Taylor Swift is back with a new album, The Life of a Showgirl. While the album has been touted as a peek behind the curtain of the Eras Tour, it has left fans divided. Through a reunion with pop legends Max Martin and Shellback, we see Swift make a swing, and a potential miss.
Taylor Swift is the biggest pop star on earth. We need only look at the outlandish success of the Eras Tour to support this claim. This position was only further supported by the record-breaking success of her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. The album became the first ever to occupy the top 14 spots on the Billboard Hot 100. Despite the chart success, this album was not without its detractors. Many considered it to be self-indulgent, too long (31 tracks), and too lyrically dense. I didn’t share these opinions, for me, the bloodletting Taylor poured into her album made it incredibly engaging and one of her best bodies of work. All of this considered, the news of a 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, brought many questions. Where do you go artistically when you’ve had the biggest tour, not only of your career, but of all time? The Life of a Showgirl, in Swift’s own words, sought to let us behind the velvet curtain of her life during the European leg of the Eras Tour. I would argue it actually shows us an icon struggling to place her narrative when the detractors are silenced and the future looks bright.
The album was recorded with Max Martin and Shellback, legends of the pop genre who previously worked with Taylor on her instant classic, 1989. I do feel the shadow of 1989 clouded the run up to The Life of a Showgirl. It marks the first album for years that Taylor made entirely without longtime collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, a decisive push toward upbeat pop and away from the introspective tortured poet. A move celebrated by many fans, an expectation was set high for an album that recaptured the pop magic of past collaborations between Swift, Martin, and Shellback. Ultimately, I do feel the sonic shift was a refreshing pivot from Antonoff’s production, which doesn’t always lend itself to lighter beat music.
Behind the curtain
We open the project with The Fate of Ophelia, which is an incredibly strong opening track. On the song, we see Swift experimenting with new production and sonic motifs while retaining a poetic lyrical imprint that is a signature of her music. The track sets an expectation for the rest of the album, that while the music sounds happy, Taylor isn’t willing to swap her quill for a marker just yet. I feel this continues through the next track, Elizabeth Taylor, which feels more akin to the content I was expecting from this album. In Taylor’s own words, this album was supposed to give us insight into her life behind the scenes of the Eras Tour. I feel like I come away from it (after several listens) without the insight I was anticipating. While the album’s title track, a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter, feels the closest to this, Swift mostly uses this album to explore topics we’ve already seen her tackle in previous albums. For the most part, I feel like these previously explored themes have been better covered in earlier work from Taylor.
One sharp example of this is CANCELLED!, a song many have suspected is about Blake Lively, while others suspect it is about new conservative friends Taylor has been spotted with. Either way, the song, while feeling complete and signature of Swift, feels like an offcut from her 2017 album Reputation. It is this trap of her past work that makes some of the shortcomings of this album most apparent. CANCELLED! is in many ways a textbook Taylor Swift song. It has her signature melodramatic lyricism, dark motifs, and plays into media narratives. As a result, the identity of The Life of a Showgirl is less clear. CANCELLED! is one of several songs on this project that feel like they could be tacked onto past albums. The key difference between these self-referential songs and their predecessors is that now they don’t feel fully fleshed or part of a larger conversation.
Another topic Swift explores again on this album is former foes within the music industry. Father Figure (more on this later) deals again with the ownership of Taylor’s masters recordings and the dynamic between her and former record exec Scott Borchetta. The lyrical approach to this topic feels a far cry from the sensitive but searing lyrics of songs like My Tears Ricochet from 2020’s Folklore, also about Borcetta. It feels like Taylor’s recycling of past explored subject matter has culminated in an approach to song-making that feels less concrete. Her lyrics feel more reductive and less considered.
When Taylor deviates from these themes with songs like Ruin The Friendship, Opalite or Honey, we see a more complete and well-rounded approach. Ruin The Friendship especially shows Taylor at her best, emotionally crippling over a pop beat and reflective in a way only a veteran of heartbreak can be. The Life of a Showgirl contains gems; they’re just less obvious than one would expect for the biggest pop star on earth. Further to this, an opportunity was missed. Taylor excels at introspection and self reflective music that, regardless of production, genre, or sonic choices, retains a distinctive artistic imprint. This album sometimes forgets this hallmark of her songcraft. The premise that we were supposed to see Taylor’s life during the Eras Tour is a misnomer. The Life of a Showgirl struggles to pin down a central theme, asking us to accept the disjointed and sometimes contradictory messaging without the connective material to make the work make sense on its own two feet. Instead of learning what it feels like to be at the very top of your game, we are given music that at times just feels reductive.
Actually a misstep
Partway through the album, we are subjected to Actually Romantic, a very thinly veiled response to Charli xcx’s 2024 song, Sympathy is a Knife. This was a huge misstep on Taylor’s part. Swift completely misses the point of what Charli was saying in her song. While Charli’s lyrics deal with her own sense of insecurity being in Taylor’s presence, Actually Romantic is a diss track that comes totally out of left field. For an artist with as water-tight a public image as Swift, I have to wonder how on earth this made it out of the studio. I will preface that, naturally, we do not know the relationship Charli and Taylor have, and so we will only ever have a fractured version of the story, but this just feels nasty. The choice to include a song that so clearly punches down is not only a bad move because of the clear fact it makes Swift look petty and egotistical, but also because it overshadows the rest of this album. Did Taylor see the media storm around Kendrick Lamar after his decisive victory over Drake in their multi-track back-and-forth last summer, attempting to get her own Not Like Us moment?
