Storm warning on the pop planet: the new album by American singer Taylor Swift is unveiled on Friday, April 19, at midnight New York time (6 a.m. in Paris).

Since the star announced the release of The Tortured Poets Department in February, during the Grammy Awards ceremony – the prestigious American music awards where she won the award for best album of the year for the fourth time –, her millions of fans (the “Swifties”) have been trying to sniff out clues about what’s in store for them.

Among the known elements: this eleventh album contains collaborations with the British rock group Florence The Machine and the American rapper Post Malone, who accompanies him on the first track Fortnight.

“I am a very big admirer of Post [Malone] because of his quality as an author, his musical experiments and the melodies he composes which stay in your head forever,” the singer wrote on Instagram on Thursday. country who became a global megastar. “I had the opportunity to see this magic come to life when we worked together on Fortnight,” she added, announcing the release of a music video late Friday.

New references to an ex-boyfriend

This new album, Taylor Swift recently said, “reminded me that writing music is what keeps me going.” Among the theories in circulation, this opus would focus on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend, British actor Joe Alwyn. The name of the opus (“The circle of tortured poets” in French) would also be taken from a group discussion called “The tortured man club” (“The club of the tortured man”) that the actor held with Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott, two other actors.

The list of tracks – sixteen in total – already gives some clues about the involvement of a man, an English one at that: So Long, London (“Goodbye London”), I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) (“ I can change it, no really I can) and The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.

Returning, without taking any gloves off, to her former companions has also become a tradition for Taylor Swift, song after song. The current elected official is American football star Travis Kelce, recent Super Bowl winner with the Kansas City Chiefs. And for him, the new album “is incredible.”

First billionaire artist thanks to music alone

With her new Grammy victory in February, Taylor Swift did better than American music legends like Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon or Stevie Wonder. Nearly twenty years after she started, nothing seems to be able to stop her.

At 34, she became, at the start of the year, the first artist to become a billionaire thanks solely to income from her music. His world tour, “Eras Tour” – which will pass through Paris and Lyon in the coming weeks – is expected to bring in a total of $2 billion (€1.88 billion) in revenue after having already broken the symbolic ceiling in 2023 billion dollars, a first in the history of music.

The opening of the ticket office at the end of 2022 for the start of the tour was canceled following pre-sales marked by endless waiting and numerous technical breakdowns linked to massive fan connections. The 2022 release of his previous album, Midnights, a victim of its success, also caused short outages on Spotify.

The Pennsylvania native has been writing songs since she was a teenager and got her start in the country capital of Nashville. By gradually moving away from this very American style, it gradually climbed the rankings and gained popularity.

In 2018, she left the Big Machine label and joined Universal, without the rights to her previous albums. Never mind: she re-recorded her first records to regain control of them. These opuses, which each time benefit from the mention “Taylor’s version”, succeed in convincing her fans and the music industry, another tour de force for this essential artist of American popular culture. .

Beyoncé and Billie Eilish as competitors

With 283 million subscribers on Instagram, she is so influential among American youth that the political world is beginning to imagine the impact she could have on the November presidential election. Even if she rarely speaks on the subject, Donald Trump and his Republican supporters fear her influence on a young audience.

This new album will land on platforms three weeks after that of another American icon: Beyoncé and her Cowboy Carter. An opus with rich country influences that could be a contender for the next Grammy Awards. With perhaps, also, the new album of another star, Billie Eilish, which releases Hit Me Hard and Soft on May 17.