As anticipation for Taylor Swift’s eagerly awaited album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ reached fever pitch among Swifties throughout the world, joy turned to sadness when news broke that the album had leaked online a day before its scheduled release on April 19.
The Tortured Poets Department: Taylor revealed the album’s arrival at the Grammys in 2024
Since Taylor revealed the album’s arrival at the Grammys 2024, fans have been counting down the hours before its official release.
However, many people were disappointed when excerpts of songs from ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ began circulating on the internet under the hashtag ‘TTPD Leak’.
Soon after the leak became public, the phrases ‘TAYLOR SWIFT LEAK’, ‘FORTNIGHT LEAK’, and ‘THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT LEAK’ began trending online.
In response to the suspected leak, microblogging site X banned searches for specific album-related keywords and tweets.
Users were unable to search for words such as “Taylor Swift leak”. This decision occurred amid speculation that the leaked songs originated from a Google Drive holding the whole ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ album.
Swifties, on the other hand, reacted in support of the pop artist and began flooding social media platforms with tags linked to fake audio links, while others posted misleading content labeling audio files with songs from the forthcoming album that had songs from past albums and other meme material. While news of the leak has gone viral, the legitimacy of the same remains unconfirmed.
Taylor Swift has previously faced pre-release leaks
Taylor Swift has previously faced pre-release leaks. Her album ‘1989′ met a similar fate when it leaked three days before its official release date in 2014, despite her efforts to keep the song a secret.
Earlier in her career, leaks marred the release of her third album, ‘Fearless,’ with the lead single ‘Mine’ appearing online ahead of schedule. However, both albums went on to become some of her best-selling records.
This is not the first time that searches for ‘Taylor Swift’ have been blocked on X. On a prior occasion, X prohibited searches for the artist after pornographic AI-generated photographs began to circulate on the platform, gaining millions of views before being removed.
