Entertainment

Per chairman Taylor Swift, here's what we know about 'The Tortured Poets Department'

Published

2 years ago

April 18, 2024

Per chairman Taylor Swift, here's what we know about 'The Tortured Poets Department'

It’s the dawn of a new era — a new Taylor Swift Era, that is.

This week, the 14-time Grammy Award-winning artist will release her 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” which she first announced at the Grammys in February.

While accepting the pop vocal album award for “Midnights” — her first of two wins that night — Swift thanked her fans by divulging “a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19.”

The announcement came as a shock to Swifties, who had theorized that the singer would instead announce “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” at the awards ceremony. (That the albums seem to share a B&W aesthetic didn’t help).

And while she may have intentionally thrown fans off the scent, “All’s fair in love and poetry.” So here’s what we know so far:

When does ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ come out?

Following a whirlwind promotional week, “The Tortured Poets Department” will arrive at 9 p.m. Pacific on Thursday. Her “April 19” announcement in February was referring to the album’s East Coast ETA.

Swift began making the album directly after she turned in “Midnights,” and it took her about two years to complete, she said during her first Eras Tour show in Japan on Feb. 7.

“I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour, and when it was perfect — in my opinion when it’s good enough for you — I finished it and I am so, so excited that soon you’ll get to hear it,” she told the crowd.

What genre is it?

In Target’s product description for “The Tortured Poets Department” vinyl, the album is classified as pop, but the singer herself has not indicated where the album lands with respect to genre.

Instead, the self-proclaimed “chairman of the Tortured Poets Department” has released successive batches of lyrics, including “Crowd goes wild at her fingertips / Half moonshine, / full eclipse” — posted on the day of the April 8 solar eclipse.

Still, clues about the album’s potential sonic characteristics may lie with two of its credited songwriters, Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, who have each produced large swaths of Swift’s discography.

If the two producers’ generally dissimilar sounds — Dessner leans pastoral, and Antonoff, synthetic — both inflect the record, it could be anything from folk to indie pop.

How many songs? Any guest artists?

Swift revealed the track list for “The Tortured Poets Department” in a Feb. 5 Instagram post, listing the following 16 titles:

“Fortnight” (feat. 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!!!!” (feat. Florence + 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”

Additionally, there are four different confirmed editions of the album, each named after the bonus track it will include: “The Bolter,” “The Albatross,” “The Black Dog” and “The Manuscript.”

Post Malone and Florence and the Machine are also credited as songwriters on their respective tracks.

Spotify’s library installation for Taylor Swift’s new album “The Tortured Poets Department” is on view at the Grove in L.A. through Thursday.

(Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images)

After the initial announcement at the Grammys, Swift was relatively quiet. In recent weeks, though, she’s gone back to her internet-breaking behavior.

It started with an Apple Music collaboration that saw Swift releasing five different playlists on the platform, each consisting of songs from her catalog and representing one of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The playlists were titled with track names and lyrics from “The Tortured Poets Department.”

Then, on Saturday, Apple Music marked the final countdown to the album with a digital scavenger hunt.

“A word a day til the @taylorswift13 album drops,” the music service wrote in its bio on X (formerly Twitter).

Soon after, fans discovered that the secret words were hidden within song lyrics on Apple Music. Thus far, they’ve parsed the words “hereby,” “conduct,” “this,” “post” and “we,” and while many have their theories, the meaning of the incomplete word jumble is still unknown.

The festivities have also moved offline, to Spotify’s “The Tortured Poets Department” library installation at the Grove in L.A., which debuted Tuesday and is open through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

“Fans will be able to explore a poetry library, highly curated to represent the new record,” the event description on the Grove’s website reads. “The shelves will be packed with books and visual surprises for fans to enjoy.”

Visitors also seem to be finding a number of Swift’s trademark Easter eggs throughout the installation, including an upside-down “So Long, London” title — which fans suspect is a nod to her year-ago breakup with British actor Joe Alwyn — and a clock set to 2.

The former visual also appeared in a video Swift posted Tuesday on Instagram. Captioned “The TTPD Timetable,” the cryptic clip guides viewers from a “Midnights”-style room into “The Tortured Poets Department,” where a wall calendar teases a Friday music video release.

How can I listen to the new album?

