wore a glittery green dress that immediately sparked discourse due to its apparent ties to her sixth studio album.

Then on Jan. 9, Swift stepped out in New York City wearing a hunter green bodycon sweater dress under a tan coat.

She continued the green trend on Jan. 10, wearing a crushed velvet dress in bright green to an event with Blake Lively.

On her brown boots, fans spotted black coils that appeared to channel a slithering, snake-like shape.

Her latest looks are not the only pieces of evidence fans have touted as to why they believe Swift will rerelease "Reputation" next.

Fans of Swift know she's been rerecording her first six albums in an effort reclaim her music when those master recordings were sold to Scooter Braun's company in 2019. So far she has released rerecords of 2008's "Fearless," 2010's "Speak Now," 2012's "Red," and 2014's "1989" — all of which are dubbed "Taylor's Version" to signify her ownership and include never-before-heard tracks from " the vault. "

Swift herself promised Time during an interview for her 2023 Person of the Year honor that the vault tracks from the "Reputation" rerecord will be "fire."

Time described Taylor speaking of her rerecording process as if it were a "mythical quest."

"I’m collecting horcruxes,” she told the magazine — a reference for Harry Potter fans. “I’m collecting infinity stones. Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now."

Read below for everything we know about "Reputation (Taylor's Version)," from Easter eggs, a possible release date and more.

'Reputation (Taylor's Version)' Easter eggs

Taylor Swift is known for planting clues in her music, on social media and around the internet that spell out messages or signify tricks up her sleeve. Some are more obvious — like the entirety of the "Look What You Made Me Do" music video — while others take more detective work — like the secret messages she planted in her CD liners .

When it comes to "Reputation (Taylor's Version)," fans are abuzz attempting to find clues — about a release date, about its songs, about anything. The “Nov. 10” theory was one circulating on TikTok for a while (go ahead, look into it) but it was debunked.

Now new breadcrumbs, including a special message from the singer, have them feeling optimistic again.

To understand possible "Reputation (TV)" Easter eggs, though, it's helpful to be versed on its imagery. As Swift says in her Time Person of the Year story , her "Reputation" era was "a goth-punk moment of female rage." Think lots of black and lots of snakes.

In her tweet thanking journalist Sam Lansky for writing her Time profile, she said, “I have tRuSt iSSueS when it comes to interviews but I couldn’t be happier that I did this one with him.”

One fan suggested on X, formerly known as Twitter , that the frequent capital "S" resembles snakes, which is synonymous with "Reputation" in Taylor Swift lore. (See our timeline of Swift's feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian for more on that.)

But a different fan thought the tweet was a clue about a possible vault track.

"I’m calling it now: I am guessing Trust Issues will be a Vault track on Reputation (Taylor’s Version)," the X user predicted .

One eagle-eyed Swiftie tweeted a timeline of Swift's social media behavior leading up to her rerelease announcements and theorized that news about "Reputation (Taylor's Version)" is coming on New Year's Day. The holiday is also the title of the last track on that album, but the date came and went without any album news.

Others also theorized about the aesthetic of her Time photo shoo t. Fans believe the photos are a possible Easter egg, as they seem to emulate vibes from "Reputation" album cover: She wears black clothes in some photos, with dark eye makeup and her hair in a "wet look" with her signature bangs swept back.

When is 'Reputation (Taylor's Version)' releasing?

While fans are so ready for it, news about the complete release of “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” has been elusive. There is no official release date for the rerecorded album.

But two “Taylor’s Version” songs from "Reputation" popped up in 2023. Neither song has been released in full on streaming platforms or for digital download.

The Aug. 23 trailer for Prime Video’s show “Wilderness” marked the global debut of “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version),” featuring snippets of the song throughout the 90-second preview.

On Aug. 3, "Delicate (Taylor's Version)" was featured in Season Two of the Prime Video series " The Summer I Turned Pretty ."

Jenny Han, the showrunner and author of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” TV and book series, is a proud Swiftie. More than eight of Swift's songs appear in Season Two.

But while the public got a taste of a few rerecorded “Reputation” tracks, it seemed to be a work in progress as of August. Ed Sheeran told Andy Cohen in an interview on the "Deep & Shallow Podcast" Aug. 15 that he had not yet rerecorded the "Reputation" song "End Game," in which he's featured with rapper Future.

More Easter eggs — but with meanings that are still unclear

There are still several cryptic posts and messages that Swift put out into the universe but still remain unclear to fans. One of them is the "glitch." Let us explain.

When Swift released her rerecording of "Wildest Dreams" in 2021 — this song is from her "1989" album, the rerecording of which dropped in full October 2023 — she also dropped a video clip accompanying the track. It featured an image of Swift standing in a blue dress with a red lip — style choices often associated with her "1989" era — that suddenly glitches. After the glitch, Swift winks at the camera.

As the "Reputation" era is associated with disruption ( Swift famously deleted all of her social media posts before the album's release ), fans think the glitch may have hinted at her sixth studio album all along.

When the original iteration of "Reputation" was announced in August 2017, Swift teased it with video clip of a snake about to strike, interrupted by a glitch.

Plus, to further add to the "glitch" mystery, Swift in 2022 put out a song called "Glitch" that includes a lyric fans have latched onto: "But it’s been 1,290 days of our love blackout." They believe 1,290 days holds some deep significance that ties all this glitchiness together.

Another theory that Swifties say hints at "Reputation" comes from the album cover of "1989 (Taylor's Version)." Fans zoomed in on the font styling of "Taylor's Version" and noticed that while the first "s" appears normal, the second seems to have extra emphasis at the start of the letter stroke and could resemble a snake.

When fan theories fail to materialize, Swifties will often post online using the clown emoji to represent her "clowning" fans.

Even U.S. landmarks aren't immune from being clowned: On Nov. 26, the official account for the Empire State Building in New York City released a shot of the landmark lit up in black and white in anticipation of the expected album.

"There will be no explanation," the tweet said with a black heart.

"I'm glad the Empire State Building is clowning as hard as I am," @antiheropaige replied to the tweet.

Esther Sun is an intern for TODAY.com. She loves café-hopping and watching cooking TikToks she knows she will never try.

Maddie Ellis is a weekend editor at TODAY Digital.

Ariana Brockington is a trending news reporter at TODAY digital. She is based in Los Angeles.

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Lyrics submitted by Mellow_Harsher

End Game Lyrics as written by Johan Karl Schuster Edward Christopher Sheeran

Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

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Taylor Swift dropped her first video of 2018 and it's a large one.

Swift's newest single from 2017's reputation features genuine rapper Future and apparently aspiring rapper Ed Sheeran for the pseudo title track from the album. And yes, Swift raps, too. First teased on her social media app, The Swift Life, and on Instagram by Swift, then previewed on Good Morning America, the video was shot in Tokyo, Miami, and London. It was directed by longtime Swift collaborator Joseph Khan, who's responsible for some of the pop star's most well known music videos, including "Blank Space" and "Look What You Made Me Do."

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Every Time Taylor Swift Used Sports Metaphors in Her Songs — Before and After Meeting Travis Kelce

Taylor Swift became a bonafide sports fan after she started dating NFL star Travis Kelce in summer 2023.

“Football is awesome, it turns out,” Swift quipped to TIME in her December 2023 Person of the Year profile. “I’ve been missing out my whole life.”

Rooting for Kelce , a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, even seemingly inspired Swift as she wrote The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.

“These blokes warm the benches / We’ve been on a winning streak,” she sings on “The Alchemy,” which was released in April 2023. “He jokes that ‘It’s heroin, but this time with an E’ / ‘Cause the sign on your heart / Said it’s still reserved for me.”

