The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024)
Table of Contents
Background
Taylor won the Grammy Awards for “Best Pop Vocal Album” and “Album of the Year” for Midnights a few hours later. In her acceptance speech for the former, she revealed a new studio album, titled THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, and announced its release date of April 19, 2024, which she had been keeping secret for nearly two years. Its cover artwork was subsequently posted on her social media accounts, along with a photograph of a handwritten note:
«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…Sincerely, The Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department.»
Taylor Swift
Live Performance
Lyrics
[Verse 1]
Was any of it true?
Gazing at me starry-eyed
In your Jehovah’s Witness suit
Who the fuck was that guy?
You tried to buy some pills
From a friend of friends of mine
They just ghosted you
Now you know what it feels like.
[Chorus]
And I don’t even want you back
I just want to know
If rusting my sparkling summer was the goal
And I don’t miss what we had
But could someone give
A message to the smallest man who ever lived
[Verse 2]
You hung me on your wall
Stabbed me with your push pins
In public, showed me off
Then sank in stoned oblivion
Cause once your queen had come
You’d treat her likе an also-ran
You didn’t measure up
In any measurе of a man
[Chorus]
And I don’t even want you back
I just want to know
If rusting my sparkling summer was the goal
And I don’t miss what we had
But could someone give
A message to the smallest man who ever lived
[Bridge]
Were you sent by someone
Who wanted me dead?
Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?
Were you writing a book?
Were you a sleeper cell spy?
In 50 years will all this be declassified?
And you’ll confess why you did it
And I’ll say, “Good riddance”
Cause it wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden
[Outro]
I would’ve died for your sins
Instead I just died inside
And you deserve prison, but you won’t get time
You’ll slide into inboxes
And slip through the bars
You crashed my party and your rental car
You said normal girls were “boring”
But you were gone by the morning
You kicked out the stage lights
But you’re still performing
And in plain sight you hid
But you are what you did.
And I’ll forget you but
I’ll never forgive
The smallest man who ever lived.
Artist | Taylor Swift | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Album | THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT | |||
Released | April 19, 2024 | |||
Recorded | 2023 | |||
Studios | Long Pond (Hudson Valley) Electric Lady (New York City) Tiny Telephone (Oakland) Smilo Sound (Orcas Island) Sterling Sound (Edgewater) | |||
Genre | Alternative | |||
Length | 4:05 | |||
Label | Republic Records | |||
Songwriters | Taylor Swift Aaron Dessner | |||
Producers | Aaron Dessner Taylor Swift | |||
THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT CHRONOLOGY | ||||
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