Taylor Swift live: The Tortured Poets Department addresses Matty Healy and Joe Alwyn relationships

Taylor Swift has released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Society, revealing just three hours after it dropped that it is a surprise double album.

The pop titan’s latest record, announced earlier this year when she won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album (Midnights),was released overnight on Friday 19 April.

Physical copies of the LP feature a prologue/poem written by legendary Fleetwood Mac star and solo singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks, a longtime champion of Swift, and an epilogue written by Swift herself.

In a five-star review of the album, The Independent’s critic Helen Brown praised the “playful narratives” and “hooks like anchors”.

In keeping with the literary (if ungrammatical) album title, Swift is on her most piercingly polysyllabic form here,” she wrote.

The album seems to be a reflection on some of Swift’s most significant relationships. Sharing a “treasure hunt” for fans before the album’s release, Swift offered clues that eventually unearthed the sentence: “We hereby conduct this post-mortem.”