Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl

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My thoughts on Taylor Swift have ebbed and flowed like the tide over the years, and the announcement of The Life of a Showgirl arrived at a particularly low ebb. The highs of folklore and evermore, and the early days of The Eras Tour, feel like a distant memory at this point. Since then, none of her records have delivered on what they promised. The build up to Midnights alluded to a record exploring a lush 70s vibe but ended up being a fairly middle of the road synth affair, while The Tortured Poets Department built itself around her identity as an acclaimed lyricist, only for the songwriting to be some of her most petty and immature. In fact, TTPD seemed to tap into all her biggest failings, her worst habits, and dial them up to eleven. Nothing meaningful to say outside shallow high school drama and dissing her exes. Lifeless vocals delivering overly clunky and verbose lyrics over another indistinguishably bland arrangement. Squeezing every penny out of her fans by trying to sell them a dozen variants of the same album. The bar was already on the floor for Showgirl‘s arrival.

Heralded by yet more avaricious “new variant!” hawking, and touting another fun concept that would inevitably come to naught, all the warning signs were there from the start. Admittedly though, the album actually opens on a more promising note than I expected. ‘The Fate of Ophelia’ sounds like an upbeat and energised ‘Summertime Sadness’ in places, ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ has a fun beat in its chorus and some flashes of great expressive bass, while ‘Opalite’ has one of her best grooves in years and production that sparkles like a Christmas song. None of it lives up to the flamboyant burlesque aesthetic, nor is it anywhere near the quality you’d expect from the songwriting team behind ‘Blank Space’ and ‘Style’ – but it’s something! That’s more than can be said for what follows; it’s all downhill from here.

‘Father Figure’ sees Swift position herself as the underdog taking on the music industry, when at this point her underdog days are ancient history, and she’s been the most rich and influential artist on the planet for years. The misguided Mafia analogies are competently done for the most part, barring the line “I can make deals with the devil because my dick’s bigger” which acts as a final warning for the kind of appalling writing coming your way. The opening of ‘Eldest Daughter’ is so cringe and terminally online that I’m both amazed and embarrassed that it saw the light of day, ‘CANCELLED!’ feels like Swift attempting to brush off criticism of her surrounding herself with a MAGA crowd, and having a billionaire sing about how money can’t buy happiness on ‘Wi$h Li$t’ is about as tone deaf as it gets. Meanwhile her Charli XCX diss track ‘Actually Romantic’, adding another name to the tower block of people living rent free in her head, reaches new lows of mean-spirited pettiness. The flat arrangement and lack of musicality also proving her to be every bit the “Boring Barbie” she’s rebutting against. 

The uncharacteristically raunchy ‘Wood’ reeks of trend chasing. Clearly aiming for the cheeky, innuendo rich pop of Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, but without the necessary charm or camp humour to pull it off. “His love was thе key that opened my thighs” sounds like a line that was cut from Robin Hood: Men in Tights for being a bit too on the nose. Shakespeare compared to the title track mind: “Her name was Kitty, Made her money being pretty and witty, They gave her the keys to this city, Then they said she didn’t do it legitly“. That’s your favourite English teacher right there – assuming you went to a school in the world of Idiocracy. If you make it this far you’re at least treated to a guest appearance by Sabrina Carpenter, who delivers the best vocal performance on the album, even when given some of the most convoluted lines to stumble over. 

The Life of a Showgirl doesn’t deliver glamourous big band burlesque vibes, nor does it offer an intimate peek behind the curtain at the reality of putting on some sequined façade to hide the flawed person beneath. Absent of any actual “showgirl” aspect, what is the album really about? Not much. It does a lot of telling over showing, especially when it comes to love. The songs spend a lot of time overtly saying she’s happily in love, but without any of her erstwhile romanticism to make you actually believe it. The album also finds her picking fights with anyone and everyone, before playing the victim in her very next breath. The trainwreck moments, that are entertaining for all the wrong reasons, are pretty much the only interesting parts of this latest project.

Taylor Swift has a functionally bottomless bank account, world class artists and producers lining up to work with her, a back catalogue full of compelling lyricism that inspired a whole generation of songwriters, and millions of hardcore swifties worldwide hanging on her every word. She has everything stacked in her favour to allow her to push herself, try new things, take chances, grow artistically, and make an ambitious and engaging pop record. Instead, Swift and her yes men seem content with dropping an album of AI slop quality and expecting her fans to order 5 copies just because it has her name on it. I’ve learnt to better appreciate good pop music as I’ve gotten older, and the next generation – Olivia, Sabrina, Chappell, Billie etc. – are doing a lot of fun and exciting work. Showgirl represents pop music at its very worst; greedy, exploitative, artistically bankrupt. Just mindless product consumption. I really hope backlash to this record inspires Taylor to take a bit of time away for self-reflection before her next project, because the pop landscape, and more importantly her fans, deserve so much better than this.