“Did you girl-boss too close to the sun?”, “Everything’s just trolling and memes.”, “Her name was Kitty; she made her money being pretty and witty”. These are just a few lines from Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of Showgirl”.
Let me start off with this: I love Taylor Swift. Her albums “Speak Now”, “Red”, and “1989” are some of my favorite albums of all time. “Folklore” and “Evermore” were such drastic changes from her usual sound that they brought me back to her and her fandom. The Era’s Tour was a stunning display of artistic excellence and exceptional performances.
My personal love for Taylor Swift aside, I thought her past few albums have teetered on middling. “Midnights” was an interesting concept, but it didn’t do anything particularly interesting or innovative sonically, although it was still an incredibly well-written album. “The Tortured Poets Department” was polarizing in its confessionality, but seemed sloppy and lazily put together. And “The Life of a Showgirl” is the twisted amalgamation of her worst tendencies yet.
Mistake number one, in my mind, is announcing her album on Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast. She has never so publicly associated herself with one of her boyfriends before, and even though their relationship was highly publicized from the beginning, by announcing her album on their podcast, she has subconsciously shifted the narrative away from her artistry and towards her relationship, which, in the past, has been her fear exactly.
The album takes a turn from the synth-pop revival sound created by producer and long-time friend, Jack Antonoff, heavily featured in her previous albums. The trade-off she makes, though, is this boring, bland production that has been a staple in many of the hit songs this year.
This uninspiring production can’t be ignored by me, given the buildup for the album by the Swedish producers, Max Martin and Shellback, notorious hitmakers of some of the biggest pop songs of the 21st century. Every song on the album is produced by these two, and this created a significant amount of hype, with fans thinking this would be a bulletproof glitterpop album along the lines of her most successful pop albums.
Instead, we were given this. Fine. Aggressively average. No, most of the songs aren’t horrible, but they aren’t great either. They are melodically boring, lyrically uninteresting, and downright juvenile at times.
Lyrically, this album features some of her worst lyricism yet. They are all over the place, concepts are not expanded on in a meaningful way, and it feels like she’s just saying things to say them.
Her internet references are horrendous on this album. She talks about “Trolling and memes”, “Cutthroat comments”, and “Girl-bosses”. She attempts to be funny and witty, but it comes off as your parents using teenage slang to “hang with the kids”.
But there were some highs. Overall, I would say the first 3 tracks of the album are the most solid. These are “The Fate of Ophelia”, the lead single referencing Hamlet, detailing how she was saved from the fate of Ophelia by being “rescued” by her lover, “Elizabeth Taylor”, a moody, dramatic song about her lover being her refuge from the chaos and glamor of the spotlight, and “Opalite”, an upbeat pop song about being in love.
These songs are solid earworms that will have you humming the chorus for the rest of the day. The first three tracks are also the best written, with a standout line for me being, “Be my NY when Hollywood hates me, you’re only as hot as your last hit, baby” (Elizabeth Taylor).
Other than that, I found the rest of the tracks to be boring and unoriginal. Critics on TikTok have found that many of the songs sound like other songs. The title track, “The Life of a Showgirl”, has a very similar-sounding chorus to “Cool” by the Jonas Brothers; “Actually Romantic”, many have noticed, sounds like “Where Is My Mind?” by the Pixies. And these are only a few of the similarities people have noticed.
On the topic of “Actually Romantic”, the track makes no attempt to hide the diss she makes to Charli XCX’s “Sympathy is a Knife”. Diss tracks aren’t new to Taylor, but this one feels undeserved and needlessly petty, ignoring the complex feelings Charli addresses in her song.
There have been over 34 album variants of The Life of a Showgirl, something Swift has been criticized for on her previous two albums. Many have viewed this as a blatant display of her cash-grabbing tendencies.
The Life of a Showgirl is her most commercially successful album yet, continually breaking records she set with her previous two albums. Still, the overall consensus amongst critics has been scattered. Some publications, including Rolling Stone, have given the album glowing reviews, but other publications have given it middling reviews.
I found this album to be particularly anger-fueling because I know that Taylor Swift is capable of writing and producing quality music. I have seen and resonated with much of her work, but this I can’t seem to connect with. It is out of touch, uninteresting, and some of her laziest work yet.
My opinion? Taylor Swift is tired. Since 2022, she has released at least 1 album every year. She was on tour for almost two years. She needs a break and to take two or so years off from music. Then, she’ll have some time to hone her craft. I believe in Taylor Swift’s artistry. I know she has it in her to make truly exceptional work.