On February 4, Swifties watched the Grammy Awards with anticipation in equal parts for Taylor Swift’s awards and for the announcement of her then-upcoming album. Given that Swift announced her album Midnights at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2022, Swifties—the artist’s fans—felt the singer-songwriter was both a shoo-in for a winner at the Grammys and likely to make her next album announcement while there. Most fans were expecting her to put in another piece of her rerecording project puzzle by putting out Reputation (Taylor’s Version), and given that songs from the album have made up a relatively small portion of her Eras Tour setlist, fans were banking on the release of a re-recorded version to coincide with a more Reputation-heavy set list for when she resumes her tour in May in Europe. But Swift has a way of defying expectations. During her acceptance speech for Best Pop Vocal Album, she announced her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, would be dropping April 19, and went on to upload the album cover on the spot.

The following day, Taylor revealed the 16-song tracklist, plus a bonus track, “The Manuscript.” Then, during a Melbourne concert on February 16, she unveiled a second edition, with an alternative cover and the bonus track “The Bolter.” She announced a third edition, “The Albatross,” while performing in Sydney on February 23, and a fourth, “The Black Dog,” in Singapore on March 3. Each edition was available on her website for preorder as soon as she announced them. Think that’s a lot? In reality, that was only the beginning of the marketing blitz to take place across every conceivable platform on which the album was made available for purchase.

To mark the release of the album, Spotify opened a pop-up store in a shopping mall in Los Angeles. In Chicago, a mysterious QR code appeared on a wall. The QR code itself was cryptic, but the YouTube Short it directed curious scanners to was clearly connected to Swift’s TTPD album. A new channel showed up on the SiriusXM satellite radio dial dedicated entirely to the singer’s music, appropriately named Channel 13 (Taylor’s Version)—13 being Swift’s favorite number—and airing TTPD tracks on non stop rotation the weekend of the album’s release. On Instagram, users could pull down on Taylor Swift’s profile to reveal a secret timer counting down to the release time, and it linked to Threads, Instagram’s partner social media network. On Threads, special tags mentioning the artist and her upcoming album had their own special effects, and Swift posted her very first thread right after the album launch; everyone who shared it could add a special TTPD badge to their profiles—a veritable medal of honor for Swifties everywhere. Amazon Music, meanwhile, offered track-by-track commentary provided by the singer herself.

But what turned the most heads was what happened over on TikTok. Universal Music had had a falling out with the video-sharing platform earlier this year in a royalties dispute that ultimately ended in songs from its artists being pulled—including those by Taylor Swift. Despite that, the singer’s music was available on TikTok a week before the release of TTPD (presumably because she has a separate agreement with them). The release was marked by more than simply the return of Swift’s catalog—now there was exclusive content like a special profile picture frame reward for completing a series of challenges. Despite the political and economic controversies surrounding TikTok, there was more focus on its role as a promotional platform.

Finally, from early April, Apple Music revealed five exclusive playlists, curated by Taylor Swift herself and filled with her own songs, which fans interpreted as representing the five stages of grief: denial (I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life), anger (You Don’t Get to Tell Me About Sad), bargaining (Am I Allowed to Cry?), depression (Old Habits Die Screaming), and acceptance (I Can Do It With a Broken Heart).

Here, “breaking up” might be a more appropriate label than “grief.” As soon as the title of the new album was revealed, fans remembered Swift’s ex Joe Alwyn once mentioned in an interview that he and his friends had a group chat named the Tortured Man Club. In the days leading up to the album’s release, a secret message appeared, piece by piece, in the Apple Music lyrics view, with the full message, “We hereby conduct this post mortem,” emerging the day before TTPD dropped, all but confirming that the music would explore the recent events of her personal life.

At midnight Eastern Time on April 19, TTPD was finally released into the wild. So there was room to breathe now, right? Well, not quite. Right at that moment, a two-hour countdown appeared on Taylor Swift’s Instagram. Swift’s previous album, Midnights, was 13 tracks long, but three hours after its release, the 3am Edition expanded that to 20 songs. And in TTPD’s case? It turned out to be a double album with an additional 15 tracks for a grand total of 31 and carrying the full title The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.

