Ranking Every TTPD Song

Don't let the Swifties see this one...

Dear Readers, did you really think I would start a whole blog and not talk about my favorite music artist? With the amount of vitriol and digs I get about my fan status of the blonde musical juggernaut, you would think I would shy away from the subject. On the contrary, I find spite to be a terrific motivator.

Last spring Taylor Swift released her latest album titled The Tortured Poets Department. On the heels of a breakup from longtime partner Joe Alwyn comes an album with some of the most heart wrenching lyrics she’s ever written. With references to marriage, infidelity, and allusions to the secrecy and covert-ness of their relationship, this feels like a love letter to her fans more than pop songs that appeal to the general populace. She’s beyond catering to the world audience at large; she’s writing to Swifties (like me!) directly.

The whole album isn’t about Joe, however; she (allegedly) refers to her on-again-off situationship Matty Healy, frontman for the alternative band The 1975. It is generally understood that she’s been connected to him on and off for more than a decade. Her new relationship also makes an appearance: Travis Kelce, tight end for the NFL’s infamous Kansas City Chiefs. That relationship has been a cauldron of swirling theories from being a NFL money making conspiracy to being so real that they’re already married. Their classic Americana relationship is So High School. More on that later.

Now that I’ve got you up to speed, you’re probably wondering…is this Taylor’s greatest album? Is it Sarah’s favorite? What does this mean in terms of Taylor’s songwriting? Do I actually like the album?

Personally, my favorite album of hers is Reputation from 2017; unseating that album from its number one spot in my heart would be an incredible feat. Dropped as I started college and had my first real situation-ship and minor heartbreak, Reputation is more of a rock inspired pop album with hits such as Look What You Made Me Do, Delicate, and I Did Something Bad. Seeing these performed live on the Eras Tour when I missed her Reputation tour was extremely gratifying and is a core memory of mine.

As for her best album? 1989. No question. Her first real pop album dropped in 2014 and exploded into public consciousness with two singles: Bad Blood and Shake It Off. Even my parents who haven’t listened to secular music in at least three decades know Shake it Off, and if you don’t….yes you do. Those two songs aren’t the best on that album, though…but that’s a blog for another time.

I stayed up super late for the release of The Tortured Poets Department (also known as TTPD to fans, and now to you, dear reader. I don’t wanna type it out every time!). And honestly?

It’s not my favorite. Not even close.

Some of the songs sound extremely similar; no, way too similar, to each other. So much so that I have a hard time distinguishing them. Two hours after TTPD dropped, she released a second part, making the grand total songs come out to thirty-one. It’s a huge album…that easily could have been shorter. I say this with all the love in my heart: it feels like she knows her fans would listen to just about anything, and this album proves it. I am absolutely not saying that there aren’t amazing songs on this album, because there are; I just wish there was someone in the studio tapping her shoulder like…”Hey Tay…uh….these two songs? Yeah, let’s take both of them and make them one song! They are almost identical on first listen!!”

That’s kind of the key phrase: first listen. It’s true; on the first listen, I was not impressed with this album. However, after giving the album more chances, the lyrics stood out much more. There are songs on here that I truly do not care for, but there are hidden ones that are simply genius songwriting that get lost in the weeds of this massive meadow of an album.

So here it is. Manuscripts by McCann is proud to present my definitive ranking of The Tortured Poets Department. I thought about only doing the first album, but my favorite songs are on the Anthology. For the sake of your sanity (and mine) I split the ranking into two parts, so look forward to Part Two hitting your inboxes next week (and if you haven’t subscribed, go ahead and do that. Now. Then come back and like this post. All done? Okay, keep reading and leave a comment at the bottom when you’re done. Thanks, much appreciated.)

My Ranking of TTPD

31. So High School

If “So High School” has no haters, I’m dead.

Starting off with a blazing hot take: no one should date in high school. There, I said it. I’d be horrified if people today knew me then. Everyone romanticizes falling in love before becoming a legal adult…does that not feel weird to anyone else?? I get grossed out when I find out movies have people that young falling in love. High school sweethearts that last are way more rare than people think and definitely not for everyone.

Anyway, I see where Taylor is going with this; she’s in love with a football player, she’s on the bleachers dreaming about the day when he’ll wake up and find…just kidding. I know the Swifties are gonna crucify me for this one, but this is easily the worst writing on the album. ”You know how to ball, I know Aristotle”? Come on. “While your boys play Grand Theft Auto”. Yeesh.

(Side note, I’ve never been into jock types, as is completely evident by this ranking. Fun fact about me: every single guy I’ve ever liked or crushed on played an instrument. Every. Single. One. Blondie seems into it though…there’s no accounting for taste!)

This song is at the bottom because I have the strongest negative feelings about it. Next!

