Swiftie Guide to Clowning: The Tortured Poets Department
Presenting evidence on the most interesting TTPD theories.
With The Tortured Poets Department release imminent, Taylor Swift has thrown the fandom into chaos with an easter egg-packed promo schedule. Clues from social posts, billboards and murals, and Spotify’s pop-up library have Swifties going feral.
It’s a lot to digest even if you’re chronically online like I am, and nearly impossible to track if you’re not. Whether this is your first album release as a swiftie or you’re a veteran of the pandemonium, hopefully this cheat sheet will help you join the clownery today ahead of TTPD dropping at midnight ET.
Instead of tick-tocking the promo chronologically — it’s all too interwoven! — I’ve separated everything by theme and theory. Click the links below to jump to a section.
What We Have Confirmed
We still know very little about the TTPD despite this week’s promo. Here’s what we’re working with:
Of the 16 standard tracks, Jack Antonoff shares songwriting credits on eight, Aaron Dessner on five, and Post Malone and Florence Welch on their respective features. There are four bonus tracks.
The standard edition’s runtime is 65:08, about the length of folklore. The average song is about 4 minutes long.
The album is classified as pop (which doesn’t tell us much).
The first music video will premiere at 8pm ET on Friday (AFTER release).
Taylor has revealed five lyrics on Spotify, at the Spotify pop-up, and on billboards in Times Square:
“Crowd goes wild at her fingertips/Half moonshine, Full eclipse”
"I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all”
“Even statues crumble if they’re made to wait”
“One less temptress. One less dagger to sharpen.”
“Lost the game of chances. What are the chances?”
“As she was leaving, it felt like breathing”
What We’re Clowning About
Piecing together Taylor’s easter eggs predictively instead of retrospectively feels like assembling a puzzle in the dark, just mashing together random pieces hoping we’ll eventually see the bigger picture.
While I prioritize sourcing confirmed information, clowning obviously requires venturing into the unknown. I’ve tried to stick to theories rooted in reality (or at least in textual analysis) on some level and have skipped theories related to Taylor’s personal life, as she’s made it very clear that she’s uncomfortable with that focus.
The Basics
We’ve unscrambled 5/6 words from songs on Apple Music’s TTPD playlists (with the remaining word coming on Thursday):
Hereby (from “Glitch”) | Conduct (from “peace”) | This (from “Better Than Revenge”) | Post (from “Clean”) | We (from “We Were Happy”)
→ Will the sixth word be “mortem,” as in “We hereby conduct this post-mortem”?
Swifties have also discovered QR code murals leading to YouTube Shorts showing individual letters, which when combined and unscrambled spell “FOR A FORTNIGHT.” Visit taylorswift.com/forafortnight and you’ll see a countdown ending at 2pm ET on Thursday.
→ It doesn’t seem like Taylor would host a worldwide scavenger hunt for a merch countdown tied to a single song. The music video isn’t coming until Friday. Is this a lead single announcement or something bigger?
The Hallway Theory
The timetable video shows us leaving the Midnights room and going down a stark, uncanny hallway to enter The Tortured Poets Department. It’s a relief to enter the corporate minimalism of the Department after braving the eerie hallway where the lights’ reflections don’t make sense, the Department and Midnights seem to have the only functional doors, and there’s something weird and unidentifiable going on at the far end.
Taylor has long used hallways as a lyrical and visual motif, and swifties have noticed that many of the dozen or so songs in which she mentions hallways were included on the TTPD Apple Music playlists. I’m more interested in the “I Know Places” lyric video, though:
Taylor Alison Swift!! Is that an upside-down door we come through at 3:06, returning to a desolate hallway that acts as a portal to search for a world where you’re free to be yourself away from public scrutiny? Kind of like how the new hallway seems to be acting as a portal between your albums. Just wondering.
Hallways are in-between spaces. They’re where you go to find somewhere else. Taylor often represents hallways as isolating and fraught, spaces you have to endure to get to the truth, to peace. Her music is where she searches for and expresses her truth, but she has to make it through the fear and uncertainty of the hallway to discover it.
→ The Midnights and TTPD rooms have the only functioning doors in the timetable video because Taylor’s music comes with a built-in shield: She doesn’t have to share what a song is about because the public will do it for her, often without hearing a note. They’ve already done it with TTPD.
The Countdown Theory
We never figured out what the “exile ends” pocket watch in the “Bejeweled” music video was counting down to, but swifties now think that Taylor is calling it back with TTPD promo. The “red herring” website error on Grammys night that had us all clowning for rep TV included a “321.” The QR code mural in Chicago linked to a YouTube Short that included “Error 321” with a faded “13” below.
→ I get the feeling that this has something to do with a bigger project or process rather than with any single album. I think TTPD is part of the process but not the final reveal of this easter egg, and that we’re somehow still in the middle of the red herring.