We have to question what the angle is here? Taylor is surely media savvy enough to know how this looks, but still, it was released. It feels further poorly conceived because it invites comparison between both artists. Charli has occupied nearly the polar opposite niche to Taylor in the pop ecosystem. By drawing attention to this in a bitchy diss track, Taylor reminds her naysayers of how both artists differ. It further detracts from other messages on The Life of a Showgirl, with songs like Wi$h Li$t, Eldest Daughter, and Elizabeth Taylor expressing a desire to be removed from drama and settle into married life. If that is the takeaway here, why take a U turn mid album for its worst song? Additionally, in the context of the political climate, xcx inherently tied her branding to left wing politics by endorsing Kamala Harris at the start of her presidential run, while Taylor received consistent criticism that she should have been more engaged with the 2024 presidential election. Given Taylor’s track record of dividing public opinion and having a hands-off approach to politics, this song’s inevitable discourse feels like additional fuel to that most divisive of fires.
It feels unfortunate to see her unable to resist the temptation to respond to a song like Sympathy is a Knife. Charli’s song actually added to Swift’s mythos. This detracts from it. Actually Romantic deflects from what otherwise seems like a very happy period in Taylor’s life. Songs like The Fate of Ophelia and Opalite see Taylor at her most genuinely joyful since Lover. If we can’t commit to the theme of behind the scenes of her touring life, at least centre in on this as your North Star.
Changing her sound
The Life of a Showgirl did get one thing right, Taylor needed to make a drastic shift away from the stark ballads of her previous album. For the shortcomings of this record, it represents a necessary change of pace for Swift. The production, while feeling shy of the ‘infectious beats’ promised in Swift’s interview about the album on the New Heights podcast, does have danceable tracks and positions Taylor in the right direction sonically. Particularly the eyebrow raising track, Wood, displays a Taylor more willing to expand her output by playing with an almost Jackson 5-esque Motown beat that surprisingly works. I believe it shows that Taylor isn’t out of steam, even if this album does evoke an overarching idea that she needed to wait longer before dropping a new project.
Another interesting production choice was the use of a sample of George Michael’s Father Figure on Swift’s track of the same name. In an age of lazy samples, this is by no means the worst, but it does again feel like a missed opportunity. The sample doesn’t particularly do a lot for the song, instead feeling like background texturing. While many great samples do this, if using the chorus directly for your song, one should strive to utilise the original material more dynamically. A prime example of this is Jade’s Before You Break My Heart, released only a few weeks ahead of The Life of a Showgirl. Taylor’s sample is a far cry from the utterly derivative sampling of the likes of Ava Max’s discography or a David Guetta song but still feels lacking. Knowing the artistry she is capable of I wonder if she really needed more time on this album as a whole?
Where do you go when you’re already on top?
The Life of a Showgirl feels transitional. Created at a time when Swift was at the very apex of stardom it at times feels complacent or underbaked. While the production choices feel fresh and her voice is crisp, there is one central flaw in the conception of this album. It doesn’t really know what it’s trying to be. One moment it feels like a vibes only pop record before it pivots to Reputationesque spite before jumping back again. Swift’s lyricism is also left lacking on this album. In her conception of The Life of a Showgirl, it seems she has an internal conflict to address: is she the hitmaker or the poet? In trying to combine the two on this album, she falls short of both across at least half of the tracks. We know she is capable of this; her entire discography between Red and Lover proved as much.
Further to this, I think she needs to strike a balance between reflective songwriting and branching out (or rather inward) to create a more engaging thematic approach. The most fascinating thing about Taylor in 2025, when every detractor has been decisively silenced, is what that does to a person’s mentality. Hearing her reflections on success and her view on fame, as the title and album imagery would suggest, would have made for an incredible and engaging listen. Instead, we see Swift producing music that, for the first time in a long time, feels lacking. By returning to the familiar topics, the album struggles to feel as integral to the lore that Taylor has so far cultivated through her discography. There are enough good songs on this album to save it from a truly damning review, but far too much that feels lacking to warrant the glowing reviews Taylor usually collects with ease.
Considering her position, as the undisputed biggest pop star on earth, maybe even of all time, I have to question if the hunger was lacking? Where do you go when there are quite literally no new heights to summit? Other artists have found themselves in similar positions; indeed, Karol G’s Tropicoqueta had a similar background ahead of its release. Where these albums differ is that while Karol ventured inward to find new ground to cover, Taylor has revisited topics we have heard before in a way that feels reductive and even tired. Knowing that she cannot produce an album that won’t instantly dominate charts and amass millions of streams, thanks to a dedicated army of Swifties, I have to wonder if that has allowed Taylor to get comfortable? That would certainly explain the massive PR misstep of the Charli xcx diss. While Swift’s work has always had a central theme of self-mythologising and self-indulgence, this is the first album that feels like these motifs are actually in the way of the music instead of adding additional texture to it.
As a long time fan, I appreciate that not every album can be a favourite. Perhaps The Life of a Showgirl is simply a grower, but it will never be on the same pedestal as previous classics like 1989 or Folklore. For me, this album proves one thing: Swift needed to wait longer and let her ideas develop. A transitional album, I suspect this will be one that will have its defenders but will remain cemented in the Taylor Swift canon as a divisive and opinion-dividing record. Clearly, it turns out that The Life of a Showgirl is just less exciting than we thought. Here’s to Taylor taking the time needed on her 13th album to course correct from her middling efforts on the 12th. Taylor Swift will inevitably make music after this that will once again move the needle forward; this just isn’t it.
