Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan is defending Taylor Swift and the length of her two-hour, 31-track album, The Tortured Poets Department.
“Taylor Swift is one of the most gifted pop artists of all time,” Corgan, 57, told Irish Times in a new interview published Monday, June 3. “How is it a bad thing that she’s releasing more music? I can’t follow that … You can go on Spotify and just skip it.”
Citing his band’s own two-hour record released in 2023, Corgan told the outlet that he can empathize with Swift, 34, over criticism about putting out hours-long albums.
“People complained about the length of my last album, Atum,” he continued. “I thought, ‘Well, just go make your own playlist. Just listen to the record one time – rag over the six or 10 songs you like and make your own record.’ Why is this such a strange concept?”
Everything to Know About ‘The Tortured Poets Department’
Corgan went on to use longtime friend and fellow musician Sinéad O’Connor as an example of why lengthy projects should be looked at as something positive. (O’Connor died in July 2023. She was 56 years old.)
“Let’s go back to Sinéad for a second,” he said. “Now that Sinéad’s gone, would it be a bad thing if somebody turned up tomorrow and said, ‘Hey, I just found this tape, and there’s enough for 20′ – or 30 or 50 – ‘Sinéad songs.’ Would that be a bad thing?”
Swift announced she was releasing her 11th studio album while accepting the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album in February.
“[The way I can celebrate] is by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the past two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19th,” she told the crowd during her acceptance speech. “It’s called The Tortured Poets Department and I’m going to go post the cover right now backstage.”
Though Swifties thought they were just getting one new record, many fans were both shocked and delighted when Swift revealed that TTPD was actually a surprise double album just hours after its release.
“It’s a 2 am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album,” she wrote via social media. “I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore … it’s all yours.”
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In recent years, Swift has become known for dropping new music at unexpected times.
In July 2020, she announced her eighth album, Folklore, just hours before its release. She followed the same pattern that December when her ninth album, Evermore, came out shortly after confirming its existence. Swift’s 10th studio album, Midnights, followed a more typical release model, dropping in October 2022.
