Taylor Swift surprised fans overnight when she announced that her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, would arrive as an anthology featuring 15 bonus tracks.
Two hours after the album hit streaming platforms this morning (April 19), Swift posted an announcement to her socials that she had a second instalment of the album she calls The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.
"It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album," she writes. "I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours."
This generous act is nothing new for the biggest star on the planet. She has regularly added bonus tracks to her releases, including songs from the "Vault" for her (Taylor's Version) re-releases. Her last album, Midnights, was given a boost a few months after its release when she added bonus tracks and reissued it as Midnights (Til Dawn Edition).
Among the new tracks added to The Anthology are the four she has included on the different physical editions of TTPD, including "The Manuscript," "Black Dog," "Albatross" and "The Bolter."
Swift explained the album in a separate post, writing that The Tortured Poets Department is "an anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time - one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry."
See her posts below.
It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album. ✌️ I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine… pic.twitter.com/y8pyDK8VTd
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 19, 2024
The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time - one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and… pic.twitter.com/41OObGyJDW
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 19, 2024