The breakup after six years of Taylor Swift’s relationship with actor Joe Alwyn returns to the fore this Friday before the launch of ‘The Tortured Poets Department’in which the American dissects the ills of her relationship and undertakes a therapy exercise after the end of the daydream.

Throughout the 16 tracks that make up the singer-songwriter’s eleventh studio album that breaks listening and sales records of entries it is easy to find direct allusions to his ex-partner. Once again, her personal life constitutes her favorite material to build songs and, with them, pay off debts.

“This album reminded me why write songs It’s something that really helps me in my life. “I’ve never had an album where I needed to write songs more than I did on this one,” Swift herself (West Reading, 1989) commented in public about the therapeutic effect of a highly anticipated work, which was leaked online this Thursday. full.

Rumors about the possible thematic core of the album began since the last Grammy gala she herself revealed the titlevery similar to that of an online chat that his ex shared with fellow actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott, called ‘Tortured Man Club’.

That is also the title of one of the featured cuts, in which Swift blurts out to her interlocutor with the pretense of a writer (it should be remembered that Alwyn co-wrote some of the singer’s songs in the past): “You’re not Dylan Thomas and I’m not Patti Smith.”.

Likewise, the geographical coincidence between the British nationality of his ex and the inspirational source of the song ‘So Long, London’, one of the most tortured along with ‘Florida!!!!’, does not seem coincidental. Regarding this, there are those who have pointed out that this was the state in which ‘The Eras Tour’ ended when the couple’s breakup was made public in April 2023.

The reproaches continue in one of the potentially most radioable songs of this batch, ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’ (in Spanish, my boy only breaks his favorite toys), in which the artist announces the moment when she gives up in a relationship that is not prospering: “I abandon building castles that he destroys.”

Until the end with ‘Clara Bow’, named after the silent film actress of the same name, heartbreak conceptually covers the entire album and, with it, melancholy becomes strongbut without desperation either in his words or in his ways, rather acceptance, with spaces for irony and sarcasm in cuts like ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ or ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’.

It is that, almost at the end, one of the few reliefs of accelerated and eighties “bpm” that can be found in this ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, marked by the emotional density of songsco-produced by the author with her inseparable Jack Antonoff.

Under his criteria, synthesizers and electronic arrangements largely replace the organic textures that accompanied the melancholy that also permeated previous works such as ‘Evermore’ or the previous ‘Folklore’, both from 2020. In the midst of all this, from time to time Glimpses of Swift from the “country” era emerge, as when she recovers the ukulele and old melodic structures from that time, see in the dynamic and long ‘But Daddy, I Love Him!’.

Special mention deserves the two collaborations of this album that has been published without a prior letter of introduction: on the one hand Post Malone on the initial ‘Fortnight’ (in which he is relegated vocally to more of accompaniment work) and, on the other, Florence + The Machine on the cathartic ‘Florida!!!!’, with a more balanced vocal relationship between the two performers.

It will be on May 29 and 30 at the Bernabéu

With ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ already out, Swift will begin the European leg of her ‘The Eras Tour’ in Paris on May 9, 10, 11 and 12. There will be fifty performances until the end on August 20 at Wembley Stadium in London, with stops like those at May 29 and 30 in the renovated stadium Santiago Bernabéu of Madrid.