Taylor Swift Drops Major Surprise for ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

With Taylor Swift fans already delirious with anticipation about the release of her new album, the singer proceeded to send them stratospheric early Friday by revealing that The Tortured Poets Department is a double album.

Following the release of the new record’s first 16 songs at midnight, a mysterious countdown to 2 a.m. E.T. appeared hidden on her Instagram. “It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album,” Swift wrote in a post when the fateful moment finally arrived.

“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs,” she added. “And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.”

The second batch included four songs that had already been announced as bonus tracks—“The Black Dog,” “The Bolter,” “The Manuscript,” and “The Albatross”—along with 11 unexpected new tunes. Although it’s a surprise, some of the most hardcore Swifties may have picked up on the singer’s subtle clues that something was on the way.

All that’s left for fans to do now is enjoy the new music. And by “enjoy” we mean debate furiously about which of her exes the album is about, and what she meant when she described the record as an “anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time.”

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