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The title of Taylor Swift’s 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, hinted there’d be plenty of literary references throughout her new songs.
To the dismay of recovering English majors everywhere, that’s not quite how things played out, but there are still plenty of name-drops — and even a couple of nods to classic literature.
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On the title track alone, Swift alludes to fellow musicians Charlie Puth and Patti Smith as well as her pal and collaborator Jack Antonoff and the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. The standard edition’s closing track, meanwhile, is named after Clara Bow, the silent film actress who was known as the first “it girl.”
While poetry fans may be disappointed by the lack of actual poem content on TTPD, the album includes enough shout-outs and Easter eggs to keep Swifties busy for at least the next week or two.
Keep scrolling for all the name-drops on The Tortured Poets Department:
The Blue Nile
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“Guilty as Sin?” opens with the line, “Drowning in the Blue Nile,” but this is not a reference to the Nile River tributary that runs through Ethiopia and Sudan. The Blue Nile was a Scottish synthpop band that was primarily active in the 1980s. In her song, Swift’s narrator says that her love interest has sent her the Blue Nile track “Downtown Lights,” which she hadn’t heard in a while. “Downtown Lights” was the only song the band ever charted in the United States. (It peaked at No. 10 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart, which is now known as Alternative Airplay.)
Charlie Puth
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One of the many names dropped on the title track is Puth’s, who appears in the lyrics, “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.”
Fans have already begun theorizing that the “you” in question is Swift’s ex Matty Healy, whose band The 1975 has a hit called “Chocolate.” Healy also publicly praised a Puth song in 2018 via X.
The Chelsea Hotel
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The title track also includes a nod to New York City’s famous Chelsea Hotel, which has housed many cultural luminaries over the years, including Smith (referenced in the same song), Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Iggy Pop, Madonna, Jack Kerouac and many more. Cohen, who died in 2016 at age 82, famously wrote the song “Chelsea Hotel #2” about his time in the building.
Clara Bow
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The standard edition of TTPD ends with “Clara Bow,” which references the silent film star of the same name. For a full breakdown of Bow’s life and possible connections to Swift, see Us Weekly’s previous dissertation on this topic.
Dylan Thomas
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“And you’re not Dylan Thomas / I’m not Patti Smith / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel,” Swift sings on the album’s title track. Thomas was a Welsh poet who died in 1953 at age 39 after claiming he’d had 18 whiskeys. At the time, he was staying at the Chelsea Hotel.
Jack Antonoff
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Swift doesn’t say Antonoff’s last name on “The Tortured Poets Department,” but the clues are there in these lyrics: “But you tell Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave / And I had said that to Jack about you.” Antonoff also cowrote the track with Swift.
Lucy
The same “TTPD” line that references “Jack” also mentions someone called Lucy, though it’s not clear if there’s a real person behind the name. Listeners who believe that the song is about Healy have already pointed to the rocker’s recent dust-up with Boygenius member Lucy Dacus. In September 2023, Healy joked that he’d told Dacus that her band’s name inspired him to start a group with a name combining the word “girl” and the R-slur. In response, Dacus tweeted, “You don’t hear from me at all.” Healy subsequently deactivated his X account.
Patti Smith
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Smith, the iconic singer-songwriter and author, appears in the chorus of the title track. In 2019, Smith defended Swift after she received criticism for not speaking out more about politics. “She’s a pop star who’s under tremendous scrutiny all the time, and one can’t imagine what that’s like,” Smith told The New York Times. “It’s unbelievable to not be able to go anywhere, do anything, have messy hair. And I’m sure that she’s trying to do something good. She’s not trying to do something bad. And if it influences some of her avid fans to open up their thoughts, what does it matter? Are we going to start measuring who’s more authentic than who?”
Every Time Taylor Swift Has Proved Her ‘Cat Lady’ Status Through Her Lyrics
“I don’t agree that artists and musicians have more responsibility to speak out than anyone else,” Smith continued. “I think everybody has to be more active. Art is inspiring and art can really bring people together. A song can rally people, but it’s not going to make change.”
Sarahs and Hannahs
“But Daddy I Love Him” includes a dig at the “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best” who are “clutching their pearls” over the narrator’s romantic choices. This doesn’t appear to be a reference to anyone specific, though — just a general nod to Swift’s critics.
Stevie Nicks
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“You look like Stevie Nicks in ’75, the hair and lips,” Swift sings on “Clara Bow,” referencing the Fleetwood Mac singer. “Crowd goes wild at her fingertips.”
Ahead of TTPD’s release, Swift fans noticed a tambourine and scarf — two of Nicks’ signature accessories — had been added to the album’s pop-up in Los Angeles.
Taylor Swift
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Swift references herself on “Clara Bow” near the end of the song, singing, “You look like Taylor Swift in this light / We’re loving it / You’ve got edge, she never did.”
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