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\n\tOne of the constants of Taylor Swift\u2019s storied career has been the chances she\u2019s taken at the precise moment when taking a chance wasn\u2019t necessary. She was a country superstar who didn\u2019t need to go pop; she was less than a year removed from a major pop album and didn\u2019t need to take an indie-folk detour; she was in the middle of a blockbuster run of new albums and didn\u2019t need to re-record her old ones. Time and again, Swift has identified artistic opportunities that other stars would have blanched at (or at the very least, set aside for a different time, so as to not muck up any professional momentum), and she has leapt into them fearlessly, always coming out on top.<\/p>\n
\n\tSo right now \u2014 in the middle of a mega-selling stadium tour, after a record-breaking fourth album of the year Grammy win, in a high-profile new romance and at the commercial zenith of an already all-time career \u2014 is, naturally, the time Swift has chosen to release a knowingly messy, wildly unguarded breakup album.<\/p>\n
\n\tShe didn\u2019t have to do this! <\/em>But then again, making an album like The Tortured Poets Department <\/em>is exactly what separates Swift from her more careful peers. Challenging herself to shape-shift, to accomplish something new at the moment anyone else would rest on their laurels, is what makes her so fascinating.<\/p>\n