<\/p>\n
The release of a new Taylor Swift album, like all things in the Taylor-verse, is not a moment for solitude. It is a social event, a time to share hot takes, analyze clues, jump to conclusions.<\/p>\n
I must have done something right in my life, because I am fortunate enough to be surrounded by brilliant, Swift-obsessed young women brimming with thoughts about the World\u2019s Greatest Pop Star. Here is a sampling of what popped up on my phone during the first 12 hours or so following the release of The Life of a Showgirl <\/em>last Friday at midnight:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m addicted to the album. The storytelling is spectacular and it\u2019s such a strong voice.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI do not like this album at all, with the exception of two or three songs.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI absolutely love the album. It brings together all the fun, lighthearted parts about love but also the regrets she\u2019s had. It\u2019s so mature and unique.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cNot a huge fan. The vast majority sounds like imitations of other pop girlies, which is disappointing.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI LOVE THIS ALBUM SO MUCH. It seems like she sees it as her last big pop moment, so she\u2019s throwing herself into it full force because she feels like it\u2019s her last chance.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cUgh. The lyrics are lacking for me on this. I\u2019m missing any real emotion. It just feels like a lot of petty wordplay that won\u2019t age well and isn\u2019t half as clever as she thinks.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n Consensus has been hard to come by in the first wave of reaction to Showgirl<\/em>, even from the post-millennial faithful whose thoughts matter a hell of a lot more than mine do. And to be fair, these feelings may evolve over time\u2014one of my correspondents above wrote back the next day to report that a song she had initially described as \u201ccute and lazy\u201d was now making her cry.<\/p>\n At this point, though, questions of good-or-bad, thumbs-up-or-thumbs-down, how-many-stars seem pretty incidental when we\u2019re talking about a new Taylor Swift project. She\u2019s way beyond all that. This is her first album after the world-conquering Eras Tour<\/a>, the announcement of her engagement to Travis Kelce<\/a>, the President of the United States posting \u201cI hate Taylor Swift!\u201d and then (TACO-style<\/a>) backing down and calling her a \u201cterrific person.\u201d The album release was covered as a major story on the news networks. \u201cI\u2019m immortal now,\u201d she sings in a tossed-off, jokey-but-definitely-not moment on the title track.<\/p>\n The seismic impact was entirely predictable\u2014Showgirl<\/em> sold 2.7 million copies, the second-highest one week total in history. It became the year\u2019s biggest-selling album on its first day and broke records by reaching Number One in 100 countries in less than eight hours. The first single and opening track, the ambitious Hamlet<\/em>-meets-Fleetwood Mac \u201cThe Fate of Ophelia,\u201d was Spotify\u2019s biggest debut of all time, and the record\u2019s accompanying film The Official Release Party of a Showgirl<\/em> (self-distributed by Swift to movie theaters nationwide) dominated the weekend box office, taking in $33 million.<\/p>\n Twelve albums and nineteen years into a career that only gets bigger, she\u2019s in territory no pop star has ever seen, and realistically her new music can only be assessed next to her own work. (And brace yourself for the upcoming nuptials\u2014whenever and wherever the blessed event happens, it will be the closest this country gets to a royal wedding.)<\/p>\n Swift has attained a level of cultural domination that is simply unprecedented. Of course we live in a highly fragmented world, but she is that exceedingly rare figure that everyone has to have an opinion about. In 2025, we are all Swifties.<\/p>\n Which brings us to the curious case of The Life of a Showgirl<\/em>. Swift had pretty much teed up what to expect this time around. Its concise twelve tracks are a response to the 31-song sprawl of last year\u2019s The Tortured Poets Department<\/em><\/a>, and her reunion with Swedish megaproducers Max Martin and Shellback indicated a pure pop focus she hasn\u2019t explored since 2017\u2019s Reputation<\/em><\/a>. The songs, recorded in between Eras stops, would reflect the whirlwind nature of leading the most successful tour of all time while concurrently finding love at last with Kelce.<\/p>\n All of which is true, to a point, and every single fan comes to this album knowing all the backstory. But if we weren\u2019t all filling in the blanks, connecting the dots, cracking open the Easter Eggs, much of this wildly uneven album doesn\u2019t ultimately have much to offer about her current situation. Too often, Swift settles for overworked metaphors, characters, and one-liners.<\/p>\n The simplest love songs present some of the album\u2019s greatest joys. \u201cOpalite\u201d is a straight-up bop, dizzy in love, complete with a quote from the Ronettes\u2019 \u201cBe My Baby.