Taylor Swift’s hotly anticipated new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” dropped on April 19 with more than a few surprises. In addition to the 16 initial tracks Swift dropped at midnight, followed by a surprise release of a second volume a few hours later, “Tortured Poets Department” comes with an introductory poem by rock legend Stevie Nicks.
If you’ve been streaming the new album today, though, you’ve missed Nicks’ prologue. The handwritten poem, which she writes is “for T and me,” only appears inside of the album’s CD casing. Nicks’ notes indicate the poem was started on Aug. 13, 2023, in Austin; there’s a second time stamp for Sept. 13.
MORE: Listen to ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ on Apple Music
“He was in love with her / Or at least she thought so,” the poem begins. “She was brokenhearted / Maybe he was too.”
“Neither of them knew / She was way too hot to handle,” it continues.
Though these singer/songwriters are separated by 40 years — Swift is 34, Nicks is 75 — they have much in common, and fans of both women are likely to spot references to their love lives in the poem. (“She tells the truth / She writes about it /She’s an informer / He’s an X-lover / There’s nothing there for her / She’s already gone.”) Plus, there’s already speculation about whether Swift is referring to Joe Alwyn or Matty Healy in the essay she penned for the album’s epilogue — because yes, there’s even more to read for those who preordered the “Tortured Poets” CD.
Swift also mentions Nicks in the lyrics to a track on the new album. In “Clara Bow,” Swift sings, “You look like Stevie Nicks in ’75, the hair and lips / The crowd goes wild at her fingertips / Half moonshinе, a full eclipse.”
If you haven’t bought the CD (yet), you can read Nicks’ full poem at USA Today in the meantime.
The two artists have previously expressed admiration for one another, and their relationship goes way back.
When Nicks and Swift performed “Rhiannon” and “You Belong with Me” together on the Grammys stage in 2010, Swift called the opportunity to share the stage with her idol “a fairy tale and an honor.”
“Taylor is writing for the universal woman and for the man who wants to know her,” Nicks wrote in a 2010 piece for Time. “The female rock-‘n’-roll-country-pop songwriter is back, and her name is Taylor Swift. And it’s women like her who are going to save the music business.”
Stevie Nicks penned a poem for Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets Department’ originally appeared on Simplemost.com
