Is Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department Misunderstood? (with Shaad D'Souza) (Patreon Preview)
Pop Pantheon
DJ Louie XIV
4.7 • 630 Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a preview of this week's Pop Pantheon: All Access episode, Taylor Swift's eleventh studio album The Tortured Poets Department— a sprawling, 31 song, two disc, two+ hour melange of music from the superstar— arrived last April amidst peak Taylor cultural overload: her landmark Eras Tour had been globe-trotting for a year, she'd just recently dominated the Grammys winning her record-breaking fourth Album of the Year trophy for previous album Midnights, her non-stop fountain of re-releases of previous works seemed ceaseless, and her new relationship with football star Travis Kelce was plastered all over our TVs and social media feeds constantly.
All of that made the album a lot to stomach for many outside of the artist's (massive) core fan base and Poets, though hugely commercially successful, was broadly seen as one of the pop icon's weaker efforts, including by the makers of the podcast.
But with the power of hindsight, how does Tortured Poets hold up removed from all of that context?
Louie, Russ, and friend of the pod Shaad D'Souza gather to discuss just that, plus each share their... um.. "tailored" versions which help prune the massive tracklist into something more manageable, and maybe good?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey y'all, DJ Louie here just dropping a preview of this week's Pop Pantheon All Access episode. |
| 0:05.3 | If you enjoy this snippet and you want to hear the rest of this episode plus weekly bonus episodes of this podcast, |
| 0:11.0 | you can subscribe at patreon.com slash Pop Pantheon or click the link in the show notes of this episode. |
| 0:16.9 | If you're considering subscribing to Pop Pantheon All Access and you use Apple's App Store on your mobile device, |
| 0:22.4 | we recommend not subscribing to Potthian All Access using the Patreon app on your phone, |
| 0:27.8 | where Apple is now charging unnecessary fees for new subscribers. |
| 0:32.3 | Instead, go to patreon.com slash Poppantheon on your desktop to subscribe. |
| 0:36.9 | You will still have access to all of the features of Patreon, |
| 0:39.4 | including listening to our bonus episodes on your Apple Podcast app. We wish we had more control over this, |
| 0:44.3 | but sadly we don't. So that's our recommendation to save you a couple bucks. You can also, of course, |
| 0:48.2 | subscribe for the audio only directly here in the Apple Podcasts app. Enjoy this preview. |
| 0:53.5 | Welcome to Pop Pantheon All Access, the podcast where we do even more over-analyzing of all |
| 0:58.8 | your favorite pop stars and to do other stuff too. |
| 1:01.5 | This is your host, DJ Louis XIV. |
| 1:04.1 | Thank you all so much for being subscribers to the show. |
| 1:07.4 | Before we get into today's episode, I want to let everybody know that we just announced our latest |
| 1:12.8 | main pop girls dance party in New York City. |
| 1:16.2 | This will be our Pride edition, and it will be happening on June 7th at the Parkside |
| 1:21.2 | Lounge in the East Village. |
| 1:22.5 | We're so excited about it. |
| 1:23.8 | The last one was such a smash, and we're super stoked to play all your favorite |
| 1:29.4 | pop girlies to celebrate pride. That's that. Get tickets in the show notes of this episode. You can also |
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