Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets' is written in blood

For all of its fetishization of new sounds and stances, pop music was born and still thrives by asking fundamental questions. For example, what do you do with a broken heart? That's an awfully familiar one. Yet romantic failure does feel different every time. Its isolating sting produces a kind of obliterating possessiveness: my pain, my broken delusions, my hope for healing. A broken heart is a screaming baby demanding to be held and coddled and nurtured until it grows up and learns how to function properly. This is true in the era of the one-percent glitz goddess as it was when blues queens and torch singers organized society's crying sessions. It's true of Taylor Swift, who's equated songwriting with the heart's recovery since she released "Teardrops on my Guitar" 18 years ago, and whose 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, is as messy and confrontational as a good girl's work can get, blood on her pages in a classic shade of red."

Back in her Lemonade days, when her broken heart turned her into a bearer of revolutionary spirit, Swift's counterpart and friendly rival Beyoncé got practical, advising her listeners that while feelings do need tending, a secured bank account is what counts. "Your best revenge is your paper," she sang.

For Swift, the best revenge is her pen. One of the first songs from whose title was was revealed back in February (a vinyl-only bonus track, it turns out, but a crucial framing device) is called "The Manuscript"; in it, a woman re-reads her own scripted account of a "torrid love affair." Screenwriting is one of a few literary ambitions Swift aligns with this project. At the Grove mall that I saw, every bound volume in the library bears Swift's name. The message is clear. When Taylor Swift makes music, she authors everything around her.