Album Review: Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl

Yesterday, I was at the cinema for The Official Release Party of a Showgirl. I went in blind, had not listened to any song from The Life of a Showgirl before, although I was spoiled of a few lyrics from the songs Actually Romantic and Wood, which admittedly had me worried. And that's even though the signs for Taylor Swift's twelfth album were quite good with Max Martin and Shellback returning for production and songwriting – no, Taylor Swift doesn't write all her songs herself and she never has and that's not a bad thing inherently – and her apparently editing herself after 2024s mystical and simultaneously explicit, if excruciatingly bloated The Tortured Poets Department. 

Apart from a focused album experience, the marketing for The Life of a Showgirl promised us a new era for Taylor Swift's music in the form of a musical and thematic exploration of being a showgirl. The whole album was conceived during the biggest grossing tour of all time, which made Swift a billionaire and one of the richest women in the world: The Eras Tour. Specifically, it was written and produced during a stop Swift made in Sweden, where Max Martin lives. During the tour, Taylor Swift also entered a romantic relationship with American football player Travis Kelce. The two got engaged mere months before the album's release this Friday. 

With the title of the album and this context, it seemed to be reasonable to expect a career highlight from Mrs. Swift, reflecting on becoming the biggest and richest pop star in the world as well as finding true love, with production comparably showy, lush and bombastic to Taylor Swift's first and previous collaborative album with Martin and Shellback, her career-highlight 1989. And that's the pretext for The Life of a Showgirl. 

What we've gotten instead is Taylor Swift's worst album yet and an embarrassing display of a generational artist becoming a detached, tone-deaf and out-of-touch billionaire. Don't get me wrong here, Taylor Swift's music has never been for the unprivileged or the marginalized, but it has been almost always been relatable for not only a huge, but seemingly the biggest audience in the Western world. This gift she seems to have lost, along with her ability to write some of the most captivating hooks and bridges in mainstream Pop music. It begs the question, was it really reasonable of us to expect Taylor Swift making the 1989-kind of return to form? 

Looking at her last couple albums, not really. If Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department did one thing, it was to show us that Taylor Swift could not make Pop bangers like she used to. She can't provide the ambition, the melodies nor the writing anymore and that is one takeaway from The Life of a Showgirl. People expected she could not make worse than The Tortured Poets Department, which was an album mostly for her fans because of its extreme length with its only draw being lyrics that detailed her love life like never before, inviting people to speculate on all the references and reconstructing her last couple of relationships. The album nevertheless, despite being boring as hell for anyone not remotely into Taylor Swift in that way, was sort of a victory lap for her, proving that even when she does not edit herself, even when she doesn't talk about anything really meaningful at all, even when the music itself is nondescript and the choruses are weak, a lot of people are still going to eat it up. For The Life of a Showgirl though, she now, despite obviously not needing to, tries to broaden the scope again and cater to the largest audience. This album is her attempt – and I'm not saying she is in any need to do so, it seems more like she thinks she might have to – to stay at the top. The problem is: Taylor Swift personally can't handle her “opposition” – which is mostly only in her head but manifests through these new songs – and she doesn't seem to understand anything about what's going on in the world. When Nicki Minaj is the one to positively share your new song called CANCELLED!, you should come to realize that you are on the wrong side of history.

The Life of a Showgirl is exactly the album Taylor Swift promised us – in the mind of Taylor Swift. This is her return to playing the game. She's got the producers who blew her up to epic proportions for the first time. She's got a new love, lots of beef, the biggest tour ever and an album, where she earnestly and in a relatable way – as far as she can tell – detailed the life of a showgirl. It's a life about you and your associates being cancelled for public word and not for your actions or true self (CANCELLED!), about keyboard warriors and hot takes on social media (Eldest Daughter), about becoming a billionaire because of the hard work you put in (Opalite), about being dissed by leftist, queer, coke addicted colleagues (Actually Romantic), about finally living in an all-white and rich neighborhood (Wish List) and about being called names by jealous women (Honey). 

