<\/p>\n
In last year\u2019s sweetly devastating Las Vegas melodrama\u00a0The Last Showgirl<\/em>,\u00a0Pamela Anderson\u2019s middle-aged dancer Shelly is on an audition for the first time in decades. Her long-standing gig, the classic revue\u00a0Le Razzle Dazzle,\u00a0is shutting down. She allows that many people would consider her too old for this prospective new part (while still lying about her age). But it\u2019s a huge theater, she jokes: \u201cDistance helps!\u201d<\/p>\n This year\u2019s\u00a0The Life of a Showgirl<\/em>\u00a0marks the first time I might also say \u201cdistance helps\u201d about a Taylor Swift album. It\u2019s not that Swift at 35 has by any means aged out of her own role of World\u2019s Biggest Pop Star\u2014if anything she\u2019s still acting too young. No, I mean that this record, her first reunion with Swedish mega-producers Max Martin and Shellback since 2017\u2019s\u00a0Reputation<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>feels much more enjoyable if you just let it wash over you in a sunny haze. Swift has always cultivated among fans their minute attention to her lyrical details. But the closer one looks at many of these tracks, the less compelling they often become. Off-putting, even.<\/p>\n Instead, this album\u2019s virtues are in its surfaces, shinier and more accessible than on her past few, more languorous and twisty records. If some of the lyrical choreography has grown hackneyed, focus on the beads and sequins.<\/p>\n One issue is simple overexposure. It\u2019s been only a year and a half since Swift\u2019s previous album,\u00a0The Tortured Poets Department<\/em>, unfurled its 31-song parchment<\/a>. That was in the middle of the box-office-record-breaking \u201cEras\u201d tour that kept Swift in stadiums and the whole world\u2019s news and social feeds pretty much daily from March 2023 to December 2024. This album was apparently recorded piecemeal between dates on that tour\u2019s final European leg last year. Now it arrives timed to the news cycle around Swift\u2019s announcement a few weeks ago of\u00a0her engagement to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce<\/a>. (On one of this album\u2019s cringiest songs, the unsubtly titled \u201cWood,\u201d Swift informs us that it\u2019s not his\u00a0end<\/em>\u00a0that makes Kelce\u2019s pants so tight.)<\/p>\n The\u00a0sales and charts records<\/a>\u00a0set by this\u00a0twice-over billionaire<\/a>\u00a0have become too familiar to recite. But as context for listening to\u00a0The Life of a Showgirl<\/em>,\u00a0I would draw your attention to one particular data set: In the past five years, Swift released four new albums before this one; plus four of her \u201cTaylor\u2019s Version\u201d re-records of older albums, each with a raft of previously unreleased (\u201cfrom the vault\u201d) bonus songs; and a few scattered other singles. By my possibly incomplete count, before this morning\u2019s release she\u2019d already put out\u00a0111 new songs<\/em>\u00a0since 2020. How likely was it that another dozen would come as startling revelations?<\/p>\n In short, they don\u2019t. Most of what we hear on\u00a0TLOAS<\/em>\u00a0repeats themes and variations from across Swift\u2019s recent career. And when they do make a departure, it\u2019s often not for the better (viz. the aforementioned \u201cWood\u201d). As expected, the happy coupledom occasions a bunch of love songs more upbeat than on\u00a0Midnights<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0TTPD<\/em>, but to me they don\u2019t have the smack of wide-eyed ecstasy of their counterparts on 2019\u2019s often underrated\u00a0Lover<\/em><\/a>. That may be an unrecapturable sensation of youth. But they also lack the dramatic tension of the fraught love stories in the back half of\u00a0Reputation<\/em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Neither are most of them quite the classic Max Martin bangers with melodies\u00a0\u201cso infectious that you\u2019re almost angry at it<\/a>\u201d\u00a0that the advance hype set us up to expect. Opener \u201cThe Fate of Ophelia\u201d and third track \u201cOpalite\u201d get closest, in their choruses and bridges, although their verses are dull by comparison. Many of the songs here do benefit from following Martin\u2019s signature \u201cmelodic math,\u201d in which the words are required to fit exactly to the music in ways that enhance their listenability tenfold, a discipline Swift ignored on many recent albums. Still, there are just as many standout melodic hooks on songs she\u2019s written with Jack Antonoff and others in the past eight years.<\/p>\n Certainly none here are stern-to-bow juggernauts of pop efficiency like \u201cBlank Space\u201d or even, say, \u201cNew Romantics.\u201d Perhaps it\u2019s silly to hope for that\u2014again, some moments can\u2019t be repeated\u2014but most of the songs also don\u2019t offer the prolixly oddball left-field inner monologues of the best of\u00a0Tortured Poets Department<\/em>.\u00a0This document of Swift\u2019s supposed happy ending instead has an in-betweenness that makes it hard to revel in her purported satisfaction.