Taylor Swift’s new album – The Tortured Poets Department – has been released with to much much fanfare, with fans and critics hailing the surprise double album as her ‘best storytelling yet‘, praising the ‘surreal, beautiful, and insane‘ lyricism with ‘intimacy of Folklore and Evermore with the synth-pop gloss of Midnights’.

The lead track Fortnight – featuring Post Malone – opens with Taylor describing herself as a ‘functioning alcoholic’.

‘I was s’posed to be sent away / But they forgot to come and get me / I was a functioning alcoholic / ‘Til nobody noticed my new aesthetic,’ she sings.

While the 14-time Grammy winner often sings about fictional and imagined situations, her references to wine, other alcohol and drugs has increased significantly since her early days as a church-going, clean cut country girl.

This is perhaps unsurprising, given she was just 16 when her self-titled debut album was released.

Taylor Swift’s new bum – The Tortured Poets Department – has been released with to much much fanfare, with fans and critics hailing the surprise double album as her ‘ best storytelling yet ‘, praising the ‘ surreal, beautiful, and insane ‘ lyricism with ‘i ntimacy of Folklore and Evermore with the synth-pop gloss of Midnights. Taylor is pictured during her Eras tour

The lead track Fortnight – featuring Post Malone – opens with Taylor describing herself as a ‘functioning alcoholic’

It seemingly suggests a potential new announcement or a surprise coming at 2:00. a.m. ET

But in the years following, she said she wasn’t a hard party girl.

‘Maybe I’ll have a glass of wine, but nothing too hard-core for me,’ she told Ladies Home Journal in 2010 about her 21st birthday celebrations.

‘I’ve never had the burning desire to drink,’ she told Ladies Home Journal.

‘I need to be in control of what I say, and if I drank, I’d stress out about saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.’

‘It’ll be cool that I’ll be able to go to a lot of concerts that my friends always go to and I sit at home because it’s 21 and over,’ she said. ‘Other than that, I don’t think I’m going to all of a sudden start being in love with the idea of going to a club,’ she added to People.

In fact, her first four albums – Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now and Red – didn’t mention alcohol at all. Even 1989,  written when she was 24, living in New York and certainly going out more she only made a thin reference to booze.

‘You’re still all over me like a wine-stained dress I can’t wear anymore,’ she sings in Clean, believed to be about ex-boyfriend Harry Styles.

The liquor- references really took off with her 2017 album Reputation, largely inspired by her move to London, her feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West – as well as romance with Joe Alwyn.

Cheers: Taylor Swift shared a laid-back shot wearing minimal make-up, olive trousers and a sold-out knit sweater, featuring an allover daisy pattern on Thursday

Taylor, pictured on  Graham Norton, often is seen enjoying wine

Taylor Swift alcohol references in her songs

Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now and Red

No references to alcohol, she does reference partying on the vault track of Red, The Very First Night

1989

‘Clean’: ‘You’re still all over me like a wine-stained dress I can’t wear anymore.’

Blank Space: ‘I get drunk on jealousy’

Reputation

‘…Ready For It?‘: ‘Island breeze and lights down low. No one has to know.’ Island breeze is a fruity vodka cocktail.

‘Gorgeous’: ‘Whiskey on ice; Sunset and Vine. You’ve ruined my life by not being mine.’

‘Get drunk and make fun of the way you talk’

Delicate: ‘You can make me a drink’ ‘dive bar on the east side, where you at? ‘

‘Getaway Car’: ‘I knew it from the first Old Fashioned we were cursed.’

‘I met you at the motel bar’

‘King Of My Heart‘: ‘Up on the roof with a schoolgirl crush, drinking beer out of plastic cups.’

‘Dress‘: ‘I’m spilling wine in the bathtub. You kiss my face, and we’re both drunk.’

‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things’: ‘Jump into the pool from the balcony. Everyone swimming in a Champagne sea.’

‘here’s a toast to my real friends’

End Game: ‘your eyes are liquor, your body is gold’ ‘drinking on the beach with you all over me’

New Year’s Day: ‘cleaning up bottles with you’

So It Goes.. ‘Met you in a bar’

Lover

Cruel Summer: ‘i’m drunk in the back of the car’

Cornelia Street: ‘drunk on something stronger than the drinks in the bar

‘Paper Rings‘: ‘The wine is cold like the shoulder that I gave you in the street.’

‘Death By A Thousand Cuts’: ‘My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust. Tryna find a part of me you didn’t take up.’