Related: Every Time Taylor Swift Attended an NFL Game to Cheer for Travis Kelce

Swift went to 13 (coincidentally, her lucky number) of Kelce’s NFL games during the 2023-2024 season, including Super Bowl LVIII in February 2024. After the Chiefs won the championship, Swift greeted him on the field with a kiss and proclaimed that she had “never” seen anything like the game outcome. Kelce, meanwhile, has frequently asserted that he’s just grateful for her tireless support — even flying for 13 hours across oceans to make it in time.

While fans gushed over Swift’s first musical allusion to Kelce on TTPD , it isn’t the only time she’s mentioned sports in verse. Us Weekly revisits the pop star’s sportiest lyrics below:

‘Fifteen’ (Fearless)

“Well, in your life you’ll do things / Greater than dating the boy on the football team / I didn’t know it at fifteen.”

While Swift told her best friend Abigail Anderson that she would be better off without the high school football star at the time, the Grammy winner’s romance with Kelce later proved she could have both.

‘You Belong With Me’ (Fearless)

“She’s cheer captain / and I’m on the bleachers.”

This “You Belong With Me” lyric, as well as its football-coded music video, says it all.

‘Mean’ (Speak Now)

“And I can see you years from now in a bar / Talking over a football game / With that same big, loud opinion / But nobody’s listening.”

In “Mean,” Swift’s critics are blasting her career while watching a game on TV.

Related: Taylor Swift's Chicest Game Day Styles at Travis Kelce's Chiefs Games

‘long live’ (speak now).

“I said remember this feeling / I passed the pictures around / Of all the years that we stood there on the sidelines / Wishing for right now.”

“We are the kings and the queens / You traded your baseball cap for a crown / When they gave us our trophies / And we held them up for our town.”

“Long Live” has taken on a new life as Swift started dating Kelce, who did win the big championship trophy and held it up at the postgame celebration on the field.

‘Stay Stay Stay’ (Red)

“This morning I said we should talk about it / ‘Cause I read you should never leave a fight unresolved / That’s when you came in wearing a football helmet / And said, ‘OK, let’s talk.’”

While “Stay Stay Stay” is not about sports per se, Swit’s then-boyfriend did wear athletic equipment during a fight.

‘Blank Space’ (1989)

“’Cause you know I love the players / And you love the game.”

The lyric took on a new meaning when Swift pointed at Kelce, a pro football player, when he came to see her Eras Tour concert abroad.

‘End Game’ (Reputation)

“I wanna be your endgame / I wanna be your first string / I wanna be your A-Team.”

It certainly didn’t hurt that “End Game” was the very first surprise song that Kelce heard when he went to Swift’s show in Argentina.

‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things’ (Reputation)

“Jump into the pool from the balcony / Everyone swimmin’ in a champagne sea.”

Swimming is a sport too, let Us remind you.

‘Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince’ (Lover)

“Now I’m feeling hopeless, ripped up my prom dress / Running through rose thorns, I saw the scoreboard / And ran for my life.”

Scoreboards are an integral part of sporting events to keep track of points.

‘London Boy’ (Lover)

“You can find me in the pub, we are watching rugby with his school friends.”

“London Boy,” notably penned about Swift’s life across the pond with now-ex Joe Alwyn , reminisced about what it was like for her to become a rugby fan.

‘Afterglow’ (Lover)

“Fighting with a true love is boxing with no gloves / Chemistry ’til it blows up, ’til there’s no us.”

While Swift’s sports of choice in her lyrics are primarily football and baseball, boxing gets its due in the Lover ballad.

Related: Athletes Who Have Defended Taylor Swift Attending NFL Games


‘willow’ (folklore).

“Like you were a trophy or a champion ring / And there was one prize I’d cheat to win.”

Many athletes, like Kelce, get trophies or championship rings when they win a big game. (Here’s hoping they just don’t lose them like Travis’ brother, Jason Kelce , at an April 2023 taping of his “New Heights” podcast.)

‘Cowboy Like Me’ (Evermore)

“And the tennis court was covered up / With some tent-like thing / And you asked me to dance / But I said, ‘Dancing is a dangerous game.’”

The Evermore track has two sports metaphors for the price of one.

‘Only the Young’ 

“You did all that you could do / The game was rigged, the ref got tricked.”

The single from Swift’s Netflix documentary, Miss Americana , name-drops a referee.

‘The Alchemy’ (The Tortured Poets Department)

“So when I touch down / Call the amateurs and cut ’em from the team / Ditch the clowns, get the crown.”

“Shirts off and your friends lift you up over their heads / Beer stickin’ to the floor, cheers chanted ’cause they said. There was no chance trying to be the greatest in the league. Where’s the trophy? He just comes runnin’ over to me.”

Swift has watched Travis score multiple impressive touchdowns (and countless other passes) when she attended his football games. Plus, Swift notably chugged a beer while watching Travis in February 2024’s Super Bowl. Us also notes that Swift watched Jason rip off his shirt during one of Travis’ playoff games weeks earlier.

‘So High School’ (The Tortured Poets Department)

“You know how to ball / I know Aristotle.”

Later in the song, Swift also mentions “laughing in the middle of practice.” (Early in her romance with Travis, she would secretly visit him at the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium during team practices.)

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Bonus: ‘Karma’ ( Midnights at The Eras Tour )

“Karma is the guy on the Chiefs / Coming straight home to me.”

While “Karma” technically did not feature any athletic allusions when Midnights came out in 2022, Swift shook the world during her Eras Tour performance in Argentina. Instead of singing, “Karma is the guy on the screen / coming straight home to me,” Swift traded the word “screen” for “Chiefs.” And, in case you forgot, Travis was in the audience and was spotted blushing at the shout-out.

The Tortured Poets Department is out now .

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How Taylor Swift Won Back the Public

The reputation era was the last time the pop star let someone else define her. here’s how she rebuilt her image..

Taylor Swift is largely unmatched in modern pop — an artist who combines the soul of a poet, the nous of a chess master, and a hedge-funder’s eye for arbitrage opportunities. And her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department , caps off a period of cultural dominance unseen in recent history. For an industry that runs on youth and novelty, Swift’s hitting a career peak in her mid-30s is a rare feat, and it’s even more remarkable for a woman, especially one who, eight years ago, endured a protracted public backlash tied to her long-running feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. That was the last time Swift let someone else define her. Since then, she has rebuilt her image so successfully that it’s hard to imagine anyone else taking her down again. As Swift enjoys playing with the concept of multiple selves — explored in music videos, tour sets, and credit-card commercials — here are the 13 Taylor Swifts that put her back on top again.

The Victim (2017)

In her quarrel with the Wests, Swift was cast in the role of perfidious white woman falsely claiming victimhood. And since she has made her near-downfall an integral piece of her star narrative, the darkness before the inevitable triumph, some have questioned whether it was really that bad. (This magazine once called her single “Look What You Made Me Do” a “pure piece of Trump-era art,” which was not intended as a compliment.) After retreating from the public eye for months, she resurfaced in the summer of 2017 for a civil suit against a radio DJ who’d groped her years earlier. Confronted with a situation in which Swift incontrovertibly was a victim, seeking nothing more than a symbolic $1 in damages, public opinion began to turn around once more. She made such a winning appearance on the witness stand, refusing to be shaken by aggressive questioning, that even outlets who’d once denounced her published roundups of her best quips .

The Garbo (2018)

During Swift’s year away, she began dating up-and-coming actor Joe Alwyn. Throughout their seven-year relationship, the pair were rarely photographed together and said as little as possible about each other in interviews. “We decided together we wanted our relationship to be private,” Swift would say. Going dark not only helped Swift ward off the overexposure that caused her trouble in the past, it also meant that, if you wanted to follow their love story, you could only do so through her music, a medium where Swift had full control. (And where Alwyn, credited as “William Bowery,” would occasionally pop up as a co-writer.) As Swift returned to the spotlight, she was careful to underline the difference between her public and private selves. In the liner notes to Reputation , she wrote, “We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them that they have chosen to show us.”