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s because they were written and recorded with too much haste and determination and not enough time and space to process. But where she\u2019s coming from might also be getting harder to identify with, as she\u2019s less and less the big-sister songwriter sharing her struggles and more the nonpareil superstar issuing communiqu\u00e9s. This reaches laughability on a song like \u201cWi$h Li$t,\u201d in which she goes on about how\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0people want designer clothes, awards, \u201cbright lights,\u201d and \u201cthat video taken off the internet,\u201d and God bless \u2019em, but Swift wants only her baby, aka \u201ca best friend who I think is hot,\u201d a couple of kids, and \u201ca driveway with a basketball hoop.\u201d As if Taylor Swift has ever not wanted all the fame, all the money, all the credit, and all the control she\u2019s always known she has coming to her. With what seems like a pretty good heart and decent values compared to the truly malevolent narcissists of the world, sure. But come on.<\/p>\n Lest you think true love has transformed her into a whole new woman who no longer cares for all of that,\u00a0The Life of a Showgirl<\/em>\u00a0also includes a fistful of the score-settling songs that are Swift-album standard issue. There\u2019s no denying the force of Swift\u2019s greatest revenge songs, of course. But there\u2019s also no wishing away the penny-ante petulance of many of the others. And that\u2019s mostly what we have here, with \u201cActually Romantic\u201d becoming notorious overnight as the song in which Swift punches down at Charli XCX in response to a song that did not actually attack her<\/a>. Whatever else might have provoked Swift behind the scenes, she also mounts her attack in the most middle-school way. Sure, she scores a couple of good cracks (\u201cLike a toy Chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse\/ That\u2019s how much it hurts\u201d). But the whole\u00a0Ooh, you\u2019re so obsessed with me, do you loooooove me?<\/em>\u00a0shtick directed at another woman just reminds me of the time Swift sick-burned an ex-boyfriend in a song by saying she\u2019d tell all her friends he was gay<\/a>. And why is the whole track set to the exact chord riff of the Pixies\u2019 \u201cWhere Is My Mind?<\/a>,\u201d including the little stutter-stop at the beginning?<\/p>\n Even worse is \u201cCANCELLED!\u201d Stylizing a title with capitals and an exclamation point is something Swift\u2019s done before only with \u201cME!<\/a>,\u201d so that\u2019s obviously a bad sign. Was this track actually a \u201cvault\u201d leftover intended for the\u00a0Reputation<\/em>\u00a0re-record that will probably never happen now that Swift has been able to buy back her original masters? Frankly, I\u2019d rather think so than that she\u2019s actively returned for an umpteenth dredge at the long-drained well of her brief disfavor over her feud with the West-Kardashians\u2014a couple that no longer exists, and one of whom has for years now been in far greater disgrace than Swift ever was. But the greater offense is the out-of-touch way she savors the word canceled<\/em>, as if that were still a fresh idea. As if, in fact, she weren\u2019t putting out this record when the American government is subjecting journalists, academics, her fellow entertainers, and other undeserving citizens to much more extreme threats to their reputations and freedom of speech than Swift and her squad members have ever faced in their cushy lives. It makes the song not just bad but infuriating.<\/p>\n There is a revenge song that works here, though, and, improbably, it\u2019s her victory lap about her music-ownership rights dispute with her former label head and business partner Scott Borchetta. The song is \u201cFather Figure<\/a>,\u201d featuring a very low-key interpolation of the George Michael song of the same name. It benefits partly from an enticing sonic bed from Martin and Shellback, but mostly from Swift\u2019s use of a double perspective: She sings it in the persona of a Mafia-boss type bragging about how he\u2019s able to manipulate every situation to his advantage. At first, that seems clearly to be Borchetta, but by the end the character has become Swift herself, boasting, \u201cThis empire belongs to\u00a0me<\/em>,\u201d and \u201cturns out my dick\u2019s bigger.\u201d She even hints that she might have a propensity to betray her own prot\u00e9g\u00e9s, as someone like Olivia Rodrigo might well agree. But this unreliable narrator and the gangster character, along with the momentum of the music, make it possible to listen to the song in more open-ended ways and think not just about how it maps to Swift\u2019s very public storylines\u2014a practice that is sometimes fun but also often a suffocating aspect of trying to enjoy her music in and of itself.<\/p>\n The dick joke in \u201cFather Figure\u201d works because it\u2019s about power, something Swift always has been great at singing about. Unfortunately, we also get the nothing-but-dick-jokes lyrics in the second half of the aforementioned \u201cWood,\u201d all about her fianc\u00e9\u2019s endowment. Who wanted this? Aside from Travis Kelce himself, I guess. I don\u2019t mean to be a prude, and no doubt Swift would counter that men have been bragging about their own dicks in popular music for time immemorial. Unfortunately, Swift trying to make sex jokes usually comes off like, as others have said<\/a>, a \u201cMormon swearing for the first time<\/a>.