‘London Boy’: ‘And you know I love Springsteen, faded blue jeans, Tennessee whiskey.’

‘You can find me in the pub, we are watching rugby with his school friends,’

‘Drinking in the afternoon’

‘False God’: ‘Hell is when I fight with you, but we can patch it up good. Make confessions and we’re begging for forgiveness. Got the wine for you.’

‘You Need To Calm Down‘: ‘You are somebody that I don’t know. But you’re takin’ shots at me like it’s Patrón, and I’m just like, damn. It’s 7 a.m.’

Folklore

‘The 1’: ‘Rosé flowing with your chosen family. And it would’ve been sweet if it could’ve been me.’

‘The Last Great American Dynasty‘: ‘Filled the pool with Champagne and swam with the big names and blew through the money on the boys and the ballet.’

‘August‘: ‘August sipped away like a bottle of wine, ’cause you were never mine.’

‘This Is Me Trying‘: ‘Pouring out my heart to a stranger, but I didn’t pour the whiskey.’

‘i got wasted like all my potential’

Cardigan: ‘dancing in your levi’s, drunk under a streetlight ‘

My tears ricchochet: ‘drunk on this pain’

Mirrorball: ‘drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten’

Evermore

‘Willow‘: ‘Lost in your current like a priceless wine.’

‘Champagne Problems‘: ‘Champagne problems.’

”Dom Pérignon you brought it’

Gold Rush – I don’t like a gold rush (a cocktail)

‘No Body, No Crime’: ‘Este’s a friend of mine. We meet up every Tuesday night for dinner and a glass of wine.’

‘ ‘That ain’t my Merlot on his mouth.’

‘Ivy‘: ‘So tell me to run or dare to sit and watch what we’ll become. And drink my husband’s wine.’

‘Closure‘: ‘I’m fine with my spite and my tears and my beers and my candles.’

Midnights

‘Maroon‘: ‘How’d we end up on the floor, anyway?’ You say. Your roommate’s cheap-ass screw-top Rosé, that’s how.’

‘The burgundy on my T-shirt when you splashed your wine into me.’

‘Mastermind‘: ‘I’m the wind in our free-flowing sails and the liquor in our cocktails.’

‘Paris‘: ‘Cheap wine, make believe it’s Champagne.’

‘Cause we were somewhere else in an alleyway, drinking Champagne.’

Question…? ‘It was one drink after another’

Dear Reader: ‘My fourth drink in my hand’

The Tortured Poets Department

Fortnight: ‘I was a functioning alcoholic. ‘Til nobody noticed my new aesthetic’

Florida!!!: ‘The hurricane with my name when it came I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away Barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine’

The Black Dog: ‘And so I watch as you walk Into some bar called The Black Dog’

Taylor Swift officially dropped The Tortured Poets Department on Friday – her hotly-anticipated 11th studio album

Her five albums since have increasingly referenced alcohol, with the singer also mentioning drinking on social media, during interviews and on her Eras tour.

Speaking during her Eras Tour shows, Taylor explaining that writing Folklore – cowritten by her then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, she explained: ‘[I was] imagining that, instead of being a lonely millennial woman covered in cat hair drinking my weight in white wine.

‘I was a ghostly Victorian lady wandering through the woods with a candle in a candlestick holder, and I wrote only on parchment with a feathered quill,’.

In her video for Anti-Hero, the lead track on 10th album Midnights, Taylor drinks shots, while she’s often discussed her love of wine in interviews.

Speaking to People magazine in 2020, she said: ‘I love spending a full evening cooking a meal while sipping a glass of wine and listening to old music,’.

She also shared pictures of herself and Joe drinking wine.

‘biiig isolation,’ she captioned the artful snap of herself raising a glass, with two snake and wine emojis, nodding to her track End Game.

In recent years, Taylor has enjoyed various nights out with friends.

Recently, the four-time Grammy AOTY winner enjoyed an epic girls night out with celebrity pals including Blake Lively, Sophie Turner and Brittany Mahomes, with the bill coming to a whooping $4,000 (£3,212).

I got a blank check baby! Taylor Swift enjoyed an epic girls night out with celebrity pals including Blake Lively, Sophie Turner and Brittany Mahomes in New York City last month amid her new romance with Travis Kelce — but who picked up the bill?

Sip: Taylor was seen sashaying off the stage and slowly raising her glass at screaming fans after the curtain came down and she headed off for a much-deserved break