It would be an understatement to say that Taylor Swift fans have been examining the lyrics of her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, with a magnifying glass, trying to discern exactly what she meant by each song and coming up with a myriad of theories. While Swift is still being coy when it comes to who's who in terms of serving as lyrical inspiration for her more heartbreak-centric compositions, she's teamed up with Amazon Music to offer intros to five of the album's songs, giving fans the chance to gain insight straight from the horse's mouth.
Below you can read up on what Swift had to say about "Fortnight," "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys," "Florida!!!," "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" and album closer "Clara Bow."
Swift offered commentary on several of her latest songs.
“Fortnight”
The album's first single, this collaboration with Post Malone is "a song that exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout this album. One of which being fatalism — longing, pining away, lost dreams. I think that it’s a very fatalistic album in that there are lots of very dramatic lines about life or death. ‘I love you, it’s ruining my life.’ These are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say. It’s that kind of album.”
“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”
This song was written about “being somebody’s favorite toy, until they break you and then don’t want to play with you anymore. Which is how a lot of us are in relationships where we are so valued by a person in the beginning, and then all of the sudden, they break us or they devalue us in their mind. We’re still clinging on to ‘No no, no. You should’ve seen them the first time they saw me. They’ll come back to that. They’ll get back to that.’ ”
“Florida!!!” –
The origins of this track can be blamed on Swift's habit of watching Dateline. “People have these crimes that they commit; where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida. They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in. I think when you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks, ‘I want a new name. I want a new life. I don’t want anyone to know where I’ve been or know me at all.’ And so that was the jumping off point. Where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? Florida!”
“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”
Swift created this track all by herself, “sitting at the piano in one of those moments when I felt bitter about just all the things we do to our artists as a society and as a culture. There’s a lot about this particular concept on (the song) ‘The Tortured Poets Department.’ What do we do to our writers, and our artists, and our creatives? We put them through hell. We watch what they create, then we judge it. We love to watch artists in pain, often to the point where I think sometimes as a society we provoke that pain and we just watch what happens.”
“Clara Bow”
Swift describes this song as “a commentary on what I’ve seen in the industry that I’ve been in over time. I used to sit in record labels trying to get a record deal when I was a little kid. And they’d say, ‘You know, you remind us of’ and then they’d name an artist, and then they’d kind of say something disparaging about her, ‘But you’re this, you’re so much better in this way or that way.’ And that’s how we teach women to see themselves, as like you could be the new replacement for this woman who’s done something great before you. I picked women who have done great things in the past and have been these archetypes of greatness in the entertainment industry. Clara Bow was the first ‘it girl.’ Stevie Nicks is an icon and an incredible example for anyone who wants to write songs and make music.”
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