Taylor Swift Renews Her Vows With Heartbreak in Audacious, Transfixing ‘Tortured Poets Department’: Album Review

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift‘s “The Tortured Poets Department” registered 439,000 album-equivalent units to return as the No. 1 album in the U.S. in its second week out, according to data from Luminate first reported in Billboard.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The smell of success is… well, you know what it is: too sweet. Hozier has never been about chasing the hit, but he’s got one regardless, as the Irish singer-songwriter’s “Unheard” EP quickly generated the first No. 1 Hot 100 single of his career, in the form of “Too Sweet,” a wry ballad about mismatched lovers.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Maggie Rogers is headlining arenas for the first time this fall, but she didn’t want it to feel like moving into bigger spaces for her concerts would mean a more impersonal experience. So for 11 shows that just went on sale in late April, she went out and personally manned the box office on opening day to help sell tickets for those big shows.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic One of the buzziest — or should that be tipsiest? — performances at this past weekend’s Stagecoach came from an artist who wasn’t even listed on the poster art. Late-breaking sensation Shaboozey was squeezed into the festival as a performer in the Bud Light Backyard tent, where there was other squeezing going on as Sunday’s festivalgoers stood in line to get a glimpse of the artist whose “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has proven to be a straight-out-of-the-box smash among both country and hip-hop fans. Shaboozey isn’t coming to stardom himself in any kind of overnight way; the 28-year-old, Virginia-born singer-rapper put out his first single 10 years ago, and he’s about to release his third major-label album.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When Taylor Swift has just introduced 31 brand new songs to the world, as she did in April with the deluxe double-album that is “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” it may be a fool’s errand to immediately assess where where all that fresh grist fits into the overall scope of her catalog. Foolish, and also irresistible.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift‘s “The Tortured Poets Department” has lived up to its blockbuster potential and then some. Billboard reported Sunday that, per data provided by Luminate, the new release racked up 2.61 million album-equivalent units in its first week out — the best one-week figure for any album in nine years. The last album to debut with a higher figure was Adele’s “25,” which bowed with 3.482 million in 2015, a number that is considered unrepeatable with the changes that have occurred in consumption since then.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Beyonce did not show up. Reba did. And it was enough.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Spotify announced Wednesday that Taylor Swift‘s “The Tortured Poets Department” has become the first album in the app’s history to pick up a billion streams in a single week. And it did that with still a couple of days left to go in the seven-day period in question. The previous high-water mark for most album streams in a week belonged to Swift’s last all-new release, “Midnights,” in October 2022.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic David Gilmour, who has often given off the appearance of being happily retired, hasn’t been keeping himself from the studio after all. The ex-Pink Floyd singer-guitarist has announced his first album in nine years, “Luck and Strange,” and he’s giving everyone time to prepare for it, with the release not coming till Sept.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic More than 20 years after his death, there are treasures in the Johnny Cash vault that have remained unmined, despite assumptions that everything interesting might have been brought into the light in the posthumous recordings that came out in the years following his 2003 death. On June 28, Universal Music will issue “Songwriter,” a collection of 11 previously unreleased recordings that Cash demo-ed in 1993, all of them self-penned originals.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic There’s no golden ticket quite like the golden ticket of finding your name in the lyrics of a Taylor Swift song. It’s one thing if you’re Charlie Puth, and already on a list of Spotify’s 150 top monthly artists. But for another musical artist name-checked in Swift’s album “The Tortured Poets Department,” the impact stands to be much more impactful.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic If we had the ability to assess who is the most beloved figure in music — not in overall numbers, but sheer adoration, per capita and per peer — it likely wouldn’t be Taylor or Beyoncé but Mavis Staples, who has been taking us there since the late ’60s. There being the smile that crosses anyone’s face when fortunate enough to be in the same room, or even in just giving a passing thought to that voice, that presence, and all the different ways in which Staples embodies righteousness.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift can’t quit breaking her own records. After Spotify revealed Friday that “The Tortured Poets Department” had become the first album in the DSP’s history to amass 200 million streams in a single day, the service updated that news early Saturday, to report that first-day streams actually surpassed 300 million, when all was said and done and counted.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The torture is over for fans who waited weeks and months for Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” to arrive. But the truly faithful still have some work ahead, in trying to decode what or who is the subject of each of the 16 songs (plus four bonus tracks).

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift usually writes either an essay or poem to be included in her album packaging, but for “The Tortured Poets Department,” she used the buddy system. Stevie Nicks contributed a handwritten poem she wrote for Swift, which is the first thing fans will see when they open the LP gatefolds or CD booklets Friday morning. That doesn’t mean Swift skipped out on her usual duties, as the album packaging also includes a long handwritten poem she penned herself, placed after the lyrics in the booklets as a sort of epilogue.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Returning for its 15th annual edition this weekend, the TCM Classic Film Festival will turn Hollywood Blvd. into the center of the movie universe again for four days, for that very obsessive and loving subset of film fans that has the network’s vintage fare as part of their weekly and daily lives. And just what time span “classics” falls into is exemplified by the big opening and closing night films.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Doja Cat has rarely turned in an uninteresting or unprovocative performance, and her headlining set Sunday night at Coachella offered a plethora of looks and concepts designed to prompt dazzlement and debate among the viewing audience. Dinosaur skeletons? Mudbath choreography? Twerking Yetis? Her hour-and-a-half set just about had it all… Well, everything except for her biggest pop hits, like “Say So” and “Kiss Me More.” Familiar older songs were notably MIA from a setlist that included 12 songs from her 2023 “Scarlet” album, with its determined focus on her rapping side, and four more from the deluxe edition, “Scarlet 2: Claude,” that just popped.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Lana Del Rey had a couple of heavily favored cameos during her Coachella performance, welcoming recent collaborators Jack Antonoff and Jon Batiste, both of whom will be fronting their own sets later in the weekend — but also one far less easily guessed guest, in the form of Billie Eilish, who turned up for a surprise pair of duets. Taking to a terrace overlooking the massive stage, the duo first joined forces on Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes,” then turned their voices to “Video Games.” Both songs represent the first real breakout hits in these artists’ respective careers.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic She is still Shelby Lynne. That may sound like it’s saying it’s a little, but it’s really saying a lot, for anyone who holds a special place for the landmark album “I Am Shelby Lynne,” a turn-of-the-millennium masterpiece that put its bearer on the artistic map for good.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Paul McCartney was the obvious headliner of the bill Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl. But it was Buffett-mania that was in full sway, as a cast of dozens of singers and celebrity presenters — from Jane Fonda to Snoop Dogg — saluted or parroted a fallen musical hero for the three-and-a-half-hour “Keep The Party Going: A Tribute to Jimmy Buffett.” Most of the night’s entertainers covered Buffett classics or obscurities, although McCartney, the Eagles and Snoop Dogg broke with that to regale the full Bowl house with their own material, while Zac Brown and (sending in a video contribution) Dave Matthews debuted brand new songs saluting Buffett.