• Source: Fresh Out the Slammer

      • "Fresh Out the Slammer" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift from her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department (2024). Written and produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, it has a Western, country pop, and country rock production driven by twangy guitars, looping synths, and a hazy atmosphere. In the lyrics, a narrator contemplates on how her past relationship made her feel trapped and uses another lover as a means to escape immediately after that relationship ends.
      Several critics were fascinated by the production and storytelling lyrics, while some others found the track overwritten. "Fresh Out the Slammer" peaked at number 15 on the Billboard Global 200 and reached the top 20 of charts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. In 2024, Swift performed the song live twice on her sixth concert tour, the Eras Tour.


      Background and release


      Swift started working on The Tortured Poets Department immediately after she submitted her tenth studio album, Midnights, to Republic Records for release in 2022. She continued working on it in secrecy throughout the US leg of the Eras Tour in 2023. The album's conception took place when Swift's personal life continued to be a widely covered topic in the press: her six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn and short-lived romantic linking with Matty Healy were heavily publicized. She described The Tortured Poets Department as her "lifeline" album which she "really needed" to make. Republic Records released it on April 19, 2024; "Fresh Out the Slammer" is seventh on the track list.
      In 2024, Swift performed "Fresh Out the Slammer" twice on her sixth concert tour, the Eras Tour. At the concert in Lisbon, Portugal, on May 24, she performed the song as part of a mashup with "High Infidelity" from Midnights (2022) on piano. She sang the track again as part of a guitar mashup with "You Are in Love" from 1989 (2014) at the concert in Munich, Germany, on July 27.


      Music and lyrics



      Written and produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, "Fresh Out the Slammer" has a production that critics categorize into genres such as Western, country rock, and country pop. Its production displays elements of country and old-time music, driven by prominent twangy guitars and a hazy atmosphere that is facilitated by heavy reverberation and looping synths. A few critics thought that the guitars were inspired by Orville Peck. The Times' Dan Cairns characterized the genre as "pop-noir" reminiscent of the music by Lana Del Rey. Annie Zaleski compared the production of "Fresh Out the Slammer" to that of "Cowboy like Me" from Swift's 2020 album Evermore, citing the similar "desolate, cowboys-duel-at-dawn vibe" with "dusty, twangy riffs" and "a loping tempo".
      In the lyrics, a female narrator escapes from an intoxicating relationship. They heavily use clipped phrasings and internal rhymes ("Camera flashes, welcome bashes, get the matches, toss the ashes off the ledge"), which Swift sings with a "bouncy" cadence, according to Lindsay Zoladz of The New York Times. The first verse details the end of a previous relationship before Swift's narrator enters another: "Now, pretty baby, I'm running back home to you/ Fresh out the slammer, I know who my first call will be to." The first refrain relates that past relationship to jail time: the narrator felt that she was stuck in an endless cycle of catering to the ex-lover's needs and keeping her sanity ("Years of labor, locks, and ceilings/ In the shade of how he was feeling/ But it's gonna be alright, I did my time"). In the final lines, Swift's character dreams about being the "girl of his American Dream" to the other man and reminisces about their memories. Rob Sheffield thought that the song contains imagery inspired by the novel The Great Gatsby (1925).
      The lyrical imagery of being held in prison is exemplary of the many similar sentiments about mental health throughout other tracks on the album. Several critics interpreted the song to be about a rebound; Beats Per Minute's John Wohlmacher thought that the lyric, "Swirled you into all of my poems", suggested that Swift had written about the same man in some previous songs. For Billboard's Jason Lipshutz, the songwriting in "Fresh Out the Slammer" embodies free association that differs from the more structural songwriting elsewhere in the album. "Fresh Out the Slammer" ends with a coda that has a different tempo than the rest of the song. According to American Songwriter's Alex Hopper, the track separates the two relationships through both the lyrics and the melodic change, hinting at how "[Swift] feels about them instantly".


      Critical reception


      There were mixed critical opinions about "Fresh Out the Slammer". In a positive review, Wohlmacher thought that the lyrics were "emotionally revealing" and the sound was "breezy and a nice listen, all sensual anticipation". Maria Sherman of the Associated Press praised the tone of the guitars and called the production "wind-blown". SLUG's Palak Jayswal and The Arts Desk's Ellie Roberts contended that the track was one of the album highlights; the latter considered "Fresh Out the Slammer" a thematic transition between the gradual end of a relationship in "So Long, London" and the sudden, violent occurrence of a new romantic fling in "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived". Commenting on the lyrics and theme, Callie Ahlgrim of Business Insider summed up the song as "a fascinating tale of freedom and lust". Sheffield wrote that although the track was "easy to overlook at first" because of its "understated" and "[not] hyperdramatic" qualities, it turned out to be a "sneakily durable gauze-rocker with heist-flick guitar twang".
      On a less enthusiastic side, Konstantinos Pappis of Our Culture Mag called the track "slumbering" that could not keep his attention. Zoladz thought that the lyrical imagery of prison was too much and the tight internal rhymes were suffocating. Paste's Grace Byron described the melodic change in the song as "bizarre" and described the track as one of the album's "snoozers". Lipshutz ranked the song 23th out of the entire 31 tracks of The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, saying that it serves "more as connective tissue" in-between the album's more "towering moments".


      Commercial performance


      Upon the release of The Tortured Poets Department, "Fresh Out the Slammer" peaked at number 15 on the Billboard Global 200. In the United States, "Fresh Out the Slammer" debuted at its peak of number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song alongside 13 tracks from the album made Swift the first artist to monopolize the top 14 of the Hot 100. In Australia, the track peaked at number 14 on the ARIA Singles Chart and was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The song peaked within the top 40 of singles charts in New Zealand (15), Canada (16), the Philippines (22), and Portugal (33).


      Personnel


      Credits adapted from the liner notes of The Tortured Poets Department

      Taylor Swift – lead vocals, songwriter, producer
      Jack Antonoff – producer, songwriter, programming, acoustic guitar, drums, electric guitar, organ, percussion, synthesizer, DX7, M1
      Oli Jacobs – recording
      Christopher Rowe – lead vocals recording
      Laura Sisk – recording, lead vocals recording
      Jesse Solon Snider – assistant engineer
      Jack Manning – assistant engineer
      Jon Sher – engineer
      Bryce Bordone – engineer for mix
      Serban Ghenea – mixing


      Charts




      Certification




      References




      = Source

      =
      Zaleski, Annie (2024). Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind the Songs. Headline Publishing Group. ISBN 9781802798586.

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