When I first listen to The Tortured Poets Department, which has the potential to be Taylor Swift’s new best album, something stuck out to me. This was how she was mentioning drugs way more than she usually does in her music. She has mentioned drugs before in lyrics like “my drug is my baby” from “Don’t Blame Me,” but she has never mentioned drugs this often in her music. Here are all of the times Taylor Swift mentions drugs, including alcohol, in her new album The Tortured Poets Department. This article will only go through the first sixteen songs and none of the songs included in The Anthology.
“Fortnight” featuring Post Malone
This song is the first song on the album and is also the album’s first single. This song mentions alcohol and drugs once each. Taylor sings that she “was a functioning alcoholic,” which kind of reminds me of the time she was drunk at the VMAS. She also sings about “the miracle move-on drug” that many people, including Swift herself, probably wish existed to help them get over a relationship. It is also important to note in the presence of pills in the music video.
“The Tortured Poets Department”
The mention of drugs in this song is much more subtle and quick than most of the other songs. This song, which people believe to be about The 1975’s Matty Healy, says “You smoked.” This could very possibly not be about drugs at all and could be about smoking a cigarette. However, it is just as possible to be about smoking weed.
“Florida!!!” featuring Florence + The Machine
We now jump down to the eighth track on the album, which is titled “Florida!!!” This song probably has the most obvious mention of drugs with the state of Florida being described as “one hell of a drug” six times throughout the song. This is not the only mention of drugs in the song, though. Alcohol, which is a drug, is mentioned twice in the song. The first time is in the first verse with “Barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine”. The second time is found in the second verse just before the previously stated lyrics and it “I got drunk.” Another time drugs are explicitly mentioned in this song is in the first verse where Swift sings “And all my friends smell like weed or little babies”.
One final time drugs are mentioned in the song is a bit more of a stretch. In the bridge, Florence sings “At least the dolls are beautiful, fuck me up, Florida”. Nothing here is explicitly about drugs, but “dolls” could be referring to pills like it does in the book and movie Valley of the Dolls.
“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”
The mention of drugs in this song is quite interesting as it sounds quite false. Swift sings “Putting narcotics into all of my songs”. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Swift has rarely mentioned dugs in her music before, so this is a false statement unless she is referring to using drugs while making her music. She also sings that “I’m always drunk on my own tears”. While tears are non-alcohlic, being drunk means that she is somehow intoxicated.
“I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”
This song is a bit more unusual when it comes to its mention of drugs. It starts with the lyric about “The smoke cloud [that] billows out his mouth”. Like in “The Tortured Poets Department,” this smoke could just be from cigarettes. However, it is also likely that this smoke is instead from smoking weed. Furthermore, in the second verse, Swift sings about how “The dopamine races through his brain”. While dopamine is not a drug someone takes, it rushing through a person’s brain is one of the results of someone doing drugs.
“loml”
Drugs being mentioned in this song is another stretch, but it is a possibility. Swift sings for a moment about a “get-love-quick scheme,” which sounds like someone is selling something, like a drug, that people can use to get love quick. Now, they could be selling something like a book of how to get love quick, but I think it is just as likely to be some sort of drug.
“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”
This song has two mentions of drugs. The first is “You tried to buy some pills”. This is quite a blatant reference to drugs, unlike in some of the last few songs I mentioned. The other time it mentions drugs is when Swift sings “Then sank in stoned oblivion”. Being stoned is something that can only be achieved from doing drugs like weed.
“The Alchemy”
This song has one of the most obvious mentions of drugs out of all of the songs on the album. However, there is two more subtle times that she mentions drugs and alcohol first. The first is at the very beginning of the song when Swift sings “These chemicals hit me like white wine”. There is first of all the mention of the alcohol, the white wine, but there is also the mentions of the chemicals. It sounds as if they could be referring to chemical drugs. Furthermore, near the end of the song, Swift mentions alcohol again when she sings about “Beer sticking to the floor”. Beer is obviously alcoholic.
The most obvious time drugs are mentioned in the song is when she sings “He jokes that it’s heroin but this time with an ‘E'”. While heroine with and “E” is not a drug but the feminine version of “hero,” the fact that it needs to be specified, and that it is spelled without the “E,” is a nod to the heroin drug.
“Clara Bow”
For the final song of the track, the mention of drugs is quite well hidden. I did not even notice them until I checked the lyrics for this article. The first mention occurs a few times within the song where Swift sings “Breath of fresh air through smoke rings”. Like all of the previous mentions of smoke in the album, this could very well be referring to smoke from a cigarette, but it also could be smoke from smoking weed. The final mention of drugs and alcohol in this album is “Half moonshine, a full eclipse”. Moonshine is, of course alcohol.
