Taylor Swift surprises fans with secret double album 'The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology'

Taylor Swift has surprised fans with the announcement that her newly released record, 'The Tortured Poets Department', is actually a double album.

The expanded edition, titled 'The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology', features 15 additional tracks, bringing the total to 31. Produced by her frequent collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, the original 17-track version features guest spots from Post Malone and Florence + the Machine.

The surprise came two hours after the initial release dropped, as Swift took to social media to explain the surprise. "It's a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album," she wrote. "I'd written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you," she continued. "Here's the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn't mine anymore… it's all yours."

The reveal had been teased in the run up to the album's release. Sharp-eyed fans noticed a recurring theme of the number two in her recent activities. Her 'Tortured Poets' Spotify library installation in Los Angeles featured a peace-sign statuette (two fingers), and Swift herself flashed two fingers on camera at the 2024 Grammys when she first announced the new record. Clocks in her cryptic 'Fortnight' music video announcement and a library pop-up all displayed the time 2:00, and she even tweeted, "✌️days til THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT.”

This final, sprawling edition clocks in at over two hours. It marks Swift's fifth studio album in less than five years. This period has also seen the critically acclaimed re-recordings of four of her earlier works. In total, that's nine full-length releases since the pandemic began. Her epic The Eras Tour is also currently on hiatus before restarting next month for a summer stadium run across the U.K. and Europe.