The Upside-Down Theory
Back to the timetable video. Notice how the Department door is upside down? The door sill is at the top and the keyhole is upside down. Certain books at the Spotify pop-up were upside down, as well: at least The Albatross, Fortnight, and So Long, London.
→ Like with the countdown and hallway, I think the upside-down objects point to TTPD being one more step in whatever bigger story Taylor is telling rather than the full story. Once again, it seems like Taylor started laying the groundwork in earnest with Midnights: first with the upside-down phone during the “Anti-Hero” and “Vigilante Shit” episodes of Midnights Mayhem With Me, and later with the “Lavender Haze” and “Karma” music videos.
The Theory of Twos
Ever since Taylor flashed a peace sign while announcing TTPD at the Grammys, twos have been popping up everywhere.
She did a peace sign at the Eras Tour. It’s 2 o’clock in the timetable video and at the Spotify pop-up. There was a white statuette flashing a peace sign on the Spotify pop-up’s first day and someone discovered a black version the next day. There are sets of two stars bookending release day and two exclamation points on the timetable. Taylor tweeted “✌️days til THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT” on Wednesday.
To make things even more confusing, there are 14 tick marks on the timetable: which could be a reference to track 14, the song “Fortnight,” or an actual fortnight.
→ I’m still not on board with the double-album theory that comes up with every drop. I think it’s as simple as 2 = Fortnight = lead single, or else something that will break the internet. (That said, I also thought Taylor would never announce an album at the Grammys and here we are.)
Project Serpentine
The label “Project Serpentine” has been popping up around TTPD: first on barcodes in the Target TTPD display and later on what appeared to be the display packaging in a Target storeroom. While it’s a bit on the nose for reputation TV, that hasn’t stopped rep stans from theorizing that — related to the theory of twos — rep is dropping at the same time as TTPD. Some swifties have pointed out that Serpentine could refer to a lake in London and be the code name for an extended version of the album similar to Midnights (3 a.m. Edition). So here we are, once again, clowning so hard that the national press have their noses in family business.
→ I don’t think Taylor would undercut TTPD for reputation. I also don’t think she’d sacrifice rep for TTPD. I think she’s going to treat her most misunderstood album as a shot at vindication after some critics were quick to write it off the first time around.
The Full-Circle Theory
The TTPD aesthetic is mostly white, gray, beige, and black, in stark contrast to Midnights’ jewel tones. We can see the world devoid of color in the variants, Spotify pop-up, and promo materials, including in the actual Tortured Poets Department.
Taylor often uses color to express emotion. By removing color from the conversation entirely, she’s pointing to a new canvas unburdened by the staggering weight of her mythology. Not erasing her past eras, but freeing herself to see what else is out there.
→ I’ve been feeling for a while now like the Eras Tour and re-recordings are part of the final scene in the first (long) act of Taylor’s career, with TTPD meant to be either the first step in her next act or a transitional era.
Tayauthor
This might be the most straightforward theory on this list: At the end of the All Too Well short film, Taylor is doing a reading from the All Too Well book. The TTPD collector’s edition CDs come with bookmarks, the records come with a 24-page book-bound jacket, and the Spotify pop-up … exists.
→ It’s just a matter of time, right? I want to believe.
Debut TV
There was a desk calendar at the Spotify pop-up set to Friday, Dec. 13. Taylor was born on a Wednesday, but Dec. 13 happens to be a Friday in 2024 — lending support to the long-standing theory that Taylor is dropping Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version) on her birthday this year.
→ Maybe then you’ll all appreciate my beloved.
Chart and Sales Expectations
Current streams and social activity point to TTPD smashing even by Taylor’s standards. Because she’s continued to grow her audience since her last release, let’s use her two biggest albums to set a baseline for first-week sales:
Midnights: 1.578 million equivalent album sales (1.18M physicals and nearly 400K streams)
1989 TV: 1.653 million (1.359M physicals and nearly 300K streams)
Oddsmakers are apparently so floored by how big this album is going to be that some of them won’t even make their estimates public.
→ Streets are saying that the Target exclusive preorders have already surpassed 1989 TV preorders by more than 3x — although those numbers aren’t official — and if that’s any indication, Taylor may have a chance to break a record thought to be unbeatable in the streaming era.
What I’m Reading and Listening To
Taylor Swift could actually become an even bigger deal after ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ (CNN)
OK, she’s worth $1 billion, but can Taylor Swift write poetry? We ask the experts. (Christian Science Monitor)
Taylor Swift Ends ‘Tortured Poets Department’ with ‘Clara Bow’ — Who Was She? (IndieWire)
What’s Coming on ‘The Tortured Poets Department’? | Every Single Album Podcast (The Ringer)
This cheat sheet will be updated if anything new pops up. Subscribe for free to Wonderful Things to get first reactions to the album on Saturday. Find me on Threads and Twitter to hang out in the meantime!
🤍🤍🤍