The Vulnerable One (2018–19)

What version of Swift did she show us in the documentary Miss Americana ? Lana Wilson’s film, which follows the star through 2018–19 and was released in 2020, provides a glimpse of what Swift considers to be her human side with frequent shots of her journaling and hanging out at home with her cats. (Alwyn is barely seen.) Amid the stage-managed authenticity of scenes in which Swift defends her decision to wade into politics to a room full of middle-age white men, there are a few genuine revelations. She discusses her history of disordered eating and her innate people-pleasing tendencies with the self-awareness of someone who has undergone a lot of therapy. Tellingly, the doc is bookended by scenes of Swift failing, first at the Grammys, then at politics. When she dejectedly declares that all she needs to do is make a better record than Reputation, it’s almost enough to make her feel like an underdog again.

The Ally (2019)

In the polarized atmosphere of the Trump presidency, the urgency of the moment overcame Swift’s natural prudence. After being knocked for her silence during the 2016 election — “Taylor Swift is never, ever, ever going to tell you whom she’s voting for, because speaking up is never, ever, ever going to benefit Taylor Swift,” quipped Vox.com — she entered the electoral arena during the subsequent midterms, calling on her fans in Tennessee to vote against anti-gay, anti-feminist Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn. She continued in this vein during her Lover era, campaigning for a bill outlawing discrimination against the LGBT community and issuing the thinly veiled Trump diss track “You Need to Calm Down” as a single. “Why are you mad when you could be GLAAD?” she sang, cavorting in the video with drag queens and the Queer Eye guys … and also Katy Perry, with whom she’d buried the hatchet, ending a yearslong feud. Unfortunately, both of Swift’s interventions came up short. (Blackburn was elected with nearly 55 percent of the vote — the political defeat Swift referenced in Miss Americana .) In retrospect, the greatest legacy of this moment was Swift waving the rainbow flag so fervently that a contingent of fans became convinced she was secretly queer. ( Is that why her hair was the same color as the bisexual pride flag? , conspiracists wondered.)

The Owner (2019)

The old Taylor had made hay out of feuds with other artists; the new Taylor would only battle enemies from within the executive class, none of whom could boast their own stan armies. Performing a career-spanning medley at the 2019 American Music Awards, Swift wore a shirt emblazoned with the names of her first six albums. It was a defiant salvo in a war that had begun three months earlier, when Swift announced a plan to rerecord her old music in protest of former Big Machine Records head Scott Borchetta’s   sale of her old masters to manager Scooter Braun, a Swift nemesis. “This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept,” she wrote on Tumblr . The AMAs performance was preceded by a public back-and-forth in which Swift claimed she had been forbidden from performing her old music unless she abandoned the project. (Big Machine Records denied this.) In the current Swift narrative, this is the other dark moment she had to overcome, and her personal activism, at least, had a happy ending. The rerecording project got underway in 2021, allowing Swift to rewrite the story of her career under self-ownership.

The Auteur (2020–22)

Swift’s COVID albums folklore and evermore saw her turn away from autobiographical songwriting, employing fictional narratives inspired by the cinematic “folktales” like The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth she’d been exploring in quarantine. Full of contemplative woodland imagery and duets with adult-contemporary acts like Bon Iver and the National (whose guitarist Aaron Dessner co-wrote and produced significant chunks of both albums), the new music introduced a more highbrow, Pitchfork-friendly version of Swift. As the writer B.D. McClay noted, this era “brought back the fans who hadn’t loved her turn to pop or who had lost touch with her as they got older,” while also attracting “new fans who were interested in a Taylor Swift album without all the Taylor Swift personal baggage.” Swift’s serious-artist bona fides were further underscored by her burgeoning directorial career, which wiped away memories of earlier questionable Hollywood forays like Cats . Having begun helming her own music videos on Lover , she campaigned for a Live Action Short Oscar nomination for her “All Too Well” ten-minute version video, name-dropped her fave art-house films at film-festival talkbacks, and appeared opposite Martin McDonagh for Variety ’s “Directors on Directors” series. These efforts didn’t earn her an Oscar nom, but they did set up what appears to be the next stage of her career: In 2022, she landed a feature-film deal with Searchlight, whose presidents hailed her as a “once in a generation artist and storyteller.”

The Titan (2023)

Swift went on tour in 2023, having released four new albums since she’d last hit the road and being in the middle of her rerecording project. Other artists’ live shows might have struggled from a lack of focus, but as always, Swift found a way to make it work for her: She embarked on the Eras Tour, a celebration of her entire career — ten acts, with past and present on equal terms, and Swift miming the lyrics the way her fans had done since childhood. In the words of critic Steven Hyden , the Eras concept dismantled “the ‘new work vs. old work’ binary for artists,” allowing Swift “to be a ‘legacy act’ and a ‘relevant pop act’ simultaneously.” As one college-age fan gushed to the New York Times , “You could so easily be ashamed of singing Taylor Swift in your bedroom. You could leave it behind. But she doesn’t let you … What if we weren’t ashamed of our eras? What if we realized they were always with us?” Eras is considered the highest-grossing concert tour ever, adding billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and reportedly making Swift herself a billionaire, too. Every night, she flexed her biceps in the lead-up to the Lover cut “The Man,” towering over the music industry like a colossus.

The Crisis Manager (2023)

After news broke of her breakup with Alwyn in April 2023, Swift rebounded with his exact opposite: outspoken edgelord Matty Healy of the band the 1975. When Healy made racist comments about rapper Ice Spice on a podcast, the resulting controversy seemed for a second to engulf Swift herself. She quickly went into damage control, collaborating with Ice Spice on the remix of her latest single, “Karma,” and bringing her onstage at the Eras Tour in New Jersey. (The Healy relationship, which was never confirmed by either party, ended soon after.) The idea of Swift as a PR mastermind became such a significant element of her star image that her publicist, the all-seeing, all-knowing Tree Paine, became a minor celebrity in her own right.

The Squad Leader (2023)

Swift’s 1989 was the era of her squad — a collection of similarly famous women who represented the power of female friendship, the freedom to not be defined by her romantic relationships. (Little did she know fans would simply assume she was dating girls instead.) Coincidentally or not, the run-up to the 1989 rerelease in October 2023 saw the rebirth of the squad, as Swift began making more public appearances flocked by her celebrity friends. She was not subtle about employing the spotlight as a shield. When Sophie Turner was hounded by the tabloids amid her divorce from Joe Jonas, a Swift ex from years ago, Swift took Turner under her wing, keeping her close in a signal of solidarity. Not everyone received the same benefits: As rumors swirled that Swift was feuding with Olivia Rodrigo over songwriting credits, the latter was a conspicuous absence in her personal life.

The Mogul (2023)

When it came time to release a concert movie from the Eras Tour, Swift seized control of the means of production. She self-funded the project, then made a distribution deal with AMC directly, cutting out the big Hollywood studios. (Here, too, she was savvy in her enemies, as at that moment the studios were widely despised due to the SAG and WGA strikes.) The most notable guest at the premiere? Beyoncé, whose Renaissance Tour overlapped with Swift’s, and who would soon release her own concert film through similar methods — a gesture that they would no longer be pitted against each other, at least outside the Grammys. “The way she’s taught me and every artist out here to break rules and defy industry norms,” Swift wrote on Instagram , alongside a Boomerang of Beyoncé tossing popcorn.

