A magazine was forced to redact an author's name after publishing a review of Taylor Swift's latest album.
The 34-year-old's latest album, which is titled 'The Tortured Poets Department,' came as a surprise to Swifties last week after the singer initially revealed the news of the album during her speech after winning Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2024 Grammy's.
“Hey, this is my 13th Grammy,” she started. “My lucky number. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that. I wanna say thank you to the members of the Recording Academy for voting this way. But I know that the way that the Recording Academy voted is a direct reflection of the passion of the fans."
She then revealed the news of her new album.
"So I wanna say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19th," she continued. It’s called The Tortured Poets Department, and I’m going to go and post the cover right now backstage. Thank you. I love you..."
And just two months later, we have been graced by the masterpiece that is 'The Tortured Poets Department.'
Consisting of 16 songs, and then a further 15 (making it a whopping double album), Swift treated her fans to more songs about love, heartbreak, obsession and revenge - giving them an insight into how she's been healing over the year.
Naturally, Swifties took to social media to rave about it with some branding it the "album of the year" and others referring to it as "an emotional rollercoaster."
However, not everyone was a fan.
On Friday, Paste Magazine posted a review of the iconic album but decided to redact the author's byline in an attempt to protect them from threats.
Referring to a previous incident that saw an author receiving threats for their review of an older TS album (Lover), the publication tweeted that it purposefully removed the author's name because they "care more about the safety of our staff than a name attached to an article."
I mean, it was probably a good idea since the review rips apart Swift's 11th studio album, even comparing it to the work of Instagram poet, Rupi Kaur - now, that's really harsh.
"This album will surely get comparisons to Rupi Kaur’s poetry, either for its simplicity, empty language, commodification or all of the above," the author wrote, before adding: "2013 called and it wants it capricious, suburban girl-who-is-taking-a-gap-year wig back!"
Elsewhere they took a swipe at Swift herself writing: "There is nothing poetic about a billionaire - who, mind you, threatens legal action against a Twitter account for tracking her destructive private jet paths - telling stadiums of thousands of people every night that she sees and adores them."
I mean, I love Swift's music, but are they wrong? Not really.
The review continues to rip almost every song on the album to shreds, and it's pretty brutal.
"The Tortured Poets Department title-track features some of Swift’s worst lyricism to-date," a line reads, "including the irredeemable, relentlessly cringe 'You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate, we declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep like a tattooed golden retriever' line..."
And there's more where that came from as the review continues to bash the star and her album before finally concluding: "[Swift] can’t outrun the damning fate of being plum out of ideas by hopping in her jet and skirting off to God knows where. See you at the Grammys."
Savage. But hilarious and well-written.
'The Tortured Poets Department,' is now available to stream across all major music platforms including Spotify and Apple Music.
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