“The Tortured Poets Department” is available to pre-order (and pre-save on Spotify or Apple Music) on Swift’s website, and is currently being offered in vinyl, cassette, CD and digital album formats to be released April 19. It will also start streaming on that date — which for West Coasters means at 9 p.m. Pacific Thursday.

The four versions of the album are also available to pre-order on Swift’s website, but CD and vinyl versions of the album are also available at Target. Currently, there is no version of the album, digital or physical, that will contain all four bonus tracks.

Movie Reviews

Jeremy Schuetze’s ‘ANACORETA’ (2022) – Movie Review – PopHorror

Published

7 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Jeremy Schuetze’s ‘ANACORETA’ (2022) – Movie Review – PopHorror

PopHorror had the chance to check out Anacoreta (2022) ahead of its streaming release! Does this meta-horror flick provide interesting story telling or is it a confusing mess.

Let’s have a look…

Synopsis

A group of friends heads to a secluded woodland cabin for a weekend getaway, planning to film an experimental horror movie. As the shoot progresses, the project begins to fall apart—until a real and terrifying presence emerges from the darkness.

Anacoreta is directed by Jeremy Schuetze. It was written by Jeremy Schuetze and Matt Visser. The film stars Antonia Thomas (Bagman 2024), Jesse Stanley (Raf 2019), Jeremy Schuetze (Jennifer’s Body 2009), and Matt Visser (A Lot Like Christmas 2021)

My Thoughts

Antonia Thomas delivered an outstanding performance as the female lead in Anacoreta. It was remarkable to watch her convey such a wide range of emotions with authenticity and depth. I was continually impressed by her ability to switch seamlessly between different dialects. I absolutely loved her delivery of the dialogue of telling The Scorpion and the Frog fable.

Anacoreta employs a distinctive, meta-horror style of storytelling. The narrative follows a group of friends creating a “scripted reality” horror film, and as the plot unfolds, the boundary between their staged production and their actual lives becomes increasingly blurred. This was interesting, but at the same time frustrating as a viewer.

Check out Anacoreta on Prime Video and let us know your thoughts!

Entertainment

Todd Meadows, ‘Deadliest Catch’ deckhand, dies at 25

Published

9 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

Todd Meadows, ‘Deadliest Catch’ deckhand, dies at 25

Todd Meadows, a crewmember on one of the fishing vessels featured on the long-running reality series “Deadliest Catch,” has died. He was 25.

Rick Shelford, the captain of the Aleutian Lady, announced in a Monday post on Facebook and Instagram that Meadows died Feb. 25. He called it “the most tragic day in the history of the Aleutian Lady on the Bering Sea.”

“We lost our brother,” Shelford wrote in his lengthy tribute. “Todd was the newest member of our crew, he quickly became family. His love for fishing and his strong work ethic earned everyone’s respect right away. His smile was contagious, and the sound of his laughter coming up the wheelhouse stairs or over the deck hailer is something we will carry with us always.

“He worked hard, loved deeply, and brought joy to those around him,” he added. “Todd will forever be part of this boat, this crew, and this brotherhood. Though we lost him far too soon, his legacy will live on through his children and in every memory we carry of him.”

A fundraiser set up in Meadows’ name described the deckhand from Montesano, Wash., as a father to “three amazing little boys” who died “while doing what he loved — crabbing out on Alaskan waters.”

According to the Associated Press, Meadows died after he was reported to have fallen overboard around 170 miles north of Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

“He was recovered unresponsive by the crew approximately ten minutes later,” Chief Petty Officer Travis Magee, a spokesperson with the Coast Guard’s Arctic District, told the AP. The Coast Guard is investigating the incident.

Meadows was a first-year cast member of “Deadliest Catch,” the Discovery Channel reality series that follows crab fishermen navigating the perilous winds and waves of the Bering Sea during the Alaskan king crab and snow crab fishing seasons. The show debuted in 2005. No episodes from Meadows’ season has aired.

Deadline reported that the show was in production on its 22nd season when the incident occurred, with the Shelford-led Aleutian Lady being the last of the vessels still out at sea at the time. Production has subsequently concluded, per the outlet.

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic passing of Todd Meadows,” a Discovery Channel spokesperson said in a statement that has been widely circulated. “This is a devastating loss, and our hearts are with his loved ones, his crewmates, and the entire fishing community during this incredibly difficult time.”

