🔍 Decoding The Tortured Poets Department: A New Series
Diving into TTPD, one track at a time!
Dear Reader,
I’m super excited to share with you my latest YouTube series: Decoding The Tortured Poets Department! In this series we are going to go on a little adventure through Taylor Swift’s latest album, one track at a time. Each video will cover one song, and we’ll dive into the lyrics, themes, and musical genius behind each one.
Lyric Maps
A special feature of the series is my color-coded Lyric Maps - a fun way to highlight connections and deeper meanings within each song to Taylor’s larger discography. Your feedback on Instagram about these has been amazing, and I love hearing your own thoughts and connections!
Some of the links I make, I really do think could be deliberate from Taylor - to bring us back to a particular moment or meaning from another song and/or point in her life. But others could not be intentional at all, they’re just connections I’ve made in my head that I wanted to share with you. Either way, I'd love to hear what you think!
Musical Elements
As a musician myself, I’m also really excited to dig into the musical elements of each song. The production of this album is so layered and complex - and it’s soo good. There are re-occurring musical themes throughout the album that really help pull it together sonically - I’ll pull those out as much as I can as we go through the series. Whether a track is introducing new musical sounds that characterize this TTPD era, or call-back to sounds from previous albums and Eras, there’s so much to hear and to discuss. I even break out my keyboard in some videos! 🎹 But please keep in mind, while I have three degrees in music, I am no pianist 😋
Series Schedule and Links
When I kicked off the series last week I was aiming to share a new video every other day. But I’ve been delving deeper into each track than I had initially intended, and I really want to make each video as thorough and engaging as possible for you! So editing is taking me a bit longer, but I’m getting them up as fast as I can. I’ll link below to the four videos I have up covering an Introduction to the series, “Fortnight”, “The Tortured Poets Department”, and “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”, plus links to each song’s Lyric Map:
Track 4’s video, Down Bad, will go up tomorrow! If you’re interested and want to keep up with the series, you can subscribe to my channel and join me on this lyrical adventure. I’d love to hear your thoughts - it makes me so happy when I see your comments! And let me know if you'd like to see future newsletters diving even deeper into the series.
Who else decodes you?
Bekah
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