The Empire (2023)

Swift doesn’t give many interviews, and when she does, they’re usually with Time, which hits her sweet spot: venerable, middlebrow, and pliant. (You can imagine her parents were subscribers in the ’90s.) Her 2023 “Person of the Year” cover was a culmination of her playing a nearly perfect game on the celebrity front. “It feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33,” Swift told the mag. “Ultimately, we can convolute it all we want, or try to overcomplicate it, but there’s only one question … ‘Are you not entertained?’” However, the accompanying photos demonstrated a disconnect between Swift’s brand of relatable stardom, which all but demands a feline accessory, and the high-glam style of the culture industry. Alone among A-list pop stars, Swift is not expected to slay: As Puck’s Lauren Sherman wrote, her current aesthetic is aimed at “14-year-olds, or someone of any age who wishes to look like a senior at Emerson College in 2006.” She serves big sister, not strictly mother.

The Girlfriend (2024)

Swift’s relationship with NFL tight end Travis Kelce can be seen as a corporate merger of the last two vestiges of the monoculture, and her frequent presence on Chiefs broadcasts was widely credited for expanding the league’s female audience. This relationship has played out in full view of the media, as unlike Alwyn or Healy, Kelce — who harbors ambitions to be as famous as the Rock — has been an enthusiastic participant in Swift’s star project, flying to Argentina on his bye week so she could run into his arms after a Buenos Aires concert. Such a public performance of romance was the biggest fan service Swift could provide, and it inaugurated a period of mass saturation that has marked a stark shift from her earlier reclusion. In her Time interview, Swift confirmed her approach had changed since the Reputation era. “Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years — I’ll never get that time back.”

The Mastermind (2024)

When Swift walked the 2024 Grammys red carpet in a white Schiaparelli gown and black gloves, haters pounced. (As one anonymous writer put it , her outfit “looked like hotel curtains saddled with opera gloves and a watch choker that cut her neck in half.”) Still, as they had been trained to do, fans obsessively studied the look for clues about the rerecorded version of Reputation , which is linked with monochrome imagery in Swiftie lore. But they had it all wrong. When Swift won Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights — her 13th Grammy, she noted auspiciously — she used her acceptance speech to announce a brand-new record, The Tortured Poets Department . Which perhaps explains the over-the-top romanticism of the look. She wasn’t dressing for the Grammys, or for Midnights ; she was dressing for her new era.

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All the proof Taylor Swift is making first major change to Eras Tour

Welcome to "The Tortured Poets Department" (Eras Tour Version).

It looks like Taylor Swift 's Eras Tour is getting a brand new era, straight from the Tortured Poets Department .

Since the announcement of her new 11th studio album ( which dropped April 19 ), fans have been anxiously waiting to see if her worldwide, career-spanning tour would get a shakeup to accommodate the new music. While Swift is remaining mum, and a rep for the singer didn't respond to an EW request for comment, a new YouTube Short posted to Swift's account seems to provide all the clarity Swifties needed that a change is imminent.

In the video, which is part of Swift's #ForAFortnightChallenge tied to the album's first single, "Fortnight," the 14-time Grammy winner can be seen rehearsing for tour with her backup dancers. While some shots are obviously from the Folklore , Lover , and other existing "eras" of the show, several blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments have never been seen before.

In one, Swift, clad in workout gear, appears to be wearing the same boots seen in her "Fortnight" video . She's holding on to a banister that looks like it has the Tortured Poets Department emblem on it — the "P" and the "D" can just be made out.

taylor swift/youtube

Although the video is in grayscale, and therefore exact colors are impossible to identify for sure, several shots feature what looks like a new white-ish mic, which has never been seen before. The new era's color, of course, is also an off-white hue.

Perhaps the most interesting moment of the new clip, though, is one that features what looks like new choreography and costumes. Swift's backup dancers can be seen in top hats and dancing with canes, while she sings in the front middle of the group — choreography and props which have so far not been featured in the concert.

This is all speculative until the tour resumes in Paris, France, on May 9, of course, but if Swift is adding a whole new era, it would mark the first major change to the setlist since Swift began performing it last March.

Throughout the tour, she's made little swaps here or there: She added performances with some of the artists who opened for her like HAIM or Phoebe Bridgers, and she added "Long Live" to the Speak Now section when that re-recorded album released during tour. She also swapped out "Invisible String" for the "The 1" in the Folklore section after news of her split with Joe Alwyn broke.

But, nothing has majorly been added or subtracted from the show, which is already a whopping three-and-a-half hours long. Now, if anyone could pull off adding more runtime to Eras, it's the "Mastermind" herself, but it's more likely that some songs will be getting cut to make room for new material. Fans have theorized that the tracks that didn't make it into the VOD rental of the Eras Tour concert film — "The Archer," "Wildest Dreams," "Cardigan," and "Long Live" — could be first on the chopping block, but we'll just have to wait and see what Ms. Swift has up her cryptic and Machiavellian sleeve.

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Will Taylor Swift add 'Tortured Poets' to international Eras Tour? Our picks.

A double album. Thirty one songs. Two hours and two minutes. In the spaces between the international, record- breaking Eras Tour, Taylor Swift released her 11th era: "The Tortured Poets Department." But will the behemoth tour make room for the newest addition to Swift's vast catalog and how?

"The Tortured Poets Department" showcases the singer's mastery to connect words like puzzle pieces seamlessly depicting the human experience and complex themes of false wedding promises, relationship imprisonment, break-ups and drug escapism, religion versus rebellion, childhood retrospection and the duality of internally suffering while externally performing. It would be a surprise for her not to push this body of art into the spotlight.

But how it fits into the 44-song three hour and 15-minute Eras tour is anyone's guess. And we won't find out until she resumes the tour on May 9 in Paris. I'll be there.

Read Melissa Ruggieri's review Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets' is hauntingly brilliant, even the 15 surprise songs

Whether or not she's incorporating the era has already been decided. Swift is 13 steps ahead . She plans her moves years in advance. There is a two-month break from the tour and she has been spending time in Los Angeles. Her team of dancers have not been as active on social media possibly because they're rehearsing a new set. Or maybe it's a coincidence?

The simplest path would be to absorb some of the the 31 songs into the acoustic set that comes after "Bad Blood" during the "1989" era. Swift has used the 2024 surprise songs to play mash-ups on the guitar and the piano. It's when she makes announcements and it's a custom gift to concertgoers and fans watch in envy on livestreams from around the world.

'Tortured Poets' release live updates What to know as Taylor Swift's new album debuts

More likely, she will add a "Tortured Poets" set. The show is segmented, allowing a new era to squeeze in. She could open the show with the new era, although "Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince's" opening line is a perfect opening for an artist who has released seven albums and hasn't seen fans: "It's been a long time coming." She could end the show with the set, but "Karma" is a good show closer.

Cue the confetti. If she ends the tour with "Tortured Poets," I'm guessing "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart" is the closer.

The writing shines bright like Swift's glittering sequin stars which is reminiscent of and relative to "Folklore" and "Evermore." For the flow of the concert, it makes more sense to not place "Tortured Poets" next to these albums. The show flows with a narrative that spans almost two decades with highs and lows of energy. Two areas that could be good: after "Reputation" and before "Speak Now" or after the secret songs and before "Midnights." Maybe she dives into the stage to swim to the an asylum of typewriters and tormented thoughts.

The four eras with the most amount of songs are the latest records she owned that aren't re-records: "Lover" (six songs), "Folklore" (seven songs), "Evermore" (five songs) and "Midnights" (seven songs). Will she follow that flow? Will she cut songs from these eras?

I could see her performing the lead single "Fortnight," title track "The Tortured Poets Department," Eras Tour song "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart," "Down Bad," "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me," "thanK you aIMee" and "So High School."

