Part of the art of being Taylor Swift is embodying first the Everygirl, then the Everywoman — the Miss Americana in them all, from era to era.
Beyoncé is a goddess, Taylor is a real life human — just like us.
But there’s a moment on “The Tortured Poets Department” — the insanely anticipated 11th studio album by the Queen of the Swifties — when she embraces her power as the most famous, the most influential woman in America, if not on the planet.
It occurs on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” — one of two tunes that Swift wrote by herself with that wicked pen of hers.
“I was tame, I was gentle/’Til the circus life made me mean/Don’t you worry folks, we took out all her teeth/Who’s afraid of little old me?/Well you should be,” she sings in the rumbling revenge song that brings some menace to the melody.
And you can bet that Swift’s most recent exes — the 1975 frontman Matty Healy and, especially, British actor Joe Alwyn — have been quaking in their boots ever since the pop superstar announced “The Tortured Poets Department” after winning Best Pop Vocal Album for 2022’s “Midnights” at the Grammys in February.
Sure enough — there is plenty of “Bad Blood” spilled on Swift’s latest. And with the raw honesty and specificity of her lyrics, she is clearly in her “IDGAF” era.
In fact, the album starts with back-to-back shockers that just might have you clinching your pearls — or, in this case, your friendship bracelets.
“I was supposed to be sent away, but they forgot to come and get me,” she reveals at the beginning of album opener “Fortnight,” hinting at some kind of crisis.
Then she digs deeper into the dirt with an even more jarring jaw-dropper: “I was a functioning alcoholic/’Till nobody noticed my new aesthetic/All of this to say, I hope you’re OK/But you’re the reason.”
In 30 seconds, she’s gone from “Love Story” to “Horror Story.”
But then again, Swift — like many of us — hasn’t been the same since the pandemic. Not the same artist — and probably not the same woman.
Indeed, “Folklore” — released in the darkest days of lockdown in 2020 — introduced us to Taylor 2.0, with its intimate alt-folk feels connecting to us in the midst of isolation.
Swift’s trusted “Folklore” tandem of Bleachers lead singer Jack Antonoff and the National frontman Aaron Dessner are back in her songwriting/production squad on “TTPD.”
But one “Folklore” collaborator who isn’t back is Alwyn — after their six-year relationship ended in 2023.
And he gets the Taylor treatment on “So Long, London” — a long (nine minutes and 28 seconds) goodbye to the city where the former lovebirds once lived together.
“Just how low did you think I’d go/Before I’d self implode,” Swift sings over a throbbing beat that is still more downer than banger.
Elsewhere, Healy — who Swift dated briefly after her Alwyn split last year — seems be the target of her pen on the vicious takedown “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.” (That title says it all.)
But on “TTPD” — much of which pulses with the same moody, mid-tempo electro-pop of “Midnights” — the love is not all lost. “The Alchemy” is a sexy slow dance that is unabashedly about Swift’s current beau, Travis Kelce.
“Where’s the trophy? He just comes running over to me,” she sings about her Super Bowl champ stud.
And all of a sudden, our girl is living the dream again.
If there’s one knock against “The Tortured Poets Department” — other than the melancholy malaise it sometimes falls into — it’s that the timing feels a bit off.
Swift is still in the middle of her epic Eras Tour, just won a record fourth Album of the Year Grammy for “Midnights” and is now a certified billionaire at 34. Plus, she’s boo’d up with her own personal bodyguard in Kelce.
How exactly are we supposed to commiserate with her “tortured heart” again?
And yet we can’t shake her off.
