🔎🤍 Decoding The Tortured Poets Department

Let the investigation begin!

May 29, 2024

Dear Reader,

🎶 “Who else decodes you?” 🎶

Welcome to the first official board meeting of our investigation into The Tortured Poets Department. The topic at hand? We are discussing the theory that every song in The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology has a sister or mirror song from Taylor Swift’s past song catalog. So if that interests you at all, then I hope you’re up for joining this investigation with me!

Since The Tortured Poets Department released over a month ago now, I have been working on decoding, filming, editing and finally now posting the first video of this series. I’m so excited to share it with you! This bonus newsletter will give you a quick overview of what this new series is about, what you can expect in the first video, and what to look out for in upcoming “board meetings”. I’d love to hear your feedback on it all! So, let’s dive in.

This Newsletter Covers:

🔎 Decoding TTPD, Part 1
🎶 TTPD’s Mirror/Sister Songs Playlist + Links
🎥 Coming Up Next
❓ Can I Ask You a Question?

Decoding TTPD, Part 1

After The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology released, I was editing my reaction videos and putting together some shorter clips to share on social media. The first reel I decided to post was this one, of recognizing “champagne problems” in the TTPD song “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus.” I thought it was such a fun connection, and I wanted to see if others had noticed the same thing. What I wasn’t expecting was for the reel to get the amount of traction and engagement it did - over 1 million views later, the comments section is still one of my favorite things to read through! It got difficult to keep up with (so I’m really sorry if you left a comment and I haven’t replied yet 🙈) - but I love how so many people have been sharing the connections they’re finding between TTPD tracks and other Taylor Swift songs.

I felt like this was the perfect opening to start a series exploring all of the connecting threads we can find in TTPD. So my investigation began. This YouTube video is the first part of presenting my findings with you. For each TTPD track, I’ve selected one (or two) past Taylor Swift song(s) that I think most closely relates to or mirrors it. Some of the connections are pretty clear. Others less conclusive. But these are my preliminary ideas - I’m hoping to expand the investigation and collect your own evidence as the series continues!

I actually sat down and filmed this video less than a week after TTPD released 😅 So I’m *super* excited to finally get this series going! It feels pretty fitting though, to kick it off after Taylor Swift just sang (in her latest Eras Tour show in Lisbon) The Tortured Poets Department, with the lyric, “Who else decodes you?” - which was my original inspiration for starting this series.

As I’ve continued to listen to the album (it’s on a continuous loop on my listening devices, and in my head 😋) and had more time to process and ponder, my thinking has evolved from where it was when I filmed this video. I still stand by the initial pairings I put forward in this video, but I would love to hear your own thoughts. As the series goes on we’ll dive deeper into each track and can edit the playlist with any better pairings we discover, as needed.

Speaking of that playlist…

TTPD’s Mirror/Sister Songs Playlist + Links

Of course I had to make a playlist to capture the start of this investigation. The playlist currently covers TTPD tracks 1-16, and the mirror/sister pairings I selected for them (which I explain more fully in the video). I’ll update the playlist with TTPD tracks 17-31 and their respective pairings once part ✌️ of this introduction goes up.

I hope that hearing a lot of these pairings of songs back-to-back can help draw out the connecting threads I’ve been finding! And I pinpoint much more specific connections in the YouTube video.

Here are links for this playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube, as well as clean versions on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.

Coming Up Next

Part 2 of the introduction to this series will be up in a few days! It’ll cover Tracks 17-31 for The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology and their sister/mirror pairings.

After that, there’s a lot of crucial evidence to cover. I’m planning to do deep dives into each TTPD track, covering all of the threads we can find that connect to Taylor’s past discography, as well as within the album itself. We’ll look at the lyrics and musical elements to try and decode this album as best we can. I have a lot of ideas of what this can look like. But I would love to hear your thoughts as well on what you would be most interested in seeing in this series!

Would you like stand-alone videos covering each TTPD track individually? Would you prefer longer videos covering multiple tracks at a time? Let me know any of your thoughts in the comments, and/or feel free to email me or dm me over on Instagram.

I hope you’re as excited about this series as I am! I genuinely cannot wait to hear your own ideas. Every time I listen to TTPD, I discover new connecting threads - there’s so many in this album! So I can’t wait to dive deeper into this investigation with you. Stay tuned for part ✌️ Until next time,

I trace the evidence, make it make some sense,

Bekah

🎶 Can I Ask You a Question? 🎶

🎶 Have you been making connections between TTPD songs and previous Taylor Swift songs in your listening?
🤔 What would you like to see in future meetings/videos for this series? Would you prefer videos decoding one TTPD track at a time? Or longer videos covering multiple tracks at a time?

Dear Reader