Who tortures whom? I'm sorry. That isn't the sharpest zinger to zing toward this vast new Taylor Swift double album, but my phone died after listening to 19 of its 31 tracks on Friday morning.
After finding my charger and hearing the lyric, my expectation for a better mood in the third act of the two-hour hostage situation faded.
Friends used to play a game where we chose a decade we wished to live in. The 1830s, sans racists.”
Swift, a 21st-century pop giant, is relentlessly prolific and reluctant to censor, making this extended version of her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” unpleasant and endless.
The biggest surprise is how much suffering is planned.
In contrast to her recent successes — the highest-grossing concert tour in the species' history, the highest-grossing concert film, and on-field kisses with her boyfriend after he won the Super Bowl —
Swift's new ballads are sour theater, fixated on memories of being wronged and stranded, and laden with clunky, convoluted, samey, purple, and hacky lyrics.
Swift, Jack Antonoff, Aaron Dessner, and Patrik Berger produced a profusion of soft-edged, slow-moving melodies that do her lyrics no favors.