'Tortured Poets' release live updates:Taylor Swift's new album has dropped
The Chelsea Hotel (or Hotel Chelsea or The Chelsea) is in Manhattan. Built in the late 19th century, the 12-story hotel is a New York designated landmark that has famously housed writers, painters, authors and the who’s who of fashionable socialites. And still does.
Stephanie Burt, a Harvard professor who teaches a class on Swift, explained the layers of the lyric.
“Swift is not only telling (the guy in the song), you're not that talented,” Burt says. “She's saying, let's not be the kind of artists who make our self-destructive, tortured natures central to our art, which invites everyone to look at what a mess we are.”
Both Smith and Thomas lived in the hotel. According to John Brinnin's 1955 biography, “Dylan Thomas in America,” Thomas was reputed to be a "roistering, drunken and doomed poet." Smith went on to produce albums and tour the world. She sang and performed with Bruce Springsteen.
“Patti Smith is who you invoke if you want to talk a woman onstage who is absolutely magnetic and a poet with a capital ‘P,’” Burt says. “Dylan Thomas is who you invoke if you want to talk a romantic, self destructive poet who had the talent to back it up, but had absolutely no self-care skills who made everything too much.”
Swift is saying let’s not be self-destructive artists and let’s leave that to the “modern idiots.”
If you didn't get the memo from the department's Chairman, "Tortured Poets" is Swift's 11th era album with 16 tracks and four bonus songs (four versions of the album each have a different bonus track).
Its track titles are brutal. Fans speculated the album was Swift’s six-year relationship with English actor Joe Alwyn and their breakup. Both stars kept the relationship out of the public eye. The back of the first version of the album reads, “I love you, it’s ruining me,” serving as a dagger-to-the-chest harbinger.
