Your Complete Guide to TTPD, Part

Dear Reader,

When I sent out Your Complete Guide to TTPD three days ago, I was not expecting SO much to happen before TTPD’s release. It feels like just a week ago I was seeing posts and comments that Taylor wasn’t doing any promotion for her new album. Oh wait, it was. Cut to the current situation, and I feel like I can hardly keep up! 😅

From a revealed timetable, a music video premiere to look forward to, Apple Music searches, Spotify lyric reveals, Easter Eggs in pop-ups and more, there’s so much going on I decided a Part 2 to this TTPD Guide was in order. With all the 2’s surrounding this album, I suppose a second part was just meant to be. So let’s get into it!

TTPD Timetable and Tonight’s Agenda
Apple Music’s Word of the Day, Completed
Spotify’s TTPD Library Pop-Up in LA
Taylor’s Spotify Lyric Reveal Videos
Chicago Murals and Error Codes
iHeartRadio’s TTPD Album Premiere
Taylor Swift’s Instagram Countdown
Useful Links Roundup

Just like we had a Midnights release week schedule, a couple of days ago Taylor Swift shared one for TTPD! We can only see the first day and a half of the schedule so far, meaning there could be a lot to come. For Midnights the schedule included: two music videos, two TV interviews and a special chaotic surprise on release day. We’ll see what goes down for TTPD.

Yesterday, April 17th, Taylor Swift and Taylor Nation shared this video. Taylor’s caption called it “The TTPD Timetable”, and Taylor Nation’s said: “If entry into THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is what you seek, step out of the Midnights room and enjoy a peek.🚪 Add another board meeting to your #TTPDTimetable on Friday at 8pm ET for a music video premiere!”

Here’s a breakdown of the video:

The video starts with a clock set at 2 o'clock in the Midnights room. As the camera zooms out we see a green couch with a cello, reminding me of this birthday post Taylor shared of her and Jack in the studio (she has a cello on her lap). On the table we can see a Midnights vinyl and scattered glitter gel pens. During the Midnights album roll-out, Taylor shared playlists (similar to her recent 5 Stages of Heartbreak playlists) with some of her discography categorized into three playlists: Glitter Gel Pen Songs, Fountain Pen Songs and Quill Pen Songs.

It’s been reported that the TTPD library at the Spotify pop-up (more on that later) has fountain and quill pens, but no gel pens. So it looks like glitter gel pens are getting left behind in the Midnights era, and we’re entering into an era of quill and feather pen songs. Taylor described quill pen songs as using “words and phrasings [that] are antiquated”; and fountain pen songs as songs with “modern storyline or references, with a poetic twist”.

The camera then zooms through the room to a door, passing by crumpled up papers and Midnights variant vinyls lying on the floor. There’s also photographs on the wall of Taylor with other Midnights collaborations, including Jack Antonoff, Lana Del Ray, and Zoey Kravitz.

We then get into a hallway, which is blindingly white and sterile, until we arrive at a door labeled “The Tortured Poets Department”. We go through the door’s keyhole, and enter TTPD’s room. This room has doubles of so many things! 2 desks, 2 chairs, 2 cups of coffee, etc. There’s plastic bags that could possibly be evidence bags, and white folders that maybe hold case files? The camera pans to the wall, showing another clock pointing at 2 o'clock. On a cork board are a few photographs held up with thumbtacks, and we finally zoom into the TTPD Timetable.

All we can see from the schedule is Friday and a very small amount of Saturday. Friday has handwritten, “☆☆ THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT RELEASE DAY ☆☆”. Then underneath, the very exciting second event of the day is written in at 8pm ET - a TTPD Music Video release!! At the bottom of the day there are 14 tally marks. On Saturday we can see part of the phrase “record store day”, and the second line of the notes section at the bottom of the page, has the handwritten word “time”.

This video really brought up the recurrence of 2’s, a continuing theme around this album. It also gave us our first look at the TTPD room. The white TTPD room looks like those rooms in TV crime dramas where autopsies are conducted, so that’s interesting. The fact that we’re sticking with album-themed rooms continues the idea of the Lover house, where each era had its own room in that house. The announcement of a new music video is also quite notable - so we’ll cover that next!

Super excitingly, we’re getting a TTPD music video on TTPD release day! It’s crazy that we hardly have to wait any time to see this one. We haven’t had a music video since “I Can See You” for Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). 1989 (Taylor’s Version) didn’t have a music video. So it feels extra exciting to get one for this new album.

Due to the 14 tally marks found under the music video on the TTPD Timetable, many were speculating that the music video and first single from the album could be “Fortnight” (a period of 14 days), or Track 14: “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”. Today, Taylor confirmed with this post that it will indeed be “Fortnight feat. Post Malone”!

Earlier today, Taylor Nation shared this post from The Tortured Poets Department intern, including the agenda for tonight’s board meeting. It includes the 12 tracks on TTPD’s standard edition as the 12am Discussion Topics, asks that members press play simultaneously so that we can review the evidence together, and advices bringing a dictionary. I love the attention to detail and those small touches in posts like these, that just make being a Swiftie so much fun!

Have you been taking part in Apple Music’s Word of the Day challenge? It’s been so fun to scour songs looking for capitalized letters to unscramble. Today we got the final word of our phrase. I’ll go through each day’s word, which song it was found in, the playlist that song came from (out of the 5 Taylor recently shared), and then finish off with the final phrase.

