The Tortured Poets Department
The Evangelical Urge to Over-Spiritualize Everything
I have a complicated relationship with music. In some ways, I love it with every fiber of my being. It speaks to me in ways that words cannot. It conveys words, emotions, stories, movement in such a way that allows for a fuller picture, deeper healing, soul connection, and so much more.
I also have a complicated relationship with Taylor Swift. Many people do. Many people in Nashville, especially, do. I used to have more of an opinion; nowadays I root for her and think she’s pretty badass. However, there are many people in this city—her hometown—who give less than glowing reviews despite Taylor’s affection for her city. It’s that age old theory that the people from your hometown are always the ones that hate on you the most.
As we are all aware, she just released her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, and as a surprise—but in complete Taylor fashion—it was a double album. At 2am on Friday, on Instagram, she announced: “It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album. ✌️ I'd written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here's the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn't mine anymore... it's all yours. 🤍”
I was struck by that last line “And now the story isn’t mine anymore…it’s all yours”
It’s poetic unto itself. And it’s a reflection that Taylor knows her fans and what they were about to do—the way they would ravage through her album to dissect every word, lyric, phrase, note, easter egg (which she is good at leaving). They would create narratives, think pieces, articles, even dissertations of the slice of her life and relationships through what she revealed on the album… And claim to know her. Deeply. Profoundly. That she knows them, gets them, IS them.
Moreover, that last line seemed to recognize that by releasing the The Tortured Poets Department, everything was now up for critique, debate, and interpretation. In some ways, this is exactly how it should be with poetry. There are a thousand meanings in one line—it is meant to be interpreted by the reader or the listener as it hits them in the moment, which may also morph over time. On a creative, artistic level, I can deeply appreciate this.
As I woke up on Friday morning and scrolled Instagram and saw the reviews (almost entirely positive!) roll in about Taylor’s new album, I also began to notice what I am now coining the “evangelical urge to over-spiritualize everything”
“TTPD is an album about Purity Culture…”
“TTPD is an album about deconstruction…”
“TTPD is all about ……….”
I get it, we all listen through our own particular lenses—which means that when we hear, see, and experience things there is a specific way that we perceive and interpret them through our own specific set of nuances. (And, like I said above, poetry is meant to be interpreted in a personal way!)
It’s not lost on me, however, that in religious spaces, one of the ways we connected to culture was by bringing the culture into the church and making it spiritual. Oftentimes this was done by vilifying it. Sometimes this was done as a way to justify how to interact with it, live with it, show how to co-exist, or to reiterate the need to be counter-cultural. In many cases, or most, it was to show that we were sinners in need of a savior…it was pastors who loved to drive home their point so that we would be able to see Jesus no matter where we were in our day-to-day lives.
It’s not shocking that we would continue to do it “in the wild” then too, just with different messages. We see purity culture everywhere. We see religious fundamentalism everywhere. We see biblical messaging everywhere. And to be fair, maybe it is. (Probably it is.)
Are we doing what pastors did on a Sunday morning? Is it possible that if we had walked into a church this Sunday morning we would have heard a pastor preaching the over-spiritualization of The Tortured Poets Department?