By broadening her scope again and trying to bring in all the people who felt left out on The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift just made her neoliberal and conservative magnum opus. And just as it is with white and rich people drawing from subculture, the showgirl aspect of the music is watered down to the most boring, flat and lazy instrumentals ever. Taylor Swift has always had allegations of using feminism and queer life as bait for her success, but The Life of a Showgirl is the first time she transparently proves it. Whenever topics or narratives come up that in reality relate to sexism, which is the only form of bigotry Swift has ever somewhat constantly vocally stood up to, she twists it into the unpolitical as hard as she can. And when she throws shit at fellow female Pop stars like Charli xcx or Olivia Rodrigo, she does the very thing the online discourse she despises so much always does: pitting successful women against each other. As her enemies, she's not chosen random successful women, but women who stand for progressive politics – who indulge queer life or raise awareness for the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Thus she feeds into the exact culture war from the political right that drives her home country into fascism. At the same time, her song CANCELLED! takes a concept popularized by reactionaries, makes fun of a culture of consequence and seemingly aligns herself with all people who have ever been “cancelled”, even those who – and I quote – “have skeletons in their attic”. And although she tries to frame it in the song as vaguely feminist (“Have you been girl-bossing to close to the sun?”) and non-conformant, it's not and we all know she just feeds into the anti-woke movement. 

The same philosophy is apparent in the song Honey. It is the most instrumentally lush production of the whole album, and a sweet song at its core, ruined by a frame narrative that doesn't dare to go where it needs to be. Calling women “honey” or “sweetheart” in a condescending and toxic way, when it is not your place to do so, even if it doesn't come from men, like in the song, is sexist and comes from a place of internalized misogyny. Neither the lyrics nor her commentary in the The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, reflect on that. Instead, she tries to do everything to avoid saying anything political. 

Eldest Daughter follows the same route. It starts with some of the worst lines Swift has ever written, criticizing Gen Z internet culture in a way that makes her look like a certified boomer. The apathy and coldness she sees in that is then contrasted by her own “terminal uniqueness” of not being a bad bitch, which is why she will never quit her husband or break their vow. Not only is the writing here super incoherent, Taylor Swift also connects empathy and warmth with concepts of the christian marriage and monogamy, while the apathetic internet commentators, who surely are also responsible for cancel culture, are immature and disloyal. This is perhaps the most blatant display of her loosing the connection to what was once her target audience: young people.

The next song on the album, Ruin the Friendship, paradoxically (and hilariously) throws it back to the high school days. The narrative of this song is convoluted as hell. Swift tackles topics of regret and mortality in the most immature and unclever way I could imagine. She regrets not kissing her best friend because nothing bad could've come from just kissing him despite him having a girlfriend. Now, just kissing him would be quite intrusive. It would also be disrespectful to him and his girlfriend. And also, what do you mean “nothing bad could come from it”? Maybe, if you'd kissed him, you could've ruined a lifelong friendship? And the twist comes at the end, which is: he died a short time after high school. So, the key story of the song is: “Always risk ruin the friendship by kissing your best friend because they could die and then you would regret it until the end of your life”. Sure.

After that, a largely inoffensive track, we hit the lowlight of The Life of a Showgirl: the Charli xcx disstrack, Actually Romantic. Charli xcx had a song called Everything is romantic on her brilliant album BRAT, which was – at least musically – the biggest pop cultural moment of 2024. On the same album, she references Taylor Swift in the song Sympathy is a knife. The song is about Charli xcx' insecurities, feelings of jealousy she herself obviously thinks of as inappropriate, and even includes an allusion to her having suicidal thoughts. A person she projects her insecurities on and that she is particularly jealous of without ever being able to remotely be like her, is Taylor Swift. The two both dated members of the band The 1975 around the same time, and Charli xcx, in the song, admits that she didn't want to have Swift around in the backstage of The 1975 shows and that she hoped Swift and The 1975 frontman Matty Healy would break up. What Taylor Swift makes of this song speaks to her tone-deafness. Remember, this is the person we are lead to believe is somewhat of a modern Shakespeare in the Pop music landscape – and yet, she isn't able to get a basic understanding of what the song Sympathy is a knife by Charli xcx really means or what it is about. The song is not about Taylor Swift. It's not even really offensive towards her. In fact, Charli xcx says she's jealous of Swift. Now, if you go and read the lyrics to Swift's Actually Romantic … it is a disgusting clap back at a fellow female Pop star that is totally unnecessary, super insecure and just badly written. Swift somehow twists it to Charli xcx hating her and being obsessed with her – and then she says that Charli xcx loves her more than any man. Mrs. Swift, if this kind of behavior is like the love of a man to you as a heterosexual woman – a love you seem to be enjoying a lot right now with Travis Kelce – then I have to doubt you have ever felt romantic love.