All the buzz surrounding TTPD builds on top of everything described here so far: Taylor’s personal life, and the sheer volume of music. The second the 31-track album dropped, opinions flooded in from across social and traditional media speculating who each song could be about. Among the suspects were Matty Healy of English band the 1975, who Swift briefly dated last spring; actor Joe Alwyn, previously her boyfriend of six years; current boyfriend Travis Kelce, of course; and Kim Kardashian, whose feud with Taylor stretches back years. There’s nothing new about Taylor Swift drawing on her personal life as a source of inspiration for her lyrics, but in the two years between the releases of Midnights and TTPD, she’s redefined what it means to be a superstar, dominating the charts, putting on a historic billion-dollar tour, being named TIME’s Person of the Year, and becoming the first and only artist to snag a Grammy for Album of the Year four times. As mentioned before, every music platform sees Taylor launching new music as a promotional opportunity. She’s not in the Super Bowl halftime show—she’s the Super Bowl all by herself.

And here’s why Billboard called TTPD “messy, unguarded, and undeniably triumphant.” Taylor Swift has repeatedly found success by pivoting in ways that other singers might shy away from, and here, riding the wave at the height of her career, she once again transforms herself with a raw breakup album. But as The New York Times points out, with so many predictable themes and well-trodden sonic elements across a fairly long tracklist, it raises the question: Could Taylor have used an editor? This aligns with Rolling Stone’s own view, where—despite awarding TTPD a perfect score—they suggest that the duo of Taylor Swift and artist-producer Jack Antonoff might have reached its limit. In essence, the biggest question surrounding the album is whether it represents something new and, if so, what that new thing is. And even then, finding a perfectly glowing review of TTPD’s second half, The Anthology, isn’t easy.

It’s that sheer volume of music that stands in the way of making the album easier to digest. Was it really a mistake having so many tracks? Isn’t it enough that a listener finds the song for them within the pile? Haven’t the five studio albums, four rerecorded albums, and the three-and-a-half hour, 40-song concerts—all within a five-year span—shown that more is, well, more? On the other hand, does art suffer when an artist tries to saturate and dominate the market without having something important or interesting to say, as Vanity Fair’s Chris Murphy suggests? If TTPD needed an editor, it wasn’t because the album was a mix of great and not-so-great songs, but because such a deluge of material in one release can leave even a fan struggling to get fully behind such a long album—but, importantly, the fan will continue to be there to offer their full support.

Ironically, concerns like these were alleviated through yet more numbers. Sure, it’s a double album, but it performed more than twice as well as the wildest expectations. TTPD earned itself the distinction of being the only album to break 300 million streams on Spotify on release day, and it did so in under 12 hours, beating out the previous record holder, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, and its 300 million streams in 24 hours. It’s also the only album to have ever amassed one billion streams within a week, and it only took five days. With 799 million paid streams after its first week, TTPD finally surpassed the record of 746 million set by Drake’s album Scorpion in 2018. May 4 became a historic day on the Billboard charts: TTPD topped the Billboard 200, making it Swift’s 14th number one and tying her for second place with Jay-Z, behind only the Beatles and their record 19 number ones. The album sold 2.61 million copies in its first week, the highest since Adele’s 2015 album 25 sold 3.48 million. Starting with “Fortnight” at number one, Swift dominated the Hot 100 right through number 14, beating out the previous record—also set by Swift, in 2022, when songs off Midnights occupied the whole top 10. All 31 of TTPD’s tracks, plus the song “Cruel Summer,” made it onto the chart, the most since Morgan Wallen had 36 on there simultaneously.

Artists working in popular genres like hip hop and country have long put out albums with as many tracks as possible to boost their streaming numbers, while artists like K-pop idols, whose fans are extremely loyal, are famous for releasing their albums in a variety of formats—CD, vinyl, cassette—and versions. TTPD took both strategies and combined them with Taylor’s signature promotional style that encourages listeners to run wild with fan theories as well as a widespread campaign across virtually every platform that perhaps no other artist working today would be capable of pulling off. And that means it could be a long time before we see another album break records the way TTPD has. The album will stand as an example of a young pop singer who can no longer lean on her position as the underdog and is instead pushing the power of her superstar status to its limits. (Beyoncé adopted a somewhat different strategy from the get-go, taking her personal experiences and exploring them through albums that are interwoven with history, and in that way, elevating her life into a universal artform within a historical context.) It’s almost certain Taylor Swift’s next release will be Reputation (Taylor’s Version), meaning the album she first released when she was at her most vulnerable musically will make its second appearance under completely different circumstances. The people have spoken on TTPD—now we await Taylor’s next move.