But Daddy I Love Her

Revisiting The Tortured Poets Department (sorry)

I took a long break from Taylor Swift because, frankly, I OD’d. But I’m back, baby. The other day I was listening to a podcast arguing that The Tortured Poets Department is misunderstood, and I have to agree. When it came out, critics went hard in the paint. NME called the album “flat and, at times, cringeworthy.” Evening Standard critiqued its “predictable production choices” and “hollow lyricism.” AllMusic deemed it “tedious.” And while I support everyone’s right to hate, a lot of the backlash felt less like a response to the music and more like cultural exhaustion. Like everyone was over the sheer omnipresence of Taylor Swift at the height of the Eras tour and couldn’t handle another rollout. The Needle Drop called it “her most aggravating and draining album cycle yet.”

The disdain often felt like it was looking for a target and TTPD was too convenient. Does the album have too many songs? Absolutely. (Peep my edit here.) But every single track is someone’s favorite, which means each contains at least a spark. And whenever I hear a critic dismissing the album on one of the twelve music podcasts I listen to, they always end up saying something along the lines of: “But I love ‘Down Bad’ and ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ and ‘The Black Dog’ and ‘So Long, London’ and ‘Guilty as Sin’ and ‘So High School’ and…” And I’m like, babe. If you can rattle off six songs you LOVE without even trying, maybe the album has some merit?

I should take a step back and say that I’m a late-in-life Taylor Swift fan. As I wrote about for LARB, it wasn’t until 2023, when I was hanging out with a seven-year-old who adored her, that I actually gave her music a proper listen. At first, I was annoyed that this kid was forcing me to engage with someone I’d long found grating beyond belief. But then something started to stick. The songs wormed their way into my head and made me ~feel things~.

One of the best parts of becoming a late-in-life Taylor fan is the sheer volume of content. When I got into her, she already had ten studio albums and around 250 songs. There was so much to listen to! And frankly I had the time of my dang life immersing myself in her cinematic universe. I know she’s cringe and annoying and a snake. It’s easy to hate a 5’10” blonde with bad style and a billion dollars. But her voice carries so much feeling in this oddly comforting way, and I’m endeared to how much of her discography is about throwing herself at men who have no interest in her. And I wish I didn’t, but I relate to her very A-Type, try-hard approach to making art. TTPD captures all of that.

The Matty Healy affair chronicled on the album is all about being delusional and uncool and completely in love with the wrong person. According to the lore, Taylor was infatuated with Matty for years, even throughout her six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn. She supposedly wrote several of her best songs about him, like my personal fave “Cardigan.” The Reddit list of Matty songs is absurdly long, like she’s been pining over him since Lover.

Apparently when Joe and Taylor finally broke up, she started dating Matty and was thrilled to finally be with him, the supposed Peter to her Wendy. But then fans got mad because Matty had Dimes Square New Right associations, the literal opposite of Taylor’s brand. And then he ghosted her, and not long after, was engaged to the model slash It Girl Gabbriette. I can imagine that if your primary insecurity is being uncool and not getting the guy, then the love of your life ghosting you to get engaged to Gabbriette would be excruciating. That pain is all over TTPD. It really feels like Taylor bled all over this album and converted her heartbreak into moving pop hooks, which is exactly what she does best.

The album is also funny. A lot of people rolled their eyes at the title without realizing that The Tortured Poets Department is a joke at Matty Healy’s expense. On the title track, Taylor sings, you left your typewriter at my apartment / straight from the tortured poets department / I think some things I never say / like “Who uses typewriters anyway?” Later, presumably still addressing Matty, she adds, you’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith, this ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots. In case it isn’t clear, the whole album is mocking him for being this self-serious sociopathic loser who lugs around a freaking typewriter.

There are so many funny lines on this album. She’s screaming, But Daddy I love him. She’s announcing, I’m miserable and nobody even knows! She’s asking Travis Kelce to touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto. She’s telling her fans they wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me. And she’s warning, Who’s afraid of little old me? Well, you should be.

I love when she sings, I put narcotics into all of my songs / And that’s why you’re still singing along. Because listening to her music really does feel like a drug. When I catch myself singing her in the shower or on a drive, it’s like she’s cast a spell on me. And this album feels like one of the strongest spells of all, up there with Folklore and Reputation. Another line that feels like a thesis for her entire project is, What if he’s written ‘mine’ on my upper thigh only in my mind? I mean who among us cannot relate to thinking someone wants us religiously while simultaneously being paranoid it might be entirely in our head?

I’m fine with admitting that part of my allegiance to the album might be that it was the only one that came out after I became a fan. It was the first time I got to experience a release in real time. But that setup also primed me to be disappointed, which I wasn’t at all. Unlike the critics, I didn’t find the album tedious or overwritten. Or at least not overwritten in a bad way. The album isn’t restrained or cool, but that’s not why we go to Taylor Swift. We go to her for drama, delusion, heartbreak. For music that sounds like the cringe musical you secretly love. TTPD has all that. It’s also sarcastic and exhausted. Bleeding and theatrical. A crash-out and a mess. And I adore it.