Swift holds the answer key. Sixty-nine shows are left on the recording shattering magnum opus for 2024.

Don't miss any Taylor Swift news; sign up for the  free, weekly newsletter "This Swift Beat."

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A guide to everyone Taylor Swift sings about in ‘Tortured Poets Department’ — and their reactions

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Taylor Swift didn’t hold back on calling everyone out on her newest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” and the reactions are rolling in.

The surprise double album was released in two parts on April 19, giving exuberant Swifties plenty of material to analyze — including multiple celebrity call-outs.

Kim Kardashian

Swift and Kardashian have a long-standing feud, which started with Swift and Ye back in the day and goes back to Kimye’s infamous doctored phone call , which appeared to prove Taylor had given consent for a nude wax figure of her to appear in Kanye’s “Famous” music video. TLDR: The call was edited, but Swift was ripped to shreds online anyway, an experience that inspired her now legendary “Reputation” album.

Swift isn’t quite letting Kardashian off the hook, and “TTPD’s” “thanK you aIMee” pointedly had the letters of Kardashian’s first name capitalized in the title.

Taylor Swift turns heel, owning her chaos and messiness on ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

Swift’s 11th studio LP, ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ released at midnight Eastern time, follows a busy period in the 34-year-old’s personal and professional spheres.

April 18, 2024

“And so I changed your name and any real defining clues / And one day, your kid comes home singin’ / A song that only us two is gonna know is about you,” Taylor wrote, apparently referencing daughter North West’s TikToks that have featured her songs in the past.

Kardashian didn’t respond directly to the taunt, but she did post a throwback photo with Swift’s ex-best friend Karlie Kloss on mutual pal Derek Blasberg’s birthday. Whether it was a coincidence is anyone’s guess.

Matty Healy

The 1975 frontman was the surprise “TTPD” guest star. He and the “Bejeweled” singer appeared to have had a short fling following her split from Joe Alwyn, but the lyrics in “TTPD” have led to speculation that the two were involved for far longer.

The title track is particularly damning: “You left your typewriter at my apartment,” Swift sings, referencing Healy’s apparent penchant for the old-school device. (“Who uses typewriters anyway?” she later asks.)

Swift goes on to call him a “tattooed golden retriever” before describing his smoking habits.

“But you tell Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave / And I had said that to Jack about you so I felt seen,” she continues, referencing Boygenius member Lucy Dacus, who performed with Swift on the Eras tour, and her producer and bestie Jack Antonoff. Sounds super healthy and normal!

The best songs from Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets Department’ double album

Taylor Swift released the 16-track “Tortured Poets Department” at the stroke of midnight on Friday — and surprised fans with 15 more songs two hours later. Here are the best songs from the double album.

April 19, 2024

And all that’s from just one song. “But Daddy I Love Him,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “Guilty as Sin?,” “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” all pile on the blame.

Healy responded coolly on Wednesday. “I haven’t really listened to that much of it,” the singer told paparazzi, “but I’m sure it’s good.”

His tone marks a stark difference from when he called dating Swift “ emasculating .”

His mom, Denise Welch, was similarly unbothered, saying on British talk show “Loose Women” that she “wasn’t aware [Swift] had an album out at all.”

Unlikely, considering “TTPD” just became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day, but whatever.

Just as fans predicted, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend of six years was spared little sympathy. Even the album title is supposedly a reference to the name of a group chat between the actor, Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott, called the “Tortured Man Club.”

“So Long, London” is Taylor’s most obvious hit at Alwyn, considering he inspired the track “London Boy” on her 2019 album “Lover.”

“I didn’t opt in to be your odd man out,” she sings about the end of their relationship. “I founded the club she’s heard great things about / I left all I knew, you left me at the house by the Heath.”

The 5 tracks you need to hear from Taylor Swift’s surprise ‘Tortured Poets’ companion

Released two hours after “The Tortured Poets Department” on Thursday night, Taylor Swift’s second set of new songs contains a handful of highlights.

It’s clear Alwyn promised Swift a lot more than what he gave her. In “LOML” she laments how “You s—-talked me under the table / Talkin’ rings and talkin’ cradles / I wish I could unrecall / How we almost had it all.”

The marriage references don’t stop. In “imgonnagetyouback,” Swift tries to decide “whether I’m gonna be your wife or gonna smash up your bike.”

Fans have also latched onto a line in “Fortnight,” which features Post Malone, as proof that Alwyn wasn’t always faithful to Swift. “My husband is cheating, I wanna kill him,” Swift sings.

According to a source , Alwyn “has listened to the album, and he is slightly disappointed, but not surprised at all.” Maybe he’s upset about Healy stealing his spotlight?

Travis Kelce

Of course, Swift couldn’t leave current beau Kelce behind. The Kansas City Chiefs tight end is the apparent subject of “The Alchemy” and “So High School,” both of which are riddled with football metaphors.

“The greatest in the league / Where’s the trophy? / He just comes running over to me,” she sings in “The Alchemy,” referencing the couple’s viral kiss after Kelce‘s team won the Super Bowl in February.

“You know how to ball, I know Aristotle,” she added in “So High School.” “You knew what you wanted and, boy, you got her,” she concludes in the song, alluding to how Kelce pursued her after seeing her perform on the Eras tour.

Science & Medicine

Taylor Swift’s new album is rife with breakup songs. Psychologists explain why we love them

Taylor Swift’s new ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ album draws inspiration from her own breakups. What attracts us to songs about failed relationships?

“I have heard some of it, yes, and it is unbelievable,” Kelce said at a sports event in February, ahead of the album’s release. “I can’t wait for her to shake up the world when it finally drops.”

He’s “very proud of her,” a source told E! News after the record dropped earlier this month.

“Travis is so supportive of the entire album,” the source continued, “and loves that he is a part of Taylor’s story.”

Kelce’s mom, Donna, even chimed in the conversation with her own praise. “I listened to the whole album, and I listened to it all morning long when it was released,” she told People this week.

“I was just very impressed,” she said. “She is a very talented woman, and I think it is probably her best work.”

More to Read

It’s another all-Taylor Swift edition of the Hot 100 chart this week

April 30, 2024

‘I love when we get crazy’: Swifties revel in the ‘joy’ of Taylor Swift’s album release and their avid fan culture

April 22, 2024

A field guide to the references on Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

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Eva Hartman is a spring 2024 reporting intern with the Fast Break Desk at the Los Angeles Times. She is a senior at the University of Southern California studying international relations, where she has served as the news assignments editor and magazine editor at the Daily Trojan.

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Taylor Swift's ‘Tortured Poets Department' Had One of the Best Debuts in History - Will She Eventually Score the Biggest First Week Ever?

It's zero shock that Taylor Swift finishes her first frame for new album The Tortured Poets Department : After all, she already boasted the decade's two biggest debuts, for 2022's Midnights (1.578 million equivalent album units) and 2023's 1989 (Taylor's Version) (1.653 million units), and has only kept getting bigger in the months since those releases. Still, the exact opening number for Poets is staggering: 2.61 million units, according to Luminate, more than any album since Adele's 25 bowed with 3.48 million in late 2015.

The 16-track set - which Swift expanded to 31 with its Anthology edition - also debuts all of its songs on the Billboard Hot 100 , while occupying each of the chart's top 14 slots. The Hot 100 takeover is led by the album's leadoff cut, the Post Malone collab "Fortnight," which becomes Swift's 12th No. 1 on the chart. Despite all its early commercial achievements, the album's critical reception has been more mixed to start, with many criticizing the set's length and repetitiveness.

How did the album achieve its eye-popping first-week numbers? And will Swift's album releases likely get smaller or even bigger from here? Billboard staffers debate these questions and more below.

