The pop star explains the inspiration behind the lyrics of ‘Tortured Poets’

Fans love deciphering the many references Taylor Swift browse her lyrics. For The department of tortured poets (and the surprising “double album” edition, The Martyred Poets Section: The anthology), she explained herself a bit.

Many of Swift’s albums follow the “eras” of her life – and this album specifically captures the “tortured poetry” of a two-year period. She wrote on X that “the story is no longer mine… it is all yours.”

In the iHeartRadio Album Premiere Special with Taylor Swift, she shared the stories behind some of her new songs.

She wrote “Florida!!!” with Florence and the Machine after thinking about how much people show in the crime investigation Dateline “Skip the city” to go to the Sunshine State.

“I think when you’re going through 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. Swift said. “So that was the starting point behind: where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? ‘Florida!!!'”

Swift also said that “Fortnight,” the album’s first single, which also has a music video, reflects the common themes of the rest of the album: “fatalism, longing, wasting away, lost dreams.”

“There’s a lot of very dramatic lines about, you know, life or death and ‘I love you, it’s ruining my life.’ These are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say,” she explained. “But it’s that kind of album: it’s about a dramatic, artistic, tragic look at love and loss.”

Swift said she wrote “Fortnight” from the perspective of someone who realized the American dream wasn’t going to happen for him.

“You didn’t end up with the person you loved and now you have to live with that every day, wondering what would have been, maybe meeting him or her,” she said.

Finally, Swift explained that she wrote the song “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” from the perspective of a child’s broken toy — a favorite until it’s broken, and then the child loses interest.

“A lot of us are in relationships where we’re so valued by someone at first, and then all of a sudden they break us, or devalue us in their minds,” she explained. “And we still hold on to, ‘No, no, no, you should have seen them the first time they saw me, they’ll come back to that, they’ll come back to that.’”

She added, “It’s actually kind of a song about denial so you can live in this world where there’s still hope in a toxic, broken relationship.”

Swift added even more cryptic messages The department of tortured poets and the love interests who may have inspired her lyrics in a poem titled “In Summation,” which was included with the physical copies of the album.

“A grin appears on this poet’s face. Because it is the worst men I write best,” she wrote.

Only time – and the powerful decoding power of Swifties – will tell if we figure out what she might be referring to here.