“Fortnight” is the opening title of Taylor Swift’s brand new album ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ and the perfect ice-breaker for this album. Taylor teams up with Post Malone and his face tattoos to narrate a story of ending up in the wrong place in life and with the wrong person while having to watch the one who you wanted slip away into days to fortnights to months to years and to forever.
‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album released on April 19, 2024. A last-minute announcement revealed that the album was in fact a double album containing 31 tracks, with only a few features from Post Malone, and Florence + The Machine. The album follows Taylor’s previous studio album ‘Midnights‘ from 2022.
Taylor Swift explained her perspective on “Fortnight” with iHeartRadio saying; “Fortnight is a song that I think really exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout this album. One of which being – fatalism. Longing, pining away, lost dreams… And “Fortnight,” I’ve always imagined that it took place in this like, American town where, the American Dream you thought would happen [to you] didn’t. Like – you ended up not with the person that you loved, and now you have to just live with that every day. Wondering what would’ve been, maybe seeing them out… and that’s a pretty tragic concept, really. So I was just writing from that perspective.”
Watch “Fortnight” Music Video by Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone & Ethan Hawke
Taylor Swift “Fortnight” Lyrics Meaning and Song Review
Verse 1
A devastated singer’s tortured lament begins. She is functionally erratic and had long succumbed to alcohol to drown her worries. Nobody really wanted much to do with her because all she could think about was ‘what could have been’ and the outsiders wanted her out of their lives. She was so neglected and forgotten in her own world.
But you’re the reason
And no one here’s to blame
Taylor blames someone for what has become of her. She talks about a ‘quiet treason’ by this person that threw her away into the trenches of sorrow, despair, and alcoholism. She was a girl from a small town with big dreams. Now those dreams shall stay as dreams forever.
Chorus
More often than not, her mind wanders to those two weeks (or fortnight) when they were ‘something.’ They walked into each other in the one busy street of their small town. They smile at each other and burn through a quick exchange on weather, their old parents, and how-do-you-dos. It was enough for her. She was the princess of her own castle in this small town. There wasn’t much else to do there.
Fast-forward a few years later, this person is still close to her–as a neighbor. She still sees him daily and her mind races to what could have been. She sees his wife, and she turns red in rage, but she hides it well.
Verse 2
In the second verse of the song, Taylor Swift expresses how her life seems to have stuck in an endless loop of hopelessness. All her days feel like Mondays–we all despise Mondays equally. All the months feel like February–the shortest month of the year. Taylor creates a beautiful paradox of an endless loop in the shortest possible month.
I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary
The miracle drug to move on from relationships is getting back into another relationship. She did this hoping for a cure. But this cure proved to be poisonous–killing her from inside, one day at a time. Still in love with that one person who was hers for a fortnight and forever in her soul.
In the second chorus of the song, Taylor Swift adds a new sentence–she thinks that her husband is cheating on her and her rage builds even more. But, she also knows that she is partially at fault. She has been aloof in her head ever since she got married. She was always stuck in that fortnight several years back.
This fortnight has left a forever scar in her life. She had never lived past this time and she never will. Beautiful memories framed in photographs often take you away from reality.
Let us hear what you think about this song in the comments below. Read the complete lyrics to the song on Genius.