But Daddy I Love Him: Taylor Swift takes aim at critics with new track (2024)

When you're both the biggest pop star in the world and a talented lyricist known for your intensely personal songs, any new album release becomes not just a musical event– but a chance for millions of strangers to pore over the intricacies of your life.

On Friday morning, Taylor Swift released her new album The Tortured Poets Department (followed two hours later by the surprise release of a second, bonus disc of 15 songs). First announced at the Grammys in February, and coming just 18 months after her last original studio album Midnights (there have also been two re-recordings of her old albums, Speak Now and 1989 in-between) the record was widely expected to be inspired by the demise of her six-year relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn.

Swift was linked to Matty Healy, frontman of the band The 1975 in 2023 (Credit: Getty Images)

The track is the grown-up sister to her early hit Love Story– which told of a father disapproving of a teenage relationship. This time though, it's not just Daddy and her management ("Soon enough the elders had convened down at the City Hall") who have got an opinion on her latest beau– it's also her fans. "He was chaos, he was revelry," sings Swift of her paramour, before noting that "the saboteurs protested too much."

Swift and Healy were initially rumoured to be dating back in 2014, when she was seen attending his concert and later wearing a 1975 T-shirt– but Healy dismissed the idea at the time, admitting they swapped numbers but saying it would be "emasculating" to date the world's most famous pop star.

Then in May 2023, shortly after news broke of her split with Alwyn, Swift and Healy were photographed holding hands and kissing in public. The liaison lasted barely a month– in public at least– but, as with much of what Swift does, it drew plenty of attention. Only this time, it wasn't just the press who had something to say, but her fans, who objected to Healy's string of controversies, which included making derogatory remarks about the rapper Ice-Spice (he later apologised).

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A faction of her fanbase got vocal on social media, posting open letters and videos, using the #SpeakUpNow hashtag to cite their disappointment in her choice. It was a rare moment of tension in the famously sacred relationship with her fans: she makes appearances at their weddings, invites them to her house for listening parties, interacts with them on social media and indulges them with a trail of Easter eggs in her songs.

Swift's relationship with Healy marked a rare moment of tension in the famously sacred relationship with her fans (Credit: Getty Images)

Much of Swift's success is built upon the intimacy she creates with her audience, from her relatable fashion choices to the personal moments she shares on her records. She might be a billionaire and the most famous woman on the planet, but she has done an admirable job of appearing to stay within touching distance for her fans. Yet this has created a catch-22 situation for the star, with many fans having a vested interest in her life and, especially, her relationships.

'Erotic charge'

Swift has clapped back at her detractors before– but not directly at her fans. Yet on But Daddy I Love Him, she appears to be sending a warning signal, singing: "I'd rather burn my whole life down than listen to one more second of all this bitchin' and moaning/ I'll tell you something about my good name, it's mine alone to disgrace."

At one point, she even appears to reference the bizarre petitioning against her relationship, saying: "God save the most judgemental creeps/ Who say they want what's best for me/ Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I'll never see."

And for those who claim to just be looking out for her, she also has a message: "Me and my wild boy, and all of this wild joy, if all you want is grey for me, then it's just white noise, then it's just my choice." In other words, she can look after herself. At one point, the song even veers into gentle mockery with: "I'm having his baby, no I'm not but you should see your faces."

It's not the only song that touches on her constant battle for ownership over her own life. On The Manuscript, she grapples with the downside of putting her experiences into song (a process she has said "gets me through my life"), singing: "Now and then I reread the manuscript, but the story isn't mine anymore." On Who's Afraid of Little Old Me? She says: "You taught me, you caged me, and then you drove me crazy."

Several songs touch on Swift's constant battle for ownership over her own life (Credit: Getty Images)

This album might be concerned with heartbreak, but it's also about Swift's fight to follow her own desires, regardless of what others might think– and on The Tortured Poets Department, those desires are more overtly sexual than ever before.

Writing about falling in and out of love is nothing new for Swift, but what is different on this album is the erotic charge that runs through it. Swift has alluded to sex in songs before ("I can see us twisted in bedsheets"), but has held back from allowing herself to be completely sexual on record.

Yet from the album cover– in which Swift writhes around on a bed in underwear– to the lustful lyrics scattered throughout (Swift even sings the word "sex" for the first time on The Manuscript), things have gone up a notch on this album. On Guilty as Sin?, there's even a potential reference to masturbation, as she sings: "These fatal fantasies/ Giving way to laboured breath takin' all of me / We've already done it in my head."

Much like her decision to stop steering clear of politics (she endorsed Democratic candidates in 2018– leading to a backlash), this feels like her scrubbing out another line in the sand. Swift's relationship with Healy has– apparently– given her licence to write about desire in a way she's never done before, no doubt helped by the confidence she now has in her own decisions, and her refusal to live up to anyone else's expectations.

And for those fans disappointed that her relationship with Joe Alwyn received less airtime than expected on the record– though the breakdown is chronicled movingly on So Long, London ("I stoppеd CPR, after all, it's no use")– they (and indeed, Alwyn himself) should perhaps take heart from Swift's sleeve notes, in which she writes: "It's the worst men that I write best."

Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department is out now.

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