Taylor Swift reveals more lyrics from upcoming album

At a Spotify pop-up event in Los Angeles, pop star Taylor Swift revealed more lyrics from her upcoming album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”

At the outdoor installation meant to look like a library, Swift's team shared another lyric on April 16.

“One less temptress, one less dagger to sharpen,” an old-fashioned book reads.

The reveal is part of an ongoing installation at The Grove that features a poetry library “highly curated to represent the direction of the new record.”

The installation runs through April 18 and will feature more reveals throughout the week ahead of the album’s release.

Swift also announced on April 16 that she is planning to release a music video at 8 p.m. ET on April 19. The singer dropped an animated video captioned “The TTPD Timetable,” that zooms through several rooms — including a “Tortured Poets Department” — and ends on a bulletin board calendar.

Swift has already announced several other lyrics from the album. As millions looked to the sky on April 8 for a total solar eclipse that spanned much of the Eastern United States, Swift's Instagram story revealed new eclipse-themed lines.

Her account shared a video of an old-fashioned typewriter typing out the following stanzas:

“Crowd goes wild at her fingertips

Half moonshine,

Full eclipse.”

Fans immediately began speculating about the lyric’s meaning. Some guessed the words are from the upcoming song, “Clara Bow,” which is included in her track list.

Clara Bow was an actor who rose to prominence during the silent film era of the 1920s. As a celebrity, her life became tabloid fodder and she became known for being photographed while drinking and dancing.

Among the reasons fans wrote that they believed it was from “Clara Bow” included Bow’s usage of “moon manicures.” One fan also wrote on X that a total solar eclipse happened in 1925, which was a big year for Bow.

Another fan believed Bow and Swift’s lives drew parallels.

“these are clara bow lyrics i feel… drawing parallels between her own life and the life of a notable actress who was also deeply troubled ohhh,” the X user wrote.

Another person also noted that there is a photo of Bow on a Moon Motor Car from a promotional photo shoot.

“Moonshine was popularized during prohibition, the same time that scandals started surrounding Clara Bow’s career. She left the public eye in 1933, the same year prohibition ended. Aka a full eclipse from the public eye fueled by moonshine?” yet another user commented on X, connecting the actor with the lyrics.

Others guessed it was from “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” or “I Can Do I With a Broken Heart.”

Many more fans and observers noted that Swift had used the rare solar event to promote her album.

“Taylor said let me give the girls a caption to use on their eclipse photos,” @folkIegends quipped.

It’s also not the first time Swift has made an announcement on the day of a solar eclipse. During the 2017 event, she deleted all of her posts on her social media platforms and shared a cryptic 10-second video of a reptilian tail on social media.

It turned out to be a promotion for her then-upcoming album, “Reputation,” which debuted on Nov. 10, 2017.

When does ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ come out?

“The Tortured Poets Department” releases April 19, 2024.

‘The Tortured Poets Department’ track list

“The Tortured Poets Department” will feature 16 standard songs.

• “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone

• “The Tortured Poets Department”

• “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”

• “Down Bad”

• “So Long, London”

• “But Daddy I Love Him”

• “Fresh Out The Slammer”

• “Florida!!!” featuring Florence and the Machine

• “Guilty as Sin?”

• “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”

• “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”

• “LOML”

• “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”

• “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”

• “The Alchemy”

• “Clara Bow”

Known bonus tracks:

“The Manuscript”

“The Bolter”

“The Albatross”

“The Black Dog”

What is 'The Tortured Poets Department'

While Swift herself has not exactly explained the title of her upcoming album, that has not stopped her fans from speculating that it's a reference to her former partner, Joe Alwyn.

In a 2022 interview, Alwyn had previously said he was in a group chat with his friends titled “The Tortured Man Club.”

On Feb. 16, while performing in Melbourne, Australia, Swift told fans that she had “needed” to make this upcoming album.

“‘Tortured Poets’ is an album, I think more than any of my albums that I’ve ever made — I needed to make it,” she said at the time. “It was really a lifeline for me. The things I was going through, the things I was writing about, it reminded me of why songwriting actually gets me through my life. I’ve never had an album where I’ve needed songwriting more than I needed it on ‘Tortured Poets.’”

News of Swift and Alwyn’s split made headlines in spring 2023. She has since been dominating the news cycle with her ever-popular “Eras Tour,” and public romance with NFL player Travis Kelce.

What other lyrics has Taylor Swift shared from the album?

A month before the release, Taylor Nation, the singer’s official fan account, revealed what many Swifties assumed to be a set of lyrics from “The Tortured Poets Department.”

The account uploaded a handwritten note to Instagram March 19 that read, “And so I enter into evidence / My tarnished coat of arms / My muses, acquired like bruises / My talismans and charms / The tick, tick, tick of love bombs / My veins of pitch black ink.”

At the bottom, there was an additional message that said, “All’s fair in love and poetry Sincerely, The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department.”

The pop-up installation at The Grove also featured these lyrics earlier in the day on April 16.

In the comments, fans discussed which of the tracks they are most looking forward to. It appears quite a few are already predicting “So Long, London” and “But Daddy I Love Him” will be standouts on the album.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com