April 13th’s Word: HEREBY - found in Glitch (on the “Denial” playlist)
April 14th’s Word: CONDUCT - found in peace (on the “Bargaining” playlist)
April 15th’s Word: THIS - found in Better Than Revenge (on the “Anger” playlist)
April 16th’s Word: POST, found in Clean (on the “Acceptance” playlist)
April 17th’s Word: WE, found in We Were Happy (on the “Depression” playlist)
April 18th’s Word: MORTEM, found in Begin Again (on the “Acceptance” playlist)

The final phrase says: WE HEREBY CONDUCT THIS POSTMORTEM

The definition of postmortem is: an examination of a dead body to determine the cause of death. Oh. MY.

I also put together this quick reel showing the whole phrase, and how it made the end of “You’re Losing Me” hit even harder than before. You know how her heartbeat is in the background of that song? And how at the very end it stops, after the lyrics “my heart won’t start anymore”? Then put that together with this phrase. I know 😭

On April 16th, Spotify put up a pop-up TTPD Library, inviting Swifties to look through the scene and spot all kinds of Easter Eggs. Even though I was just recently in LA, I traveled back home to the other side of the country a few weeks ago, so sadly couldn’t make the pop-up in person. But thanks to social media, I feel like I’ve been able to experience some of it through my phone screen. This Spotify post about the pop-up also has a great video with lots of close-ups (swipe to the third frame of the carousel)! There’s so many Easter Eggs to spot:

A clock set to 2 o'clock.
TTPD lyrics, which updated every day of the pop-up to match the revealed lyrics on Spotify’s videos.
Bookshelves containing books labeled with TTPD tracks.
A desktop calendar with the date December 13 Friday. The fact that December 13th, Taylor’s 35th birthday, falls on a Friday the 13th this year is wild. Definitely keep an eye out for something going down that day.
A globe with a pin in Florida - for the TTPD track “Florida!!!”
Quill and fountain pens, with no glitter gel pens in sight.
A jar containing puzzle pieces with lines and letters.
A vase with dried flowers, which have been speculated to be lavender and cornelia rose - for “Lavender Haze” and “Cornelia Street” 😭
A typewriter and a magnifying glass - common imagery around this album.
72 small drawers, which look like a library catalog.
Blacked out windows.
A hand making the “peace” sign, or it could be interpreted as holding up the number two - much like what Taylor did when she announced the album.
A recurring comment I came across from people who went in person, was that the 2’s were 2ing again!

Every day of TTPD release week, Spotify has been sharing videos on the TTPD album page with what Taylor Nation has confirmed are TTPD lyrics. Her first video was an introduction to TTPD’s release week. Each video afterwards has been of Taylor typing a new lyric on a typewriter. I copied below a transcript of her introduction, along with the revealed lyrics from each day:

“Hey Spotify, happy release week of The Tortured Poets Department album. Make sure to pre-save the album and keep checking back for more updates from the department.”
“Even statues crumble if they’re made to wait”
“One less temptress. One less dagger to sharpen”
“Lost the game of chance, what are the chances?”
“As she was leaving, it felt like breathing”
“Come one, come all. It’s happening again"

On April 16th a mural showed up in Chicago that has brought up many questions. The mural is of a QR code surrounded by “partially faded lines of code that, upon taking a closer look, appear to be made up of repeating “13”s and “TTPD”s” (from Billboard).

The QR code, when scanned, takes you to an error code on Taylor’s YouTube Channel. What really made eyebrows raise is that the error code is “321” - the same error code we got on the day Taylor announced TTPD. At the time, many of us thought that the error code was pointing to a Reputation (Taylor’s Version) announcement at the Grammys that night. She announced TTPD instead. It feels quite curious that this error code is popping back up.

iHeartRadio will be celebrating release day in style by playing The Tortured Poets Department album in full at midnight, along with exclusive audio from Taylor Swift herself. You can check out more about the event here on their website. Especially if you don’t have access to a physical copy of the album or streaming services, this could be a great option to listen to the full album the minute it’s released!

Finally, one last fun fact I’ll leave you with (if you haven’t come across it already) is Taylor's hidden countdown on Instagram. If you go to her profile, and swipe down, you’ll first see the words “The Tortured Poets Department” at the top of the screen. Keep pulling down and you’ll get taken to a real time countdown to the album’s release. I’m not sure what will happen when we get to midnight and the album is released - maybe it’ll just disappear? But it’s such a cool little detail to add even more fun to the madness of the TTPD album rollout.

That’s a wrap on my TTPD Guides preparing us for the album release! I really hope you have found them helpful. In 7 hours we’ll be listening to TTPD, and I’m wishing you an amazing first listening experience and I’m sure many more after. Look out for more TTPD content post-release. I’ll be filming a reaction video for YouTube, and will share my first thoughts and reactions on my upcoming April 22nd Dear Reader newsletter, going out to all paid subscribers.

I’ve so enjoyed working on these bonus emails and TTPD Guides - thank you for all of the love you’re showing this series! I especially appreciate your paid subscriptions, which really help to support all of that work. If you’re interested and able to upgrade to a paid subscription, I’m so excited to share those bonus emails with you! Your support at any level you’re able to offer - whether it’s paid subscriptions, sharing these emails, commenting, liking, and reading - honestly means the world 🫶

I can’t wait to listen to this album with you, and to share in our thoughts, musings, and tears together. In the meantime,

“Come one, come all. It’s happening again”,

Bekah

Have you been keeping up with all the extra reveals, Easter Eggs, and announcements Taylor’s been sharing leading up t TTPD’s release? Let me know if I missed anything!
Which revealed TTPD lyric is your favorite? The lyric, “As she was leaving, it felt like breathing” really hit me hard 😭

Delta Gatti

Update: 2024-12-04

PicoBlog

Your Complete Guide to TTPD, Part

Delta Gatti

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