Dissected for months as a social phenomenon, breaking awards and popularity records, capable of influencing American political life or the economy of the cities crossed by her latest tour, “The Eras Tour”, Taylor Swift recalls, very regularly, that she is a musician. She will make a sold-out stop, from May 9 to 12, at Paris La Défense Arena, then in Lyon, on June 2 and 3, at the Groupama Stadium.
Fruit of a productivity more overflowing than ever, The Tortured Poets Department (sixteen pieces, fifteen more in his version The Anthology, available for download), is his eleventh album, his fifth in the space of five years – without counting, at the same time, the re-recordings of four of his previous opus. It contrasts with the media hype caused by the one who competes with Beyoncé and Billie Eilish for the title of “queen of pop”.
No steamroller of flashy hits, no excess of flashy rhythms here. Like Fortnightfirst single and introduction to the album, slowed down by a refined synthesizer, on which the misty melancholy of a duet with the rapper Post Malone arises, the soundtrack is dominated by an instrumental delicacy intended to be in phase with the emotional authenticity of what the star presented as her “most cathartic record”.
An evolution more than an aesthetic revolution. Indeed, after having indulged in urban swaying (the tubes Shake It Off, Bad Blood, Blank Space…), the former child prodigy of country pop has transformed into a songwriter in search of depth and maturity. Conceived during the Covid-19 crisis, two albums, Folklore et Evermorereleased in 2020, flirted with the intimacy of folk songs and the stripped-down Americana of the indie scene.
Cinematic atmospheres
An influence that persisted in the more pop style of the album Midnights (2022), and which continues here, under the leadership of the directors, Aaron Dessner, founding member of the rock group The National, and Jack Antonoff, demiurge of Bleachers, who launched this mutation. Their way of playing electronic material, more tempted here by cinematic atmospheres than by dance, immerses a number of songs (Down Bad, The Tortured Poets Department, I Can Fix Him [No Really I Can]…) in a subtle torpor, often marked by the melancholy intensity of Lana Del Rey (of whom Jack Antonoff is the faithful accomplice). We also think of the synthesizers, which Kavinsky had arranged for the film’s soundtrack Driveor to the contemplative keyboards of The Blue Nile, a little-known English group from the 1980s, literally cited by the singer in Guilty as Sin ? (« Drowning in the Blue Nile/ He sent me “Downtown Lights” »).
You have 44.97% ..