Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” has made a dramatic entrance in today’s music scene, creating a stark division among the “Swifties.” While some fans love the romance and catchy pop sound of the album, others are critical of her lyricism and storybook portrayal of her engagement to football player Travis Kelce.
Journalistic criticism has also varied widely. A five-star Rolling Stone review argues that “The glitzy sheen across these glitter gel pen songs doesn’t mean she’s skimping on her signature detailed storytelling.” On the other end of the scale, The London Evening Standard rips the album apart: “It’s a well-worn story that rich people can still be miserable, but when you’re a literal billionaire it’s a bit tone deaf to complain about the lack of glamour.” After listening to the album twice, reading reviews and—of course—consulting what the internet has to say, here are my thoughts.
I am a Taylor Swift fan myself, and a lover—pun intended—of some of her more subdued, lyric-heavy albums, like “folklore” and “The Tortured Poets Department,” which received a similarly controversial reaction. While I was a defender of “The Tortured Poets Department,” I have to say that the majority of “The Life of a Showgirl” is not for me. This is not to say that I uniformly hate it; personally, I really like the English major-coded opening song, “The Fate of Ophelia,” as well as the edginess and power of “Elizabeth Taylor” and “Father Figure.” I can definitely see myself singing along to these tracks in the car, and their poppy melodies will no doubt be stuck in my head for weeks. Yet the lyrics and subject matter for many of the songs did not fit with the jazzy, starlet “showgirl” aesthetic that I, and many others, expected.
To me, the mismatch between the album’s content and promotional photos, as well as the implicit promise that “Showgirl” would peel back the curtain on the Eras Tour, was Swift’s biggest faux pas. The only songs that offer an insight into her life during the tour are “Elizabeth Taylor” and the title track, “The Life of a Showgirl,” which features Sabrina Carpenter, a collaboration that made for a gorgeous track. Otherwise, this lack of thematic cohesion seems to be a source of criticism of the album as a whole, at least in online conversation and social media.
I went into every song wanting to like it, and if I had not been so focused on the lyrics, I would have enjoyed the album more. Two of my favorite things about Swift are her skillful, poetic writing and feminist, “girl power” persona, both of which were not at their best in this album.
“Wi$h Li$t” evoked the image of a white-picket-fence suburbia that seems antithetical to the Taylor Swift brand—independent, business savvy and ambitious. To be clear, I do not think she needs to be single to have this. “Wi$h Li$t” is disappointing because it demonstrates a complete swing towards the mainstream, historically sexist domestic world that distinctly clashes with the feminist messages of songs like “mad woman,” “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” “Look What You Made Me Do” and “The Man.”
“Showgirl’s” most controversial track is “Actually Romantic,” which fans speculate is a response to Charli xcx’s song, “Sympathy is a Knife.” While Swift never confirmed this, the lyrics of her song, as they stand, feel almost aggressive. The tone of “Actually Romantic” is crueler than some of her previous diss tracks, like “Mean” and “thanK you aIMee,” not to mention “Dear John” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.” Since Swift is clearly at the top of the ladder when it comes to success in the music industry, this song is not sitting well with me because it feels a bit like “punching down.” It also feels unjustified—assuming that “Actually Romantic” is, in fact, about Charli xcx—because the message behind “Sympathy is a Knife” is not necessarily an attack on Swift herself, but a reflection on Charli xcx’s experience. Lyrics like “This one girl taps my insecurities / don’t know if it’s real or if I’m spiraling” are about Charli xcx herself, not Swift, whose responding lyrics, “It’s honestly wild / All the effort you’ve put in” or “And I know you think it comes off vicious / But it’s precious, adorable” are unwarranted in this context.
“CANCELLED!” has also been widely discussed as problematic, which, of course, is exactly what this song is about. While it may be one of my favorite “Showgirl” tracks sonically—with layered vocals and strong, percussive instrumentals—I think the message behind this song, in particular, is out of touch and overly contrarian. The lines “Good thing I like my friends cancelled / I like ’em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal” feel particularly spoiled and tactless.
Swift’s infamous track five has also been pretty hit or miss, with fans either loving or hating “Eldest Daughter.” I was really excited for this one, having loved “So Long, London,” “Dear John” and “All Too Well,” all previous fifth tracks. However, the trendy language Swift uses throughout the song, particularly the lyric, “Every hot take is cold as ice,” and chorus, “I’m not a bad bitch / and this isn’t savage,” takes me out of the song and makes me cringe.
Now, the moment everybody has been waiting for: “Wood.” You know what, it is funny—and probably the catchiest song on the album—but… “Redwood tree / It ain’t hard to see / His love was the key / That opened my thighs.” What else is there to say?
A Telegraph review says it best, describing Swift’s tone throughout her 12th album as relieved that “she has been rescued from solitude by a man characterized with all the depth of a cartoon fairy tale Prince Charming … “Showgir”l represents 35-year-old Swift’s happy ending. It is a long way from her persona as a modern everywoman, forensically dissecting the affairs of her battered heart.”
While I disliked the messages behind many of the songs on this record, I still love Taylor Swift’s art on the whole. Mostly, this album makes me want to revisit the anthems of my youth from the hit pop album “1989,” when I belted out the words and danced around my living room to “Blank Space,” “Wildest Dreams” and “Style.” At the end of the day, I am definitely having a better “Showgirl” listening experience by putting myself in the mindset to take the album less seriously as literature and enjoy it more as music to rock out to. After all, I will never know the life of a showgirl.