\u201d She has composed some genuinely erotic songs in her career (\u201cDress,\u201d \u201cWildest Dreams,\u201d \u201cDelicate\u201d). But she can\u2019t pull off the burlesque ribaldry that her closing-track guest Sabrina Carpenter finesses on the regular<\/a>. That may well be what Swift aimed to emulate here and in the, sorry, \u201cMaking me wet\u201d line in \u201cActually Romantic,\u201d given that she\u2019s seldom spotted a successful pop move she didn\u2019t want to make her own. But instead she comes across as weirdly\u00a0earnest<\/em>\u00a0about Travis Kelce\u2019s penis. This is especially a shame because it spoils the flavor of what should have been a deliciously faux-funky Jackson 5 rip-off from her producers.<\/p>\n The awkwardness of Swift\u2019s swears has always felt like one symptom of the lingering arrested development that afflicts a lot of former child stars because they had to skip so many stages of normal socialization. So does the juvenile irascibility of many of her feuding songs. As she put it on \u201cAnti-Hero<\/a>,\u201d still one of her most perceptive self-portraits, \u201cI have this thing where I get older but just never wiser.\u201d This doesn\u2019t seem to distress too much of her fan base, which, let\u2019s recall, encompasses a high percentage of living human beings. It might also be part of the reason new generations of kids, tweens, and teens keep falling in love with her. So maybe those of us who get impatient with it should just stop expecting it to change.<\/p>\n There\u2019s still something magical that happens when Swift draws on childhood and adolescence. The most immediately enchanting song here is \u201cRuin the Friendship,\u201d which returns to\u00a0a high school story she\u2019s touched upon before<\/a>, about a friend she had an unrealized crush on, who later died. At his gravesite, she concludes, \u201cMy advice is to always ruin the friendship\/ Better that than regret it for all time\/ Should\u2019ve kissed you anyway.\u201d Cue the gushing tears. This one could have been part of the \u201cteenage love triangle\u201d trilogy on\u00a0Folklore<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Nearly as effective is \u201cEldest Daughter,\u201d which unfortunately starts off with a bone-obvious verse about the internet, before getting into the good stuff about love reviving a lost innocence and finding someone who balances out your childhood conditioning. There\u2019s also a whisper of a callback to the \u201ccareless man\u2019s careful daughter\u201d line of \u201cMine\u201d of 2010, which personally was the country-era Swift moment that first roped me in. Although I have to call bullshit on one line here that goes, \u201cWhen I said I don\u2019t believe in marriage, that was a lie.\u201d If there was ever a time Taylor Swift did not believe in marriage, I\u2019m pretty sure we all (except the Gaylors, who were just in denial<\/a>) missed it. It\u2019s pretty much always been the consummation devoutly to be wished in all her music<\/a>, to follow her \u201cOphelia\u201d lead with another\u00a0Hamlet<\/em>\u00a0reference. Indeed, as with Juliet on \u201cLove Story,\u201d she tends to stretch each Shakespeare character more in the direction of a Disney princess. Or, to put it in the more Kelcean terms of a football metaphor, as she prophetically did back in 2017, marriage has always been her endgame<\/a>.<\/p>\n Speaking of endings, after the quite rocky second half to the album, it is a relief finally to reach the title track, which is more the kind of fictional\/historical character study Swift specialized in on\u00a0Folklore<\/em>, Evermore<\/em>, and some of The Tortured<\/em>\u00a0Poets Department<\/em>. Like \u201cThe Last Great American Dynasty<\/a>\u201d or \u201cClara Bow<\/a>,\u201d it\u2019s a portrait of a previous glamorous figure, a Vegas showgirl named Kitty, that then comes around to address Swift\u2019s own destiny. Sabrina Carpenter lends excellent backup, bringing acting chops to her solo verse that Swift can\u2019t equal, while also yielding to her elder\u2019s irresistible force. The question mark lingers: Will Carpenter be the next to carry the showgirl torch, or be exploited and left behind like Kitty, or Pamela Anderson\u2019s Shelly? This storyline, and the song\u2019s flashes of a more cabaret-oriented sound, suggests a whole other album that could have been, more directly in line with Swift\u2019s earlier teases. Aside from this song, and I suppose the fine but slightly forced \u201cElizabeth Taylor,\u201d the whole showgirl theme in the title and the album art\u2019s Bob Mackie costumes<\/a> doesn\u2019t amount to much. The question of reconciling all the sides of Swift\u2014the laboring marathon stage performer, the writer-creator, the boss and billionaire, the lover and the fighter\u2014is not confronted so much as pointed at, then chewed up in the frenzy to get another Taylor Swift product out before anyone stops thinking about her and she ceases to exist.<\/p>\n