Meadows is the latest among “Deadliest Catch” cast members who have died. Previous deaths include Phil Harris, a captain of one of the ships featured on the show, who died after suffering a stroke while filming the show’s sixth season in 2010. Todd Kochutin, a crew member of the Patricia Lee, died in 2021 from injuries he sustained while aboard the fishing vessel, according to an obituary. Other cast members have died from substance abuse or natural causes.

Movie Reviews

‘Hoppers’ review: Pixar’s best original movie in years

Published

20 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

‘Hoppers’ review: Pixar’s best original movie in years

“So it’s like Avatar?” one character quips in Disney and Pixar’s “Hoppers,” bluntly translating the film’s high-concept premise for the sugar-fueled kids in the audience. And yes, the comparison is apt. The story follows a nature-obsessed teenage girl who manages to quite literally “hop” her consciousness into the body of a robotic beaver in order to spark an animal rebellion against a greedy mayor determined to bulldoze their forest for a freeway.

It’s a clever hook. The kind of big, elastic idea Pixar used to make look effortless. “Hoppers” does not reach the rarified air of “Up,” “Wall-E,” or “Inside Out,” but after a stretch of uneven originals like “Turning Red” and “Luca,” and outright misfires such as “Elemental” and “Elio,” this feels like a genuine course correction. The environmental messaging is clear without being preachy, the animals are irresistibly anthropomorphized, and the studio’s once-signature emotional sincerity is back in sturdy form.

Pixar can afford to gamble on originals when it has a guaranteed cash cow like this summer’s “Toy Story 5” waiting in the wings, but “Hoppers” earns its place in the catalogue. Director Daniel Chong crafts a warm, heartfelt film that occasionally strains under the weight of its own ambition, yet remains grounded by character and theme. Its meditation on conservation and animal displacement feels timely in a way that never tips into after-school-special territory.

We meet Mabel, voiced with bright conviction by Piper Curda, as a child liberating her classroom pets and returning them to the wild. Her moral compass is shaped by her grandmother, voiced by Karen Huie, who imparts wisdom about nature’s sanctity. True to both Pixar tradition and the broader Disney playbook, this beacon of guidance does not survive past the opening act. Loss, after all, is Pixar’s favorite inciting incident.

Years later, Mabel is still fighting the good fight, squaring off against the smarmy Mayor Jerry, voiced with slick menace by Jon Hamm. He plans to flatten the glade where Mabel and her grandmother once found solace. Mabel’s resistance feels noble but futile. The animals have already mysteriously vanished, the machinery is coming, and her last-ditch plan involves luring a beaver back to the abandoned forest in hopes of jumpstarting the ecosystem.

That’s when the film gleefully pivots into mad-scientist territory. At Beaverton University, Mabel discovers her professor, voiced by Kathy Najimy, has developed a device that can project human consciousness into synthetic animals. The process, dubbed “hopping,” allows Mabel to inhabit a robotic beaver and infiltrate the forest from within. It’s an inspired escalation that keeps the film buoyant even when the plotting grows predictable.

Her new posse includes King George, a lovably beaver voiced by Bobby Moynihan with distinct Bing Bong energy; a sharp-tongued bear voiced by Melissa Villaseñor; a regal bird king voiced by the late Isiah Whitlock Jr.; and a fish queen voiced by Ego Nwodim. As is often the case with Pixar, even in its lesser efforts, the world-building is meticulous. The animal hierarchy, complete with titles like “paw of the king,” is layered with jokes that play for kids while slyly winking at adults.

The plot ultimately follows a familiar template. Scrappy underdog rallies community. Corporate villain twirls metaphorical mustache. Emotional third-act sacrifice looms. At times, you can feel the machinery working a little too cleanly. Pixar, and Disney at large, has grown increasingly reliant on sequels and established IP, and “Hoppers” does not radically reinvent the wheel. In an animated landscape where films like “K-Pop: Demon Hunters,” “Across the Spider-Verse,” and “Goat” are pushing stylistic and narrative boundaries, being safe and sturdy may not always be enough.

And yet, there is something refreshing about a Pixar original that remembers how to tug at the heart without squeezing it dry. “Hoppers” is playful, peppered with cheeky needle drops, and builds to a sweet emotional catharsis that may or may not have left this critic a little misty-eyed. It feels earnest and engaged.

“Hoppers” may not be top-tier Pixar. But it is a welcome return to form, a reminder that the studio still knows how to marry big ideas with a bigger heart.

HOPPERS opens in theaters Friday, March 6th.