Her twelfth studio record emerges as an exceptionally fearless set of songs.
Whether you’re ready or not, the new Taylor Swift cycle has arrived.
The celebrated vocalist released her twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, this past Friday, delivering 12 fresh tracks for devoted fans to examine and interpret as though they were the solution to an age-old enigma. Leaving the inevitable treasure hunt aside, the album appears as a triumphant victory lap, arriving after the culmination of Swift’s record-shattering, economy-altering Eras Tour.
“This record is about what was happening behind the curtain of my private existence during this tour, which was so lively and electrifying and brilliant. It simply springs from the most delightfully joyful, untamed, dramatic space I occupied in my life,” Swift expressed during her guest appearance in August on New Heights, the podcast helmed by Swift’s fiancé Travis Kelce and soon-to-be brother-in-law Jason Kelce. Her aspiration for this specific auditory adventure? “[To fashion] melodies so catchy that you’re almost irritated by it.”
The Life of a Showgirl—which is released one year after Swift’s preceding album, The Tortured Poets Department—also signifies a reunion for the songstress with Swedish producers Max Martin and Shellback, who were essential figures in the creation of her previous albums: Red (2012), 1989 (2014), and Reputation (2017). That vibrant utilization of infectious pop melodies is interlaced throughout, as are Swift’s tendencies for emotionally significant and candid lyrics.
Below, discover my 3 key takeaways from The Life of a Showgirl.
Taylor is unapologetic—but that doesn’t mean she can’t be honest about past regrets.
There are a considerable number of songs on The Life of a Showgirl that can be construed as a type of sonic rebuke towards the governing bodies—whether that’s the manipulative corporate ringleaders who control the music business in “Father Figure” or the former friend devoted to gossiping behind her back in “Actually Romantic.” Her overall feeling comes across as defiant—if not marginally guarded—when she contemplates the unfairness of cancel culture (“Cancelled!”) and asks the world to give her and her partner “the fuck alone” (“Wi$h Li$t”). However, Swift allows space for the darker moments of her past. While her love songs offer not-so-discreet praise to Kelce, they are also forthright regarding the sequence of well-publicized relationships that came prior to him. She likens past instances of treachery to the insanity that plagued Ophelia, a tragic character from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, remarking that she resided in “a cold bed full of scorpions / the venom stole her sanity.” Elsewhere, she looks for wisdom from Elizabeth Taylor (another Hollywood figure haunted by scandals concerning her romantic life; Taylor had eight marriages). “All the right guys promised they’d stay,” Swift belts, “Under bright lights, they withered away, but you bloom.”
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The production is effervescent pop at its best.
Martin and Shellback’s return to Swift’s catalog imbues the sparkling and lively vibes that have been notably lacking from Swift’s latest projects, where she worked closely with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner. Perhaps it helps that Swift’s subject matter within The Life of a Showgirl is significantly more cheerful compared to her recent albums; she toys more with the poetic expression that stems from her relationship’s honeymoon stage (“Summertime spritz, pink skies / You can call me ‘Honey’ if you want because I’m the one you want,” she vocalizes in “Honey”) than she did in the sorrowful albums of, for example, her Folklore era (Compare the aforementioned imagery to these lines from “The Lakes”: “I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet / ’Cause I haven’t moved in years / And I want you right here”). Martin and Shellback enhance these lyrics with percussions that resonate and beats that shimmer.
Taylor doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel.
As she reunites with her 1989 and Red partners (producers who worked on the very same albums that substantially formed the trajectory of her musical heritage), the showgirl version of Swift comes across as someone who is entirely at peace with the status of her artistry. To put it differently, she understands that she doesn’t have to revolutionize the process to keep things moving. Her candid manner of songwriting relies on her recognizable sense of humor and intricate wit, and she proceeds to develop her penchant for storytelling through the shaping of extravagant characters (see: Kitty in “The Life of a Showgirl”). Overall, The Life of a Showgirl is an assemblage of Swift’s most well-known (and wholeheartedly praised) methods of operation, adequately compelling without the need to introduce anything further. Perhaps that’s the showgirl in her, or perhaps that’s simply the entertainment industry.
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