The next song – and the lack of good transitions from song review to song review is representative to the lack of any kind of cohesion in the album – is called Wish List (stylized with dollar signs instead of the letter ‘s’) and it is another lowlight in the track listing. According to Taylor Swift's commentary from The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, this song follows the idea of people having wish lists for their lives. Those are presented in the verses of the song, while Swift's own wish list, is in its chorus. Both wish lists are questionable to say the least. As representatives for the wishes of the people of the world, Swift has compiled the following list of wishes: a yacht life, being famous, Balenciaga products, a fat ass and a baby face (a supposed feminist critique of unrealistic body images), complex female characters (whatever that's supposed to convey, at least Swift herself doesn't seem to want complex female characters), a Golden Palm or an Academy Award, freedom, three dogs, a contract with Real Madrid, a video taken off the internet, a lit spring break and a good surf (in the internet-way, I suppose) without hypocrites. Her own wish is a family life away from anything public in an all-white neighborhood (“want the whole block looking like you”).

I could keep on going. Especially the song Wood, a blatant copy of Sabrina Carpenter's tongue-in-cheek raunchiness but without the playful hate for men or any tongue-in-cheek-ness, is full of some of the most embarrassing lines (mostly penis jokes) Taylor Swift has ever written. Other songs, such as the first three tracks, including the great opener and lead-single, The Fate of Ophelia (an actual Shakespeare reference in the way of Swift's classic track Love Story), and the disappointing but solid title track featuring Sabrina Carpenter, save the album from being an utter catastrophe. What also saves it from that, is that the music never and the lyrics only rarely are truly catastrophic. Yes, the music is really bland, unexciting and devoid of any risk and mostly even soul, and the lyrics often fall apart after a little bit of discussion, but The Life of a Showgirl sadly remains serviceable as semi-enjoyable background fluff. And that's sad because I would love this album to be unenjoyable for all the reasons I stated above. This is an album by an artist who, contrary to what she wants us to believe, what her fans want us to believe and what she herself may even believe, still has something to prove, be that for external or internal reasons. I believe Taylor Swift tried here, and she thought she has cooked, but really, she has just released her worst album yet.

Taylor Swift's Discography Ranked

1. Folklore (2020) Score: 85

Folklore is many things for Taylor Swift: a musical and lyrical 180, a lockdown album, the beginning of her imperial phase of pop music domination and her best album.

2. 1989 (2014) Score: 80

This is the album that made Taylor Swift the pop star she is today. 1989 saw her moving away from her Pop-Country roots, finally fully embracing pulsating, '80s inspired Electropop beats, gigantic choruses and, of course, those enchanting bridges. 

3. Evermore (2020) Score: 75

On the sisteralbum to Folklore, Taylor Swift expands her Folk Pop universe even further. Although Evermore doesn't have quite the consistency nor the number of great choruses, it still stands as one of Swift's stronger records.

4. Lover (2019) Score: 70

While it is arguable that Lover invented the more pastel asthetics and musical direction that plague Taylor Swift's newer work up to this day, it still features a lot of incredible material, alongside some terrible singles.

5. Midnights (2023) Score: 65

Looking back at the bonus tracks from the Midnights era, it becomes clear to an almost frustrating degree that this core album could've been one of Taylor Swift's best. Sadly, Swift put some of the weakest songs on the main track listing.

6. Red (2012) Score: 65

Besides the big hits, which are awesome, there are only a few songs really worthwhile on Red. The rest lends itself far too much to the mediocre Pop-Country of Swift's first three albums. The album was an important step towards 1989 though.

7. Taylor Swift (2008) Score: 55

Surely a very unpopular pick for seventh place, but the self-titled debut is better off for not trying to make its middle-of-the-road Country-Singer-Songwriter hit stadiums and Pop charts like its two immediate successors.

8. Reputation (2017) Score: 55

Reputation is possibly Swift's most controversial album – and rightfully so. After 1989 the expectations were insanely high and controversies at the time didn't make life easier for Swift. The resulting album rarely, if ever reaches the highs of its predecessor, suffers from production that was dated at release and embraces bitterness a little too often.

9. The Tortured Poets Department (2024) Score: 55

This album came at a time when Taylor Swift should've released her pop bible. She was at the top of the world on The Eras Tour. Well, we got our pop bible, but in a different way than expected: unedited, sprawling, mystical, epic in proportion… but not exactly packed with hits or interesting music for anyone but Swifties.

10. Speak Now (2010) Score: 55

It sounds and works better than Fearless but Taylor Swift's attempt at making Stadium Rock, Mainstream Pop and Country at the same time still ends up being cringeworthy.  

11. Fearless (2008) Score: 50

Fearless contains more classics than Speak Now. For those, it deserves credit. And it certainly was a moment for Taylor Swift at the time. The production and writing is mostly quite poor though.

12. The Life of a Showgirl (2025) Score: 40