1. The final first-week number for The Tortured Poets Department is 2.6 million, easily the best number of Swift's career and the finest single-week tally since Adele's 25 nearly a decade ago. Is that number higher, lower or about what you expected for the TTPD debut?  

Hannah Dailey : I don't think anyone could've predicted that the number would be so insanely high, but I did expect that TTPD would earn Swift her biggest opening week yet. It's well established that the pop star's spotlight has never been brighter than in the past year, thanks to the Eras Tour, her high-profile breakups from Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy and even higher-profile romance with Travis Kelce, as well as the chart/awards success of Midnights - so it was a given that more people than ever would be tuning in.  

Stephen Daw : It feels strange to say that record-breaking numbers felt "expected," but this is Taylor Swift we're talking about. With every subsequent release - which seem to be coming more and more frequently for the singer/songwriter - she manages to break the records that she set with her last release, so it stands to reason that  Tortured   Poets  would manage to best her  Midnights  and  1989 (Taylor's Version)  sales numbers. 

Kyle Denis : Around what I expected. Swift is undeniably at her commercial peak right now, and she was able to leverage the breadth of that power with gargantuan 31-song tracklist and 19 different variants of the album. 

Jason Lipshutz : Much higher. Considering the expectations-shattering run that Taylor Swift is on right now, I shouldn't be surprised that The Tortured Poets Department scored the biggest bow of the 2020s with ease… but still, 2 million is a stratosphere that not even Swift herself has approached in the past, let alone an additional 600,000 units on top of that. I mean, TTPD blew the Midnights debut out of the water - and Midnights really wasn't that long ago? This No. 1 feat demonstrates just how much higher Swift's superstardom has climbed recently, her music becoming a monoculture unto itself that everybody needs to check out or purchase.

Andrew Unterberger : Yeah higher. Over two million felt realistic, but I still thought it would be more of a peeking-its-head-over-two-million figure than one actually even closer to three million. It wasn't even two years ago we were legitimately wondering whether another one-million-unit first week would happen again this decade; for Swift to come within shouting range of triple that is pretty wild.

2. What would you point to as being the biggest factor in Swift not only beating the already-historic first-week tallies of Midnights and 1989 (Taylor's Version) with her TTPD debut, but clearing both by around a million units each?  

Hannah Dailey : I think TTPD would have blown Midnights and 1989 out of the water no matter what, if nothing else because of how excited fans and haters alike were to scour the new lyrics for clues about her mystifying private life and famous love interests. But there's no doubt in my mind that Swift's surprise double album announcement is what sent the project over the two-million mark, inciting some listeners to purchase twice as many copies as they would have otherwise. She's playing the numbers game, and she's winning. 

Stephen Daw : The short answer is the fact that the album was made available in more than 20 different formats certainly helped that Swift reach that astronomical figure. The much longer answer is that timing played a very key factor here. Between the ongoing Eras Tour and her extremely high-profile celebrity romance, Taylor Swift is currently dominating cultural discussions across the wide spectrum of what we consider entertainment. Fan interest in all things Taylor Swift has never been higher, and from the moment she announced  Tortured Poets  at the Grammys, Swifties have remained in a near-constant state of frenzy over the album's release. To me, there was no world in which this album wouldn't beat Midnights and 1989 (Taylor's Version) by some ridiculous margin.

Kyle Denis : This is Swift's first LP of all-new material since kicking off the Eras Tour. Since the record-breaking tour began – and her subsequent high-profile relationships with Matty Healy and Travis Kelce – she's had her star grow even bigger, as impossible as that might have seemed. Her celebrity, brand and audience reach are bigger than ever – and she was already operating at pop music's pole position before any of that. 

As an album, Tortured Poets is also acutely aware of how deeply it delves into nearly two decades of Taylor Swift lore at a level that, a lot of the time, only die-hard fans understand. While the growth of her celebrity broadened her general reach, the material on Tortured Poets intensified how fans interacted with the album – whether that be countless listens on a streaming site or multiple purchases of the album's different configurations to ensure every last song is in their possession.   

Jason Lipshutz : The biggest tangible factor is probably the length of the album - more than twice as long as Midnights, which was always going to boost the TTPD streaming totals by comparison. Yet the most important factor here is intangible: Swift is just so much more enormous now than she was even 18 months ago - thanks in large part to the record-shattering Eras tour, as well as all of the success she's achieved with her recent re-recorded albums, plus "Cruel Summer" becoming one of the biggest hits of 2023 after being released four years prior. Simply put, the numbers keep ballooning because Swift's dominance in popular music keeps growing. Forget the track list length, vinyl production and romantic-drama intrigue; no matter how this album came out, it was likely becoming the biggest debut of Swift's career.

Andrew Unterberger : It's timing and planning. Any Swift album would have done massive numbers released a year after she set the new standard for contemporary pop superstardom, and the same year that she dominated both music's biggest night and sports' biggest night in consecutive weekends. But 31 tracks and nearly as many physical variants also helps, certainly.

3. "Fortnight" leads the pack for Swift on the Hot 100 with its No. 1 debut, but she owns each of the 13 spots beneath it with TTPD tracks as well. Do you see "Fortnight" as a long-lasting hit from this album - and which of the other tracks do you think has the best chance of challenging it as the set's biggest hit?  

Hannah Dailey : Two years ago , I thought that "Anti-Hero" would fall from No. 1 after its first week on the chart. It ended up staying there for eight weeks. So, this time, I'm going to trust Swift's instincts, if not my own, and say that "Fortnight" is smash hit potential and will indeed remain at the top for a while. But if another song were to give it a run for its money, it would be "Down Bad" or "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart" - both of which debuted in the top 3 and have boundless opportunities for TikTok virality. 

Stephen Daw : Of the songs off  TTPD , "Fortnight" feels like one that will stick around for a while - Taylor and Posty sound great together, and the song's mid-tempo, atmospheric feel brings something a little bit different to pop radio. But I feel fairly confident that "Down Bad" will end up being the breakout hit from  TTPD . It's got the pure pop sensibility of  1989,  the seething pettiness of  Reputation  and the more laid-back sensibilities of  Folklore  and  Evermore . A seamless blend of the things fans are looking for in a Taylor Swift hit, "Down Bad" can only go up from here. 

Stephen Daw : How does one stop a runaway train? Especially with the way that some of Swift's fans have been mercilessly going after music critics for doing their jobs over the last two weeks, I think it's fair to say that her stardom isn't cooling down any time soon. With a two more re-recordings still due to come from Taylor, as well as the European dates of her Eras Tour, she is not in any danger of losing relevance for the foreseeable future. 

Kyle Denis : I think "Fortnight" will stick around for a bit, but I doubt it truly follows in the footsteps of "Anti-Hero." With "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me" already going viral on TikTok, there's hit potential there. I'd also put my money on "Down Bad" and "But Daddy I Love Him" to make something shake. 

Jason Lipshutz : Maybe it won't replace "Anti-Hero" as her longest-lasting Hot 100 No. 1 hit, but yes, "Fortnight" is positioned for a lengthy run at or near the top of the Hot 100, with strong harmonic chemistry between Swift and Post Malone and a hook that sneaks up on the listener after fully blooming in the back half of the song. It's the most obvious single choice from TTPD to me, although I do think "Down Bad" is going to have a pronounced commercial moment - let's get that tear-soaked gym-set music video rolling ASAP.

Andrew Unterberger : "Fortnight" sounds like a smash to me, but it will not be able to simply dominate the Hot 100 for months (or even multiple weeks) by default like it might have in years past - not with rising hits from Sabrina Carpenter, Shaboozey and Tommy Richman already nipping at its heels, and not with a world-stopping Kendrick Lamar diss record entering the fray today as well. It will need to maintain momentum at streaming while growing rapidly at radio - something it certainly has the potential to do, but which we can't necessarily assume, even from Taylor Swift's new single.

