Really enjoyed your Slate piece. Wrote about the album(s) this week for my Substack (https://tomwilliamswrites.substack.com/p/review-the-tortured-poets-department) and felt a lot of the same things you did after listening to it. It's not nearly as bad an album as some are making out, but it sounds far too similar to Midnights and often the lyrics, rather than telling an independently compelling story, seem to require a lot of buy-in to Taylor Swift's brand and all the lore that surrounds it.
If you need to turn around a review of the new Billie Eilish album in a day, at least it only includes 10 songs!
Really enjoyed your Slate piece. Wrote about the album(s) this week for my Substack (https://tomwilliamswrites.substack.com/p/review-the-tortured-poets-department) and felt a lot of the same things you did after listening to it. It's not nearly as bad an album as some are making out, but it sounds far too similar to Midnights and often the lyrics, rather than telling an independently compelling story, seem to require a lot of buy-in to Taylor Swift's brand and all the lore that surrounds it.