Taylor Swift was miserable writing ‘Tortured Poets Department’

A torturous process.

Taylor Swift explained how she had different experiences making her latest two albums, “The Life of a Showgirl” and “The Tortured Poets Department,” in a new interview.

“With the last record, I was in such a different place in my life when I wrote it,” Swift, 35, said Monday on “Scott Mills on Radio 2’s Breakfast Show,” referring to “The Tortured Poets Department.”

“Just miserable,” she added. “And then when I put it out, I was so happy.”

Swift’s 11th studio album, which came out April 2024, is believed to be inspired by her whirlwind romance with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy following her breakup with British actor Joe Alwyn. The record features heartbreaking hits like “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “So Long, London” and “Down Bad.”

“So it was like, ah, I love this art. I love this beautiful art about misery,” Swift continued on the radio show. “I, however, am not miserable anymore so it feels weird to talk about the record because it’s like, you can be proud of the work, but you can also just not relate to that person you were.”

The Grammy Award winner explained that unlike “The Tortured Poets Department,” her new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” is reflective of her current outlook on life.

“The cool thing about this record is that I’m in a very similar space in my life as to when I wrote it and now that I’m putting it out, which is nice…it’s nice when those things are not incongruous,” she said.

Swift’s new 12-track album, which came out Friday, is filled with upbeat songs about her romance with fiancé Travis Kelce.

When Swift announced “The Life of a Showgirl” on Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast in August, she said the album “just comes from, like, the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life.”

“And so that effervescence has come through on this record … This is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a really long time,” she added.

Swift has already set records in the days since she dropped “The Life of a Showgirl.”

Billboard reported that she sold 2.7 million copies of the album within 24 years of its release, which marks her biggest album opening ever in the U.S. She also sold 1.2 million vinyls since the album’s release, beating her own previous record that she set with “The Tortured Poets Department” last year.