Taylor Swift has shared a new video for ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, and revealed one of the lyrics from the album.
The pop icon is set to release her 11th studio record later this week (Friday, April 19) – the follow-up to 2022’s Grammy-winning ‘Midnights’.
Now in the build-up to the LP being released, the singer has dropped a short animated video on Instagram, full to the brim with Easter eggs about the release.
Shared last night (April 16), the clip begins on a clock pointed at two o’clock. This marks the latest of clues that Swift has shared that contain a nod to that time. Previously the time was seen in the ‘Karma (Remix)’ music video, in a picture of coffee art she shared and the same as the clocks that appeared at a Spotify exhibit in Los Angeles.
From there, the camera leaves the animated room, showing crumpled paper on the floor, as well as the vinyl variants for the ‘Lavender Haze’, before heading into a white hallway and facing a door with a name place that reads ‘The Tortured Poets Department’. It then jumps through the keyhole, and zooms in on a calendar that is open at April 19 and reads ‘The Tortured Poets Department Release Day”.
Other details of the video include the calendar reading “8 p.m. ET music video release!!”, a tally that adds up to 14 and a nod to April 20, which also happens to be Record Store Day.
More hidden details include images of Swift at her ‘Eras Tour’ piano around the same time as she announced the 2 variants with 3 bonus songs, and images of her with close friend and collaborator Jack Antonoff, which she initially posted online in October 2022.
Check out the clip below.
As well as hinting at her shift away from the ‘Midnights’ era into ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ stage of her career and suggesting that a new music video is arriving on Friday (April 19), Swift has also surprised fans by unveiling a powerful new lyric from the new material.
Shared just three days before the LP drops, Tuesday (April 16) saw Swift join forces with Spotify to premiere the snippet of an unknown track at the aforementioned Swiftie library installation in Los Angeles.
At the event, a display case was placed resting on pressed flowers and a lacy white veil, with an open book on top that shows the line: “Even statues crumble if they’re made to wait.”
As highlighted by Billboard, around the same time, a video was shown on the Spotify page for the upcoming album, showing Swift sitting at a typewriter, hammering out the same phrase.
A #TSTTPD lyric has been revealed at today’s in person board meeting! 🤍 https://t.co/lNMrOG6ZVK
— Taylor Nation (@taylornation13) April 16, 2024
The moment marks the latest lyrics that Swift has teased ahead of the album release. Prior to this, she shared the line “Crowd goes wild at her fingertips. Half moonshine, full eclipse,” on the same night as the solar eclipse, and then posted the line: “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all,” after announcing special vinyl variants exclusively at Target.
Initially, the first lyrics Swift gave her fans arrived on the same day she announced ‘Tortured Poets’ at the 2024 Grammys ceremony, when she took to Instagram later that night to write: “And so I enter into evidence my tarnished coat of arms/ My muses, acquired like bruises, my talismans and charms/ The tick, tick, tick of love bombs/ My veins of pitch black ink/ All’s fair in love and poetry …”
The final run of teasers about the new album in the run-up to its release arrived after Swift hinted that ‘Tortured Poets’ was inspired by the five stages of grief. Recently, she tackled denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance over five Apple Music playlists – each representing one of these stages.
‘The Tortured Poets Department’ reportedly features Swift’s past collaborators Jack Antonoff and The National‘s Aaron Dessner as co-writers, as well as guest appearances from Florence Welch and Post Malone.
Earlier this year, Swift explained that writing ‘Tortured Poets’ was “really a lifeline for [her]”. She added: “Just the things I was going through and the things I was writing about.”
Swift continued: “It kind of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life, and I never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it on ‘Tortured Poets’.”
Following the LP’s release, Swift will resume her career-spanning ‘Eras Tour’ in Europe next month before heading to the UK and Ireland in June. Swift is due to play eight shows at Wembley Stadium in London this summer as part of the run, with support coming from Paramore.