\u201d (Maybe not surprisingly, it\u2019s apparently Kelce\u2019s favorite, and right now, it\u2019s mine, too.) \u201cHoney\u201d reaches a little deeper, with the sincerity of a partner\u2019s words breaking through the hard-earned resistance to condescending pet names; there\u2019s an echo of the furious \u201cDon\u2019t call me kid\/Don\u2019t call me baby\u201d refrain on \u201cIllicit Affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n Martin and Shellback\u2019s sound doesn\u2019t provide anything as startling as their previous Swift collaborations\u2014the thunderous crunch of \u201cI Knew You Were Trouble,\u201d the perfection of \u201cBlank Space,\u201d or the baroque arrangements on Reputation\u2014<\/em>but they consistently provide welcome air and space around Swift\u2019s voice. The biggest hooks aren\u2019t always the strongest; watch out for those pre- and post-choruses, they\u2019re the ones that\u2019ll get ya.<\/p>\n \u201cEldest Daughter\u201d and \u201cRuin the Friendship\u201d are rich, moving examples of a category we\u2019ll call Taylor\u2019s Origin Story songs (see also: \u201cMastermind,\u201d \u201cNew Romantics\u201d). The former explores how she\u2019s progressed from \u201cdying just trying to seem cool,\u201d hardened by the brutality of the Internet, to opening herself up to love and devotion. \u201cRuin\u201d makes the case for taking risks, kissing the boy who has a girlfriend, making it awkward\u2014\u201cbetter that than regret it for all time.\u201d<\/p>\n But Showgirl <\/em>drops precipitously with a series of tracks dedicated to settling scores. \u201cFather Figure\u201d and \u201cActually Romantic\u201d (with its Weezer\/Pixies\/\u201dTeenage Dirtbag\u201d scuzz-rock) are sucking up all the attention from the album\u2019s happy-in-love vibe for punching back at targets assumed to be record executive Scott Borchetta and former friend Charli XCX (with maybe a dash of Olivia Rodrigo?). No doubt, Swift is entitled to a victory lap for winning her \u201cTaylor\u2019s Version\u201d gambit and buying back her master recordings, but \u201cFather\u201d\u2019s tale of taking revenge on a deceitful mentor is nothing we haven\u2019t heard from her before.<\/p>\n As for the placement of the \u201cRomantic\u201d clapback immediately after \u201cRuin the Friendship,\u201d one of my texters points out that \u201cgoing from saying she\u2019s not good at being mean to a dis track feels like preemptive defense.\u201d Once you\u2019ve dug through all the lore, it\u2019s hard to imagine wanting to hear these songs over and over. <\/p>\n Same goes for \u201cWood,\u201d a forced and very unsexy tribute to the size of her fianc\u00e9’s genitals over a warmed-over Jackson 5 groove (including the phrase, God help us, \u201che ah-matized me\u201d) and the pleasant but minor \u201cWi$h Li$t,\u201d which contrasts her desire for kids and a suburban home with everyone else striving for glamor and fame. OK, Taylor, but why? Just listing stuff doesn\u2019t actually explain your change of heart and priorities, or if it even is a change, or what we\u2019re supposed to think about all this.<\/p>\n It all builds to the closing title track, a duet with Sabrina Carpenter (the album\u2019s only guest) that feels like it\u2019s meant to be a grand statement. Over a wide-screen sound, we hear about the allure of the spotlight, the detachment required to live the public life (\u201cDo you want to skate on the ice inside my veins?\u201d), and then we wait for the part that pulls the whole thing together but the song, which is otherwise solid enough, just…ends.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a real story of transformation in the songs of Showgirl<\/em>, and this seems like the place where Swift could explain how the too-cautious daughter afraid of risk became the business powerhouse who fought off her fears of heartbreak and finally accepted love, and maybe how art and performance and experience helped her. But she just doesn\u2019t stick the landing and we\u2019re left to figure it out on our own.<\/p>\n One definition of true greatness is that it belongs to those, whether it\u2019s the Beatles or Michael Jordan, who step up when all eyes are on them and the pressure is highest\u2014and then exceed all expectations. The Eras Tour represented that kind of triumph, and if The Life of a Showgirl<\/em> is something of a letdown, Taylor Swift has plenty of stuff coming up that we\u2019re going to want to hear about. Even if \u201cyou\u2019re only as hot as your last hit,\u201d as she sings on \u201cElizabeth Taylor,\u201d she should try to relax and enjoy the wedding. On with the show, girl.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.esquire.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The release of a new Taylor Swift album, like all things in the Taylor-verse, is not a moment for solitude. It is a social event, a time to share hot takes, analyze clues, jump to conclusions. I must have done something right in my life, because I am fortunate enough to be surrounded by brilliant, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2072352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[276609,388528,285977,285684,388527],"class_list":["post-2072351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-content-type-news-explainer","tag-contentid-c0ebd57e-f13a-4088-9da8-0b7638976185","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-locale-us","tag-shorttitle-how-are-we-supposed-to-feel-about-taylor-swift"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Taylor-Swifts-The-Life-of-a-Showgirl-Review-Curious-and.pjpeg.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2072351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2072353,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072351\/revisions\/2072353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2072352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2072351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2072351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2072351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}