The release of a new Taylor Swift album is less product rollout than it is cultural event.

Almost certainly the biggest star on the planet, her every move makes headlines and her prolific nature - The Tortured Poets Department is her fifth album in as many years, and that's without counting her re-recorded 'Taylor's Version' LPs - means there's always intrigue, particularly around who may be lyrically skewered.

Swift has an established track record of turning her ire on ex-paramours and rivals on tracks like 'Dear John' (John Mayer) or her magnum opus 'All Too Well' (Jake Gyllenhaal) a trait she herself sent up on mega-hit 'Blank Space': "I've got a long list of ex-lovers/They'll tell you I'm insane".

The announcement of the album's title caused something of a stir among the Swifties, given the singer's previous commitment to one-word LP names other than her self-titled debut and third album Speak Now which was titled Enchanted until an intervention from her record label.

As it turns out the more wordy name appears to be a none-too-subtle dig aimed in the direction of Matty Healy, singer of The 1975.

An ex-beau of Ms Swift, the 35-year-old has a reputation for being a mite pretentious at times. As such the opening lines on the title track, "you left your typewriter at my apartment/straight from the tortured poets department/I think some things I never say/Like, 'who uses typewriters anyway?'" aren't too difficult to dissect.

Healy gets it in the neck again on the chorus - "you're not Dylan Thomas/I'm not Patti Smith/this ain't the Chelsea Hotel" - and later on 'Guilty As Sin?' which opens with a reference to The Blue Nile, one of the 1975 man's favourite bands.

Sonically the album is very much a successor to 2022's Midnights, producer Jack Antonoff never straying far from his signature - read, only - style. A little bit of the Bleachers man goes a long way but it's hard not to conjure up SNL 'Don't Fear The Reaper' sketch images of his studio notes: "more reverb! Mute that percussion!".

As such The Tortured Poets Department continues in its predecessors moody, atmospheric vein with the closest thing to a pop banger a la 'Shake It Off' or 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' coming on 'I Can Do It With A Broken Heart'.

Featuring the voice of Antonoff himself giving a "one-two-three-four" countdown to the chorus, an apparent throwback to previous collaboration 'Paper Rings' on 2019's Lover, lyrically it appears to deal with the breakdown of Swift's relationship with English actor Joe Alwyn while in the midst of her globe-trotting Eras Tour.

The bouncy hook contrasted with emotionally fraught lyrics reflects the theme of painting on a smile for the crowd, Swift singing: "Breaking down I hit the floor/All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting 'more'".

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Elsewhere the 34-year-old returns to another familiar collaborator, Aaron Dessner of The National, to mine territory she explored on her lockdown releases Folklore and Evermore.

Both exercises in restrained indie-folk, the twin LPs brought Swift belated credit for her songwriting skills from people who are a little slow on the uptake and the shift to a more Midnights sound proves flattering.

Closer Clara Bow sees the actress, who famously spoke of "laughing and dancing... a feeling of tragedy underneath", used as a thematic jumping off point for a meditation on womanhood in the spotlight.

"You look like Clara Bow, in this light remarkable" begins the first verse, the second kicking off with "you look like Stevie Nicks in '75" before the singer imagines a future in which she too has been chewed up and discarded by the machine: "you look like Taylor Swift/in this light we're loving it/you've got edge, she never did".

Fond of a surprise 'drop', Swift announced hours after the release of The Tortured Poets Department that it was, in fact, a double album and released another suite of tracks dubbed The Anthology.

Focused more on Dessner than Antonoff, it treads a more soft-rock path, with 'So High School' calling back to the singer's country roots while paying tribute to current flame Travis Kelce: "You know how to ball, I know Aristotle/touch me while your boys play Grand Theft Auto".

By unfortunate coincidence one of The Anthology's few Antonoff-produced tracks mines the same "get him back" double meaning Olivia Rodrigo used on her track of the same name, while 'I Hate It Here', pleasant as it is, can't escape the notion it'd be a middling track on Folklore.

If expanding the department to 31 songs feels a little self-indulgent, it's something Swift has both the talent and the audience to get away with.

For the Swifties there's plenty to pore over here, and if those less devoted to the Church of Taylor may be unlikely to listen to the whole double album in one sitting it's still nothing like tortured.