On stage at the 2024 Grammy Awards in February, Swift flashed the No. 2 with her fingers as she unveiled her new project. Fans have since been fixated on the significance of the number and gesture, which popped up several times before the double album’s Friday, April 19, release.
Rewinding to the TTPD clues 2 years ago. Let’s go back to 2022. Swift appeared at Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022 for a screening of her starring and directing debut, ‘All Too Well: The Short Film.’ During a panel discussion, she teased, ‘People often greatly underestimate how much I will inconvenience myself to prove a point.’ When the interviewer joked that the comment should be used as Swift’s next album title, she quipped, ‘It’s a little long. … We’ll just [use] the initials.’
The TikTok creator pointed out that the name of Swift’s new record is abbreviated. (Swift revealed on Friday that TTPD is a double album, dropping with a total of 31 songs.) In another clip from her Tribeca Film Festival appearance, Swift described the process of choosing ‘the head of each department’ involved in creating the film. In promoting her latest album, Swift referred to herself as ‘the chairman’ of The Tortured Poets Department.
The final piece in this fan’s puzzle was Swift noting during the panel that she had created a ‘massive manuscript,’ which is also the name of a variant on the album. ‘The Manuscript’ is the last song on the extended version of the album.
It’s unclear whether Swift left these Easter eggs intentionally, but social media users were quick to cosign the theory in the comments section. ‘TAYLOR SWIFT I CANNOT WITH YOU 🖤🤍,’ one fan wrote, while another added, ‘She’s so crazy I love it.’ TTPD was largely inspired by Swift’s split from Joe Alwyn, who she dated from May to June 2023 after ending her six-year relationship with ex Harry Styles. (Swift and Healy were first linked in 2014.)
While celebrating the album’s release on Friday, Swift reflected on her ‘sensational and sorrowful’ journey. ‘This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up,’ she wrote via social media. ‘There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.’
