When Taylor Swift drops 31 songs in one night, there’s room for her to say, well anything. And The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology makes the Midnights’ confession, “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby / And I’m a monster on the hill,” look like child’s play.
We listened to the entire 2-hour double album and chose some of our personal favorites. Below, take a look at the most hilarious and occasionally deranged lyrics of The Tortured Poets Department. (Chairman, you could use an editor — just a suggestion!)
“You left your typewriter at my apartment” – “The Tortured Poets Department”
The visual of a man, presumably the titular tortured poet Matty Healy, lugging a typewriter around to someone else’s apartment is nearly too much to handle. Can you imagine?
“You smokеd, then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” – “The Tortured Poets Department”
This is perhaps the buzziest lyric on The Tortured Poets Department and rightly so. Why Charlie Puth? Has she seen all of Puth’s ThirstToks? Does she know how unpleasant the name “Puth” sounds? There are so many unanswered questions.
“Screamin’, ‘But Daddy, I love him / I’m having his baby’ / No, I’m not, but you should see your faces” – “But Daddy I Love Him”
She gagged us a little with this one.
“My friends all smell like weed or little babies” – “Florida!!! (feat. Florence and the Machine)”
Here Swift turns her eye for detail into something brutally honest. What woman in her 30s has not experienced this?
“I’m watchin’ American Pie with you on a Saturday night” – “So High School”
The entirety of “So High School” is so funny. The number of mismatched references she managed to cram into one track is a feat.
“You know how to ball, I know Aristotle” – “So High School”
Most insane imperfect rhyme of all. Only Swift could rhyme “ball” with “Aristotle.” Also, this is a perfect depiction of her romance with Travis Kelce.
“Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto“ – “So High School”
Bros?! Grand Theft Auto?! Girl, get up!
“We would pick a decade / We wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists / And getting married off for the highest bid” – “Hate It Here”
This appears to be a response to the blowback she received for “Timeless,” a vault track on Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), in which she romanticized the 1500s, 1944, and 1958. But adding “without all the racists” doesn’t exactly fix the problem.
“Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman / But she used to say she wished that you were dead” – “thanK you aIMee”
Of course, the sickest burn of the album belongs to Andrea.
“So I look in people’s windows / Like I’m some deranged weirdo” – “I Look in People’s Windows”
The “sexy baby” of The Tortured Poets Department is a “deranged weirdo.” Maybe don’t look in people’s windows… or stalk your ex’s location.