30. But Daddy I Love Him

”Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best” yeah okay. My feelings were a little hurt. This song feels like So High School; an adolescent sentiment of dating a guy everyone hates, but you’re gonna date him anyway. I understand not wanting the wrong people’s opinion, but surely there are other guys out there that everyone doesn’t hate. I get not wanting to be a people pleaser, and I also get not wanting to get the approval of people who don’t want the best for you…but when it’s Matty Healy? Blondie can do so much better. This song is for those girls that excuse their really poor decision making and their even poorer taste in men.

29. Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

Forgettable. I can’t remember the lyrics half the time. This song is a skip.

28. Fresh Out The Slammer

Another one I forget exists. There are a few good lyrics but it’s also indistinguishable. Another skip!

27. The Alchemy

Another one about Travis Kelce. Alchemy is basically another word for chemistry. I simply don’t care for these cutesy adolescent young adult novel feely songs on this album. This song in particular feels like the end credits of a high school romance movie on Netflix. (Think To All The Boys I Loved Before). If you like that, wonderful! This song is for you. Not for me.

26. Robin

This one has really pretty vocals, and if I heard it live…I’d probably change my stance (which is what happened to a song higher on this list). This one repeats the exact tune of So High School in places, putting it lower. Also, why is it called Robin? Will a more dedicated Swiftie please explain this one to me?? It just sounds like other songs on the album. Not upset, just confused!

25. thanK you aIMee

Now we’re moving into more positive territory. Unfortunately, I skip this one because it makes me unbelievably mad. I had a very bad friend breakup before this song came out, and I titled a photo of myself with her name in the caption, just like this song. Immature? Yeah. Did it make me feel better? No. That friend breakup was far worse than any romantic breakup I’ve ever had, and this song brings all those feelings back to the surface. However, the song is also about acknowledging that if those bad things hadn’t happened, the good things that came after wouldn’t have happened. I’m still waiting on my good things, but Reputation came out of the Kim and Kanye situation for Taylor, as well as two sold out stadium tours and even more success and fame. A solid song that I keep out of my rotation, but is necessary for the narrative.

I think this song should have been a vault track on Reputation - thematically it fits better over there. If you can’t tell, that is my most anticipated album of 2025. Or, really, my whole life. (As of February 2025 and the Grammys she still hasn’t announced it and I am losing hope.)

24. Florida!!! (ft. Florence + The Machine)

Blondie writes two whole albums that would have sounded amazing with a Florence feature, and instead she picks another overproduced song for Disney adults to put on their outdated Instagram reels? What a misuse of the powerhouse that is Florence Welch. Is it a bop? Sure. Is it the worst song on the album? No.

23. The Manuscript

An obvious reference to the now published The Eras Tour book. This song feels like she took lyrics that she couldn’t fit on other songs and squished them together on this one. This feels like a song of hers that I don’t love now, but it may grow on me, like You’re On Your Own, Kid from Midnights. For now, it’s staying in the bottom half.

22. Fortnight (ft. Post Malone)

I like Post Malone - he’s a DFW kid, just like me, and he has really cleaned up his act when he became a father. I thought having him as a collab pick was really…interesting. Especially since he also made an appearance on Beyoncé’s heavily anticipated (and best album winning!!) country album Cowboy Carter.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but to me he’s better on Beyoncé’s record than Taylor’s. When I think of collabs, I really enjoy when the featured artist is stretched a little; using their strengths to make the song better. Posty sounds fine on Fortnight, but it sounds like he clocked in to do his lil normal thing and clocked out. On LEVII’S JEANS he has a whole verse that makes sense not only for his voice but also makes a seamless transition into his recent country album that came out after TTPD and Cowboy Carter. Taylor’s collabs are rarely her best songs; the artists she features usually play a background supporting role on her songs and feel secondary to her performance (with a couple exceptions, most notably Evermore).

I also don’t appreciate that Fortnight was the song she submitted for awards. I wish artists would put the song they liked most or that they felt was their best work, not the obvious earworm radio hit. I like this one, and it’s my rotation…but there are upcoming tracks that are much, much better.

21. Clara Bow

An interesting commentary on the music industry picking out new female artists of younger generations to replace existing ones that no longer serve Hollywood’s desire for them to be evergreen. Not in my normal rotation, but a fascinating song to add to Taylor’s ever evolving thoughts on her place in the music industry.

20. The Tortured Poets Department

Taylor’s title tracks are usually pretty solid. I love the reference to Joe’s group chat with Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal. Andrew has been seen dining with Taylor and Paul dated two of her opening acts (Phoebe Bridgers and Gracie Abrams). This song is strong evidence in my argument that Taylor refers to multiple exes at once in some songs. Swifties are insistent that certain songs only refer to certain men, but in this case I think it’s at least about Joe and Matty. This song is fine, but I wanna get to the good stuff.

