Taylor Swift Releases Limited Edition ‘Tortured Poets’ Albums Featuring First Draft Voice Memos

Hannah Dailey
·2 min read
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With her latest deluxe edition of The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift — aka the Chairman — is showing fans what some of the album’s songs sounded like before they left her desk.

The pop star unveiled three limited versions of her new album Thursday (May 16), featuring three first draft voice memos of “The Black Dog,” “Cassandra” and “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” The finished versions of the songs already appear on the 31-track anthology version of Tortured Poets, but the new audio notes show listeners what they sounded like midway through Swift’s writing process.

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The digital copies are available for $5.99 each on the “Fortnight” singer’s website. The sale ends Friday evening (May 17).

The drop comes amid Tortured Poets‘ third week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, where it demonstrated the largest streaming week ever recorded since the chart first started measuring by units in December 2014 upon its debut. The album has also broken several other records since it dropped April 19, including her own previous benchmark for single-week vinyl sales.

Last week, Swift resumed her global Eras Tour, playing her first set of concerts since releasing Tortured Poets in Paris. While there, she debuted several new numbers from the album — including “Down Bad,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” and “So High School” — which she’ll continue performing at each of the remaining stops on the trek, including this weekend’s shows in Stockholm.

The new Tortured Poets set earned praise from many Swifties, as well as Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce. “It is absolutely unbelievable,” the Kansas City Chiefs tight end said on a recent episode of his New Heights podcast. “I enjoyed every bit of it … I don’t know if they’re just getting better or if I just keep forgetting how they are. It was electric in there. Paris was on a whole other level.”

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