Taylor Swift’s New Album Review: The Life of A Show Girl

“The Life of a Showgirl” might be her most confusing performance yet.

Photo from ABC News

Over the summer, Swifties across the world were elated to discover that a new pop album was coming our way. Taylor sat across from her Super Bowl-winning boyfriend, Travis Kelce, grinning that this album was going to be short (only 12 tracks), sweet, and a sharp 180-degree turn from her last (very sad) album, The Tortured Poets Department. As she described it, her new album, The Life of a Showgirl would be a pop album combining “1989 beats with folklore-esque lyrics.” 

Naturally, other Swift-obsessives and I were overflowing with excitement, especially after hearing that this album was going to be exclusively produced by Max Martin and Shellback, the duo who worked with her on pop albums such as 1989, Reputation, and Lover. But tragedy struck at midnight on October 3rd, when I realized just how far this album had strayed from pop-perfection. 

The issue with the album boils down to 2 things: production and lyricism. Max Martin and Shellback are producers known for their complex, multi-layered beats, having worked with artists like Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Ariana Grande, P!nk, and of course, Taylor Swift. Shellback has a similar reputation, producing some of Taylor's biggest hits like Shake It Off, Delicate, and Gorgeous. With this impressive track record in mind, fans had incredibly high expectations. 

For the past few years, Taylor has also worked with producers like Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff. While following online discussions, I realized that I was not the only one beginning to grow tired of the repetitiveness of the slow-synthy nature of Dessner and Antonoff’s work. A change in pace was exactly what Swift’s discography needed, especially given how well received 1989 and Reputation were when they first came out. The Life of a Showgirl, however, was far off from the pop landmarks of those past albums. 

To start, the whole album felt as if she was trying to emulate something or someone, but continued to fall short. As I listened to the album, I noticed that every track seems to carry echoes of different songs within it. The guitar backups in the song “Actually Romantic” sounded eerily similar to Weezer’s “Say It Ain't So.” Her song “Wood,” which makes several allusions to Travis Kelce’s “New Heights manhood,” blatantly interpolated the Jackson Five's “I Want You Back.”

In “Wood,” Taylor was trying to pull off the trademark Sabrina Carpenter’s style of sexual innuendo, which works for Carpenter but sounds unnatural and forced in Swift’s voice. The list of songs that sounded similar to others just keeps going: “The Life of a Showgirl” sounds exactly like “Cool” by the Jonas Brothers, while others also hear Beyoncé’s “Halo.” Other critics have said that they find her song “Cancelled” musically identical to Lorde’s “Yellow Flicker Beat.” For a woman who claims she has “been afflicted by a terminal uniqueness,” why do all of these songs resemble something else? 

While the repetitive beats and blatant interpolation disappointed me, I found especially heartbreaking how lyrically stale the whole album felt. Many apologists for this album make a fair argument: why does it have to be a deep and prophetic album for it to be a good album? The answer is that it doesn’t. I can think of plenty of songs by Taylor Swift with lyrics that are certainly not poetic or profound, but are top-tier Taylor Swift songs. 

However, just because a lyric isn’t deep doesn’t mean it’s justifiable for it to be bad. There isn’t anything particularly profound about songs like “We Are Never Getting Back Together or Style,” but they are still great songs. They are fun, they are catchy, and they don’t include overly dramatic lyrics like “did you girlboss too close to the sun?” The issue with this album isn’t that she’s not a Tortured Poet anymore. She has forgotten how to write poetry altogether.

In so many of these songs, Taylor seems to chase what she once captured on Reputation or 1989, or emulating the eccentricity of Lana del Rey, the sensuality of Sabrina Carpenter, and the edginess of Lorde, so much so that she’s forgetting she can just be Taylor Swift. She doesn’t need to recreate because simply continuing what she’s been doing would still be ten times more well-received than what’s on The Life of a Showgirl right now. 

I’ve been a Swiftie since I was four years old, when I would steal my dad’s computer to watch her music videos. But as a Swiftie, I feel comfortable in saying that this album is not her best work, and she can absolutely do better. One of the things that is true about Taylor’s work is that sometimes you need to let it marinate for a bit. I found that with Midnights, which I strongly disliked until I listened to it a few more times and slowly started to discover more songs that I actually really enjoyed. Maybe as we let this album age a bit, we will start to hear it in new ways and grow a taste for it. 

Yet, Taylor Swift constantly reinvents herself. I am not worried that this album will be her last, or that her discography will sound this way forever. If anything, I’m sure that the next album we get from Taylor will be a complete 180.

Kat Stephens ‘27