If it fades, I could see "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart" passing it. The fact that "Heart" debuts at No. 3 on the Hot 100 despite appearing 14th in the album's tracklist shows that fans are already isolating it as a favorite from the project in huge numbers.

4. While the commercial response to TTPD has of course been overwhelming, the critic and fan response has been a little more mixed this time around for Swift, with many citing a lack of quality control among the set's 16 tracks (31 in the deluxe Anthology version). Do you think the mixed response will have any impact on Swift's ever-growing superstardom, or will her unprecedented rise just continue upwards from here?  

Hannah Dailey : I wouldn't be surprised if positive public opinion about Swift ebbs a little bit after TTPD, but her superstardom will be just fine. It doesn't matter if people are saying good or bad things about her; as long as they continue discussing her at length in any capacity, she'll stay at the forefront of pop culture and find even more ways to use that discourse to springboard herself to previously unheard-of heights.  

But, if quality control of her image as an artist – and not just a celebrity - is important to her, then she may want to take criticisms about quality control in her music seriously. TTPD is very good. But just imagine what she could make alongside a few new collaborators with fresh perspectives and a less heavy-handed approach, one that forces her to leave room only for her bestest ideas. 

Stephen Daw : How does one stop a runaway train? Especially with the way that some of Swift's fans have been mercilessly going after music critics for doing their jobs over the last two weeks, I think it's fair to say that her stardom isn't cooling down any time soon. With a two more re-recordings still due to come from Taylor, as well as the European dates of her Eras Tour, Taylor is not in any danger of losing relevance for the foreseeable future. 

Kyle Denis : Everyone and everything hits a ceiling, and Swift might be approaching hers. I think the mixed response can be easily mitigated by a new re-recording – the circumstances are certainly starting to align for Reputation (Taylor's Version) - or a new album with more quality control and a new sound. Nonetheless, I do think the mixed reactions are slightly indicative of Taylor fatigue across the board. The Swifties will always be there, but I can see a scenario in which casual listeners feel less inclined to check in post- Tortured Poets . 

Jason Lipshutz : Following a little more than a week of discourse, it's even more clear to me that TTPD is going to function like the 2020s version of Reputation - mainstream listeners will continue to be polarized, but Swift diehards will wrap their arms around it as an idiosyncratic opus that captures their favorite superstar's psyche, messy sprawl of the track list and all. In the same way that Reputation didn't slow down Swift's commercial enormity one bit, TTPD is a behemoth that also feels like a personalized note to the most attentive fans, a combination that will keep Swift growing ever still.

Andrew Unterberger : I think it's not so much about the quality of TTPD and its dozens of tracks as it as about the sheer amount of Swift we've been inundated with the past four years - not just in the pop-culture ubiquity sense, but in the mind-boggling volume of new tracks she's released over that time. A little time and distance will be kinder to a lot of these songs, and certainly it's not like folks are gonna be likely to brush off new Swift music anytime soon, but it still might be a good idea for her to chill on the new releases (or at least downscale 'em a little bit) for the next couple years or so.

5. Adele's 25 moved 3.48 units in its first week - a still mind-boggling number that many of us thought would never even be approached again. Swift has gotten closer than many would have expected, but she still has a decent gap to make up. What percentage chance would you give her of passing Adele's seemingly unreachable first week at some point in her career?  

Hannah Dailey : We've all learned not to underestimate Taylor Swift, but at the same time, I feel like TTPD would've been the album to surpass  25 if Swift had it in her. So for now, I'll give her 50%. You never know, especially with her.

Stephen Daw : I'm going to be conservative and say it's a 50/50 tossup. If anyone is going to manage to beat Adele, it will be Taylor Swift - but if the immediate, ridiculous sales numbers of  TTPD  aren't able to stack up to  25 , then it's hard to imagine a future Taylor Swift album that could. 

Kyle Denis : Above 50%. Taylor's a consistent seller and smart businesswoman, it's really all about timing with her. It's possible that, with a longer pre-order window and Scorpion- esque playlist takeovers, Tortured Poets could have come closer to 25's numbers. That said, something tells me that if she was ever going to pass 3.48 million units in the first week, 1989 (Taylor's Version) and Tortured Poets were her best bets. 

Jason Lipshutz : 3%. Never say never, but that number just looks too far out of reach for modern music consumption. At the very least, that number gives Swift something to aim for when the TTPD follow-up arrives.

Andrew Unterberger : Maybe 25%. This does feel like it was her best shot, but Swift didn't get to where she is by accepting "close but not quite," so I imagine she'll continue trying for it. 2.6 million isn't a world removed from 3.5 million, though it's still far enough that it's not a gap to be bridged with a couple more vinyl variants or another bonus disc of leftover cuts. I don't know how she might do it, but I do know that I wouldn't feel comfortable betting against her doing so.

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‘Tortured Poets’ Has Shifted the Taylor Swift Debate. Let’s Discuss.

The superstar’s 11th album is a 31-song excavation of her recent relationships that is not universally loved. Our pop team dissects its sound, themes and reception.

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By Jon Pareles ,  Ben Sisario ,  Lindsay Zoladz and Caryn Ganz

BEN SISARIO Hey, have you guys seen my antique typewriter? I think I left it at someone’s apartment. I swear, I’m so absent-minded …

JON PARELES I’m not sure you want to be associated with that typewriter’s owner , Ben. He doesn’t come off too well on “The Tortured Poets Department”; by the end, he’s been reduced to “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.”

SISARIO Over the years, I’ve trained myself to view Taylor Swift’s work through the eyes of her fans — that’s crucial for understanding Swift, whose connection with her listeners is at the root of her success, and it’s also become part of the art itself. The question is not just what is Swift saying, but what is she telling her fans, and how will they respond to it? And for my first few times listening to “Tortured Poets,” it seemed crystal clear to me that this album would rally fans intensely. This is an epic of romantic martyrdom, a cry of revenge greased by tears of rage. She’s pushing Swifties’ buttons, and I could imagine stadiums on every continent screaming in unison: “I love you, it’s ruining my life!”

The sound, too, seems perfectly calibrated. Over much of the last decade, Swift has kept parallel musical paths: moody electro-pop with Jack Antonoff, and raw, delicate indie-folk with Aaron Dessner. She split the difference here, engaging both producers, and I think Swifties vote yes.

PARELES It’s not just one Taylor Swift, though. It’s at least two: the world-conquering billionaire superstar who has stadiums chanting “More!” and the vulnerable girlfriend whose heart explodes when a guy teasingly slips a ring on her ring finger. It’s also the Swift who can’t help gathering writerly details for her next song, and the Swift who’s very deliberately planting autobiographical clues and Easter eggs for the fans to find. The tension between Swift as a shrewd, workaholic cultural colossus and Swift the 34-year-old woman seeking a worthy, committed partner — and, she suggests, marriage and family — is stronger than ever on this album, and makes it a real jumble of agendas.

CARYN GANZ I have long found it baffling that some Swift observers are hellbent on inscribing her into a queer narrative. To me, she is by far our most heteronormative pop star, with a catalog of songs longing for the kind of straight, fairy tale romance that ends in traditional marriage and children. ( Not that there’s anything wrong with that !) While it’s never wise to speculate about a public figure’s sexuality, Swift has made her romantic life the overt text of her work and is nearly demanding that fans read “Tortured Poets” as historical record — including lyrics about her current boyfriend, the paradigm of American heterosexuality: a football player. The tracks on the new album, like so many in her catalog, insist that no accomplishment is worth more than, or worthwhile without, that happy ending. The things that threaten it — immaturity, insincerity, addiction, chaos, lack of commitment, enemies tarnishing her reputation — are evils to be vanquished. “Tortured Poets” is quite bloodthirsty, which I enjoy in doses, but its power is blunted by its sonic and thematic repetition. Nobody here knows when to say when.

