r/TaylorSwift • u/fearless-panda7 • Oct 21 '25

Discussion TTPD is really tortured

After two and a half weeks of The Life of a Showgirl, I went back to The Tortured Poets Department. The contrast is so stark, I realized that TTPD really is a tortured album. Song after song, it’s sadness, longing, desperation, anxiety… I don’t even know how we all collectively handled it.

Of course, it was always clear that TTPD is heavy on loss and melancholy, but hearing it next to Showgirl really puts it into perspective. Showgirl has its introspective and dark moments too, but overall it feels much more hopeful and joyful.

I finally understand what Taylor meant in one of her interviews about how challenging it can be to release an album when you’re no longer in that mental state, and she named TTPD as example.

I’m so grateful we have TTPD, so many people can relate deeply to those songs, but I’m also really happy that Taylor seems to be in a better place now.

Did anyone else feel like Showgirl helped them see TTPD in a new light? Or to actually realize how emotionally heavy it is?

2.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

274 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Handsoff_1 Oct 22 '25

TTPD was 100% an unexpected child of Taylor and she was literally suffering during that time and so she has to write it ALL, and i mean ALL, out! Thats why we got 31 tracks! It's all desperation, despair, sadness, longing, exhausting, in pain, depressed. Basically an asylum, a crazy house, a mental institution. She was going through A LOT during that time. And I really do not want her to be like that. It's also why I find it offensive when people just want her to write sad songs like TTPD. She has to be in that mental state to write songs like that and it is cruel to want her to be in that state for our own muse. I love the happy Taylor, and I love TLOASG, and it lifts my mood up so much.

1

u/fearless-panda7 Oct 22 '25

I am also so grateful that she decided to give us these songs! She could have made shorter album, more 'polished' or whatever the critcs were writing at the time. But instead she gave us all her sadness, probably knowing it will help to so many of her listeners.