Graham Reid is an NZ journalist, author, broadcaster and arts educator. His website, Elsewhere, provides features and reports on music, film, travel and other cultural issues.
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Taylor Swift in showgirl guise for her twelfth album. Supplied
The Life of a Showgirl
by Taylor Swift
Rather than being inconvenienced by listening to her music, many prefer to dismiss Taylor Swift through career statistics: more than 100 million albums sold; her Eras tour grossing more than $6 billion; a net worth around $2.7 billion.
However the idea that success in pop means baseline populism plays into the myth that modest sales or cult status equate to greater integrity and superior music.
As far back as We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together on her 2012 Red album Swift dismissed a former lover with “[you] find your peace of mind with some indie record that’s so much cooler than mine”.
It must be galling for those writing “Taylor who?” on Facebook that, at 35, she’s still here with her 12th studio album, not including four re-recorded albums with extra tracks.
The uncomfortable reality for naysayers is a lot of people like Swift’s music.
With producers Max Martin and Shellback who crafted some of her better pop hits (Shake It Off and I Knew You Were Trouble), Swift here delivers an album with few surprises outside of Wood, an innuendo-filled celebration of fiancé Travis Kelce’s sexual apparatus: “His love was the key that opened my thighs”.
The Fate of Ophelia has her – in a rather broad interpretation – suffering as Shakespeare’s Ophelia, a woman being driven mad by unrequited love … until Kelce called. In Elizabeth Taylor she asks the late, much-married star “do you think it’s forever?”.
The relentlessly Swift-centric songs explore mixed emotions (“I had a bad habit of missing lovers past” in the poppy Opalite), poke at her former record exec on the downbeat shuffle of Father Figure (“they don’t make loyalty like they used to”) and push back at trolling of celebrities in Eldest Daughter (“everybody’s cutthroat in the comments ”).
There’s the obligatory diss track, the coldly barbed Actually Romantic, apparently about Charli XCX. However little challenges or resonates like 2020’s Folklore and Evermore albums.
Coming up for air: The artwork to Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl.
It’s musically familiar, not especially populist because of her continuing self-obsession and just not that interesting or fun.
But it’s Taylor Swift. Fans will dissect it and reviews – even by those who listened open-minded – are of little consequence. The day before release a BBC online heading read, “Taylor Swift Has Made Herself Too Big to Fail”.
As she sings on the title track, a meditation on fame and the price paid for the payoff, “but I’m immortal now, baby dolls”.
This album is available digitally, on CD and limited edition vinyl
