Death-Writing as Album Architecture: Thanatography and Documentary Form in Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

In February 2024, Taylor Swift announced her eleventh studio album through a puzzle. Apple Music hosted a scavenger hunt in which parts of text were planted across her back catalogue and released as fans collectively solved word games, assembling phrases that would later surface as lyrics on the record. One of the fragments said, ‘We hereby conduct this post-mortem’, a phrase which would open one of the album’s central tracks. The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology (hereafter TTPD ) was released in April 2024 as a surprise double album totalling thirty-one songs across its standard and expanded editions.