19. The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

Interestingly, I find that the way men carry themselves and act towards women speaks way more to their stature than their measured height. I’ve met attractive ‘short kings’ and conventionally attractive tall guys with atrocious personalities. As a six foot gal myself, nothing is more of a turn off, romantic or platonic, than guys who immediately make fun or degrade me because of my height. Who are ”the smallest men that ever lived”? It’s men that think of themselves too highly and treat others poorly out of insecurity. In my opinion, this song is (allegedly!! don’t sue me, please) about Matty Healy. I think this song is highly relatable to her audience and fun to watch on tour.

18. The Albatross

If you’re not familiar, the albatross is a famous literary metaphor in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. While an albatross is a traditional sailor’s sign of good luck, the titular mariner murders the bird, therefore cursing the voyage and undergoing significant distress on the journey. Angry at the mariner for causing their bad luck, the rest of the crew retrieve the bird and tie it around the mariner’s neck. In popular culture, it is now understood to be associated with a burden on the mind, or some sort of shame or guilt someone is carrying.

In Taylor’s words, she is the albatross; once believed to be good luck, now she is dreaded by sailors and seen as a bad omen. She sings: “She’s the albatross, she is here to destroy you”. She perceives that men are warned about her but they date her anyway, leading to their destruction; however, from reading the lyrics it seems that while the other “sailors” believe she is bad luck, she is just a bird and the unfortunate circumstances are outside of her control. From the crew’s point of view, she is the cause of the bad events but in reality she is just a bird and not to blame.

I know that the motif for 1989 is a seagull, but I can’t help but wonder if this song is a reference to a ex-boyfriend of that era instead of Joe or Matty. I like this song’s literary references and is a solid addition to the album. It does sound like a scrapped Folklore song, though. This song would be way higher except that another band did the albatross motif better: Bastille’s Weight of Living, Pt. 1, off their All This Bad Blood deluxe album. (Yes, I sense the irony of the title).

17. I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

If this song isn’t about the 1975 frontman I will eat my metaphorical hat. Again, why are we dating men that everyone dislikes???? One line that makes me giggle is “the dopamine races through his brain on a six lane Texas highway”. Don’t know if she’s ever driven through here, but the Katy Freeway down in Houston has thirteen lanes, which also happens to be her lucky number. Even Highway 20, which runs right by AT&T Stadium, has up to ten lanes. I feel like “eight” could have worked better here too.

I love her ending lyric: “Oh, maybe I can’t”. A common experience of dating is going out with someone who has toxic traits but determining that just by being in a relationship somehow you are going to “fix” them. (Spoiler: it doesn’t work. Dump them.) Another popular sentiment that Swifties eat up.

16. The Bolter

I like the tune of this one; it feels like a scrapped Evermore track. Honestly, a lot of these tracks sound like thrown out songs for other albums, which is strange because Midnights is supposed to be the album with a song from every era. The Bolter refers to a girl who starts a relationship with someone, but as soon as it turns serious or they get to know her too well she ‘bolts’. I’m not sure if this song is exactly about Taylor, because it seems from public perception that she’s not the one that ends most of her relationships; she tends to stay. Take Joe Alwyn for example: she was in a very serious relationship with him for six years, but even in Reputation and Lover she writes lyrics not reminiscent of a happy girl in love, but a girl who loves a man more than he loves her and the fear that he will leave her.

I think everyone has someone in their life who is a ‘bolter’: they panic and dump romantic partnerships as soon as it gets too serious, or they don’t keep friendships for very long, or they self-sabotage projects, jobs, or relationships. Maybe Taylor sees herself as a bolter; or maybe she knew or knows someone like this. All we can do is speculate.

15. I Hate it Here

This song is a strange one: it has hauntingly beautiful lyrics “Lucid dreams like electricity, the current flies through me, and in my fantasies I rise above it” and really odd ones “I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists”. It’s such a clunky line and it’s sad to think she had to clarify for the majority of listeners who don’t have a critical thinking brain cell in their body.

The Swifties have a couple theories about this song. Some say this is about Los Angeles; it’s a necessary place to be as a musician but has major drawbacks, as well as enemies for our tortured poet. Some think it’s London, where Taylor took up part-time residence with British born Joe Alwyn.

Almost two years ago I moved to a small town, and while I have made wonderful connections and enjoy our beautiful little home, I am definitely a city girl who gets frustrated by small minded attitudes, grumpy citizens, and the lack of anything to shop at, do, or eat. While I do my best to make the most of my time here, this song ends up in my rotation when I am fed up with living here.

What I’m trying to say is maybe Taylor isn’t referring to a place in particular, but a state of mind. When she’s in a place she hates she goes to “secret gardens” and “lunar valleys” in her mind: maybe it’s a place of anxiety, depression, or deep loneliness. She copes by losing herself in her imagination where no one can find her. Ending on a positive note, this song rounds out the bottom half of the album, and it only goes up from here.

See you next week for part two; in the meantime, check out my other work on my Substack and be sure to subscribe! Follow along on @manuscriptsbymccann on Instagram.