<\/p>\n
What happened when the girl became a god?<\/p>\n
That that\u2019s the question looming over Taylor Swift\u2019s latest album release seems all too fitting with the record\u2019s mythology-heavy themes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Life of a Showgirl\u201d, Swift\u2019s 12th original studio album, landed with uncharacteristic controversy earlier this month.<\/p>\n
The follow-up to last year\u2019s \u201cTortured Poets Department\u201d, \u201cShowgirl\u201d is Swift\u2019s swiftest follow-up to an album since 2020\u2019s companion records \u201cFolklore\u201d and \u201cEvermore\u201d dropped within five months of each other.<\/p>\n
And it certainly makes for an interesting sister piece to \u201cPoets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where that record felt grand and cinematic, \u201cShowgirl\u201d feels startlingly short and sharp.<\/p>\n
As others have noted, this is the most pop album Swift has put out since 2017\u2019s \u201cReputation.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s likely much of the reason why this album has Swifties and non-Swifties alike, as the kids say, properly shook.<\/p>\n
Swift comes out swinging on this album, and where much of her past work often laments the games women have to play in their love lives, \u201cShowgirl\u201d seems to see Swift saying that, yes, there is a game, and she\u2019s winning.<\/p>\n
The titular showgirl, a performer named Kitty, is spotlit in the album\u2019s closing track as Swift and guest artist Sabrina Carpenter sing of a woman having both achieved and been trapped by fame.<\/p>\n
All the headshots on the walls<\/p>\n
of the dance hall are of the b—-s<\/p>\n
who wish I\u2019d hurry up and die.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m immortal now, baby dolls;<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t if I tried.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s that perch on Olympus that has drawn much of the controversy around the album.<\/p>\n
Where Swift album releases typically draw perennial praise and sell like gangbusters, \u201cShowgirl\u201d instead seemed to hit like sparks to kindling as commentators noted how disconnected the once-homegirl singer now feels singing about the pains of starhood.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a familiar critique for Swift. One can only see her date bigger and bigger stars and earn more and more money before hearing her sing of wearing t-shirts and sneakers on the bleachers starts to ring a bit hollow.<\/p>\n
But I think that might be in large part exactly what Swift is trying to say.<\/p>\n
Is Kitty not allowed to take the money people toss at her?<\/p>\n
Is Swift not allowed to vent over the troubles of a life few can relate to?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the Catch-22 that has snared countless artists and celebrities \u2014 from MJ to Britney \u2014 for time eternal.<\/p>\n
And I tried to go into this album with an open mind hoping for the best.<\/p>\n
But while I\u2019ve long defended such troubles for Swift, the music itself also has to hold up.<\/p>\n
I think the two hit singles off the album \u2014 \u201cThe Fate of Ophelia\u201d and \u201cOpalite\u201d \u2014 are solid Swift standards destined to soundtrack countless Instagram reels.<\/p>\n
But where I praised \u201cPoets\u201d for its heart-touching wordplay, many of the tracks off this album come off more as message than muse.<\/p>\n
To me, much of the album feels like a collection of frustrations Swift had in her head on the day of recording, quickly put down to rhymes and rhythms.<\/p>\n
The album\u2019s 10th track, \u201cCANCELLED!\u201d, feels like one of the worst cases of this as Swift offers luke-warm critiques not so much of the modern \u2018cancel culture\u2019 referenced in the song\u2019s title, but of celebrity drama in general.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to love you when you\u2019re popular.<\/p>\n
The optics click, everyone prospers;<\/p>\n
But one single drop, you\u2019re off the roster.<\/p>\n
And while I still firmly believe Swift has a poet\u2019s pen for songwriting, bars like that sound like a 14-year-old\u2019s diary and not in the good \u201cFearless\u201d way.<\/p>\n
And even the instrumentals and production on the album end up feeling painfully bland.<\/p>\n
That being said, this sounds like an album that Swift had fun recording. There\u2019s winks a\u2019plenty to the camera and you can practically hear the \u201cwhat if I said this?\u201d batted around the studio.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. Every great musician has their playful vanity records.<\/p>\n
But I agree with many of the voices out there that \u201cShowgirl\u201d will likely fall low on future lists of best Swift albums and I hope she takes more than a few years to enjoy herself and get out of the studio before hopping back on the mic.<\/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.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What happened when the girl became a god? That that\u2019s the question looming over Taylor Swift\u2019s latest album release seems all too fitting with the record\u2019s mythology-heavy themes. \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl\u201d, Swift\u2019s 12th original studio album, landed with uncharacteristic controversy earlier this month. The follow-up to last year\u2019s \u201cTortured Poets Department\u201d, \u201cShowgirl\u201d is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2029532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[372480,343046,23084],"class_list":["post-2112689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-album-releases","tag-showgirl","tag-taylor-swift"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/In-Black-Rabbit-Jason-Bateman-and-Jude-Law-are-brothers.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112689","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=2112689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2112690,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112689\/revisions\/2112690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2029532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2112689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2112689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2112689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}