After winning the Grammy for best pop vocal album during Sunday night’s 2024 Grammys, Taylor Swift decided to celebrate by making a big announcement. The singer shared that she will release a new album in April.
“This is my 13th Grammy,” Swift said when accepting the award, acknowledging her proclaimed lucky number. “I want to say thank you to the members of the Recording Academy for voting this way, but I know that the way that the Recording Academy voted is a direct reflection of the passion of the fans. So I want to say ‘thank you’ to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years — which is that my brand new album comes out April 19.”
The album will be called The Tortured Poet’s Department.
After making the announcement, Swift further teased the upcoming album on social media by sharing the album cover.
She had noted she was about to post the cover from the stage.
“All’s fair in love and poetry… New album THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Out April 19,” she wrote alongside the cover that featured the singer laying on a bed.
Swift also shared a photo of her writing, teasing further about the album: “And so I enter into evidence / My tarnished coat of arms / My muses, acquired like bruises / My talismans and charms / The tick, tick, tick of love bombs / My veins of pitch black ink / All’s fair in love and poetry.”
She then ended her message with, “Sincerely, The Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department.”
The album has 16 songs on the standard tracklist, as teased on Swift’s website.
The album follows Swift’s previously released Midnights album in October 2022, which she described at the time as “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.”
Ahead of the ceremony, Swift was nominated for six Grammys, including best pop vocal album for Midnights, best pop solo performance for “Anti-Hero” and best pop duo/group performance for “Karma” with Ice Spice, who received a best new artist nom.
Should Swift win album of the year win, she would make history as the first performer to win album of the year four times. Swift previously won album of the year three times for her albums Fearless in 2010, 1989 in 2015 and folklore in 2021. With Fearless, Swift surpassed Alanis Morissette as the category’s youngest victor at 20 years old.
Before making the surprise announcement, fans had speculated that Swift was set to announce the rerecording of her reputation album. On Sunday, the singer notably changed her profile icon on social media accounts to black-and-white, just as the original reputation album’s cover. Fans also noted that Swift’s website was down. However what could be considered a technical error was questioned given Swift’s Taylor Nation social media account “liked” tweets stating that the website’s crash was intentional.
Then to further add to the speculation, the Empire State Building Twitter account shared a photo of the building in black and white with the caption, “Baby, let the games begin” which references a lyric from Swift’s “Ready for It…” song from reputation.
For this year’s Grammys, female acts make up seven of the eight nominees in the top three categories — with SZA leading with nine overall nominations followed by Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus and boygenius with six nods a piece. Eilish, Dua Lipa, Cyrus and Rodrigo were among the musicians who took the stage at the ceremony.