Taylor Swift Reveals the REAL Meaning Behind 'The Tortured Poets Department' Songs E! News

Transcript

00:00 Taylor Swift is giving internet sleuths a breather from dissecting every lyric on the

00:06 Tortured Poets Department.

00:08 That's because days after the release of her 11th studio album, the pop superstar is teaming

00:13 with Amazon Music to give some explanation behind some of the album's most popular tracks.

00:20 Users on the platform can switch on a special audio feature that has Taylor explaining the

00:25 meaning behind five songs, starting with "Fortnite," her collab with Post Malone.

00:31 Taylor says "Fortnite" is a song that exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout

00:36 this album, one of which being fatalism, longing, pining away, lost dreams.

00:42 It's a very fatalistic album in that there are lots of very dramatic lines about life

00:47 or death.

00:48 "I love you, it's ruining my life, I love you."

00:55 Taylor adds these are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say.

00:59 It's that kind of album.

01:01 Next up, Tay says of her track "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" that the sentiment

01:06 stems from the way "a lot of us are in relationships, where we are so valued by a person in the

01:12 beginning and then all of a sudden they break us or they devalue us in their mind."

01:17 Though obviously Taylor doesn't specify who the song is about, many have speculated that

01:22 some of the songs on the album are about her exes, Maddie Healy and Joe Alwyn.

01:27 "Heartbreak" was top of mind for the singer on her collab "Florida" with Florence and

01:32 the Machine, which Taylor says was partly inspired by the true crime show "Dateline."

01:37 The singer says "People have these crimes that they commit, where do they immediately

01:40 skip town and go to?

01:42 They go to Florida."

01:43 Adding "When you go through a heartbreak, there's a part of you that thinks, 'I want

01:46 a new name, I want a new life, I don't want anyone to know where I've been or know me

01:52 at all.'"

01:53 Fame is another big theme on the album as Taylor explains to Amazon Music, and while

01:58 the track "Clara Bow" is named after the 1920s film star, the Grammy winner says the

02:03 song is "really all about life in the public eye," explaining "What do we do to our

02:09 writers and our artists and our creatives?

02:12 We put them through hell.

02:14 We watch what they create, then we judge it.

02:16 We love to watch artists in pain, often to the point where I think sometimes as a society

02:22 we provoke that pain and we just watch what happens."

02:26 "There's a lot of pain in the world, and I think that's what we're all about.

02:27 I think that's what we're all about."

02:28 "I think that's what we're all about."

02:33 (upbeat music)