LINDSAY ZOLADZ My opinion of this album, which I reviewed on Friday, really hasn’t changed with repeated listens, and if anything I’ve backed even further into the corners of my initial praise and criticism. I have entered a handful of its songs into my personal Swift pantheon (the title track, “Guilty as Sin?,” “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” “The Black Dog,” “Fortnight” and “Florida!!!,” in precisely that order), and I believe that everything else needed at least a few more minutes in the air fryer.

I hear only two unique concerns on this album that separate it from any other Swift release. The first is being in love with a person who is struggling with their mental health and possibly an addiction — the manic highs, the feverish promises and the sudden abandonment she describes all feel incredibly vivid and give the material its emotional arc. She puts it succinctly in one of my favorite moments here, when she ends the song “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” with a halting and even comic “Whoa, maybe I can’t .”

And then, of course, there is Swift’s fascinating pushback against her more judgmental fans. She’s defiant on the much-discussed “But Daddy I Love Him” — “I’ll tell you something about my good name, it’s mine alone to disgrace,” she tells all the “wine moms” and “Sarahs and Hannahs” who clutch their pearls when Swift is seen with someone they don’t approve of — but I’ve also been thinking about its sister song on the second LP, the forlorn “How Did It End?” On that one, Swift woefully braces herself for all the chatter that will accompany the public announcement of a breakup, with all the people she knows and millions she’ll never meet demanding, “We must know, how did it end?”

That sounds exhausting, yes, but I would also love to hear Swift grappling more with her own role in that dynamic. Because even while she is bemoaning that kind of intrusiveness, I don’t know if she’s ever released an album that so explicitly lends itself to the kind of lyric-by-lyric analysis of whom she’s singing about. How do you all square the desire for privacy she seems to crave in many of these songs with the simultaneous Easter egginess of it all?

PARELES Lindsay, I wouldn’t call it a craving for privacy — not when she’s spending three hours a night onstage, walking red carpets and enjoying a public display of affection at the Super Bowl. Rather than privacy, the theme is more like seeking autonomy under the spotlight: the right to make good choices and bad ones, to learn — or not — from mistakes, to wreak vengeance or come to terms with regrets (the way she does in “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus”). I’ve never been a big fan of the pains-of-fame album, which can easily tilt into self-pity; it takes a songwriter as great as Joni Mitchell to come up with a song as telling as “For the Roses.” To me, a line like “I love you, it’s ruining my life” is a lot more resonant than “I was hitting my marks.” Somehow Swift has managed to get her fans to identify not just with her heartaches but with career pressures that, at this point, are self-imposed.

SISARIO I don’t see the duality of Swift’s on/offstage personae as a conflict as much as fodder for the enterprise. Yes, the dissonance between the outward triumph and joy of the Eras Tour, on the one hand, and the interior agony she was apparently going through at the same time, is intriguingly jarring. But the theme running through so much of her work is performative misery, which she turns into gold by celebrating it with her fans.

PARELES One thing that’s virtually absent from this album is the playful but self-questioning touch that Swift brought to “Anti-Hero.” The songs on this album are pretty much just sad or angry. The upbeat moments, like “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” or “But Daddy I Love Him,” still lash out at targets, and even “Imgonnagetyouback,” which is at least partly a wordplay exercise, has pushback at its core. After the self-reflection of the last few albums, are we headed back to teenage petulance ?

SISARIO Something that “Tortured Poets” drove home for me is that perhaps Swift’s greatest strength is how she has melded songwriting and journaling. Even she admits she’s no Patti Smith. But her gift is conveying the sense of honest intimacy, letting her feelings spill out in ways that seem straight from the heart. Her most powerful lyrics often involve telling details — a scarf, a cardigan — that are like burning memories.

And the journal is an inherently messy model. It has no end. Its purpose is to be a repository of the thoughts and feelings that are too raw, too personal, to say in public. (Well, at least to conceal while you are singing along with 80,000 people about those intimate details from a previous album.)

For a lot of Swift’s career, I think she has been a master of taming this chaos with the discipline of song. And it still happens here: the tight verse-chorus-verse of “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” could almost fit on “1989.” But overall — and definitely on the “Anthology” tracks — the journal sprawl wins out.

ZOLADZ Swift has in recent years pivoted to a release strategy that has more in common with rappers than other pop stars, and she seems to be following the lead of someone like Drake in her more-is-more approach. I do wonder, though, if her tour’s emphasis on her many different “eras” has only underscored how long this particular one has gone on. Sonically, the material on this album feels like an extension of either “Midnights” or “Folklore” and “Evermore.” Contrast the evolution here with the colorful reinventions between “Red” and “1989,” or between “Reputation” and “Lover.” To reference a hue she mentions on “The Prophecy,” too much of it feels like varying shades of greige.

PARELES There are some magnificent moments among the synths, especially with the vocal harmonies in songs like “So Long, London” and “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can).” But some of the sameness also comes from tunes and cadences that are starting to feel too familiar. One that especially stuck out to me on this album is the way a sustained verse melody gives way to a choppy pre-chorus, or chorus, that arrives in two-syllable bursts, the way it does in “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” “The Prophecy” and “The Bolter.”

When Swift started using that device, it brought some fresh hip-hop percussiveness into songwriting that was rooted in country. But now it’s standard practice for Swift and her many emulators. Swift is 11 albums and umpteen bonus tracks into her recording career, so it’s harder for her to evade echoes of her past. The songs near the end of this album, especially, start to sound like outtakes from “Folklore,” pretty as they are. But no one is forcing her to put 31 songs on an album, either.

GANZ It is simply too much, Jon, and for the first time in a while, listeners and critics are having honest conversations about it. Being a fan has come to mean unequivocal support in the stan (or superfan) era , with no room for criticism or questioning of any kind. The “Tortured Poets” moment is an interesting test — it has cracked open the door for debate and perhaps humanized Swift once again in the process. It’s been fascinating thinking about this album in contrast to Beyoncé’s supersized latest release, “Cowboy Carter,” which is diametrically opposed in nearly every way, though she is also the curator of a passionate fan base. (She is also eight years older.) At such a fraught moment in the world, Swift’s focus has grown exponentially insular. There can be comfort and safety in that for both artist and listener, but it only strengthens that parasocial relationship.

ZOLADZ To Ben’s point about the fans, and to crib a phrase from the streaming economy, this feels like an album designed for her top 5 percent of listeners — the ride-or-dies who will defend her every move and pore over her every lyrical clue. Everyone else seems either puzzled or underwhelmed by it as a whole. But Swift is someone who thrives off feeling underestimated and misunderstood, so maybe the mixed reception of this album will be the creative rocket fuel that launches her into her next era. Only time will tell if “Tortured Poets” represents a turning point in the cultural narrative about Swift, or if the mixed reception will be washed away by her next inevitable triumph. Appropriately enough, one of the two albums she has left to rerecord is “Reputation,” a defiant album she made during a time when her approval rating had dipped some. Suffice to say, I think we’re now ready for it, again.

Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. He studied music, played in rock, jazz and classical groups and was a college-radio disc jockey. He was previously an editor at Rolling Stone and the Village Voice. More about Jon Pareles

Ben Sisario covers the music industry. He has been writing for The Times since 1998. More about Ben Sisario

Caryn Ganz is The Times’s pop music editor. More about Caryn Ganz

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history  by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?  

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex  at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence  to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .