Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl has been out for about three weeks and I’m positive that we have all listened to at least a handful of songs off the album by now. As a longtime fan of Swift, I hold her music near and dear to my heart, and with each album, whether it be brand new tracks, or one of the many (Taylor’s Version)s, I will always, always stream her music. As far as The Life of a Showgirl goes, there have been many, many opinions circulating within my social media, my friends, and myself, and I want to express my varied feelings on the album. Keep in mind that these are my opinions, and we can agree or disagree on any of these takes.
When I saw the title, “The Fate of Ophelia” I anticipated anything but this as the album opener. Expectations aside, I was impressed! I love this song. The story of Ophelia in Shakepeare’s Hamlet is incredibly tragic, so I expected a heartwrenching song, but Swift shifts the narrative because she has been saved from the fate of Ophelia. This song is an excellent balance of thought out lyricism and an incredibly catchy vibe. It’s such a fun lover girl, glitter gel pen pop song, and a fantastic way to start the album and set expectations high.
“Elizabeth Taylor” is the second track on the album. Elizabeth Taylor was a glamorous actress in the 1960s, starring in numerous Hollywood hits. Swift mentions Taylor a previous time, in “…Ready For It?” on her 2017 album Reputation, so the name is not unfamiliar to Swift’s discography. It is a love song written in the perspective of Taylor, however, the references to Taylor’s life are incredibly niche. For a song about a star-studded actress, I would have loved to see more of a Hollywood flair within the lyrics, matching the 50s and 60s showgirl aesthetic of the album title and cover. Musically, however, the production is addictive and striking, setting the song as, overall, mediocre in my eyes.
Track three, “Opalite” is incredible. This song is incredibly high, if not at the top of my ranking of the tracks on this record. It has a wildly catchy beat that makes me want to get up and dance around my room. Swift writes another love song, defining the glitter gel pen genre with the lyrics. The lyrics are hopeful and excited about feeling in love, Swift says, “This is just a temporary speed bump, but failure brings you freedom, and I can bring you love, love, love, love, love.” I truly adore this song, and it absolutely has a place in my favorite Swift songs. No further comments, Swift does it again.
“Father Figure” is the fourth track on the record. In the song, Swift asserts herself into a masculine performance of her gender, as well as asserting power over what or whoever the song may be directed at. She says, “I was your father figure…you made a deal with this devil, turns out my dick’s better,” and “Mistake my kindness for weakness and find your card cancelled,” establishing a power dynamic where she holds the majority of it. However, I am not the biggest fan of this song. Though the beat is catchy, it is, and credit is given, sampled from George Michael’s song also titled “Father Figure.” Lyrically, the song is incredibly one-dimensional, however, and that is something that did not meet my personal expectations for a Swift album. I like how she messes around with typically gendered dynamics, but it could have been more lyrically powerful.
I wanted to like this song. I wanted to like this song so bad. I did, I promise. As a girl who struggles with perfectionism and I often find myself overworked and overcommitted, I had such high hopes for this song. And those hopes were met, until the chorus, “But I’m not a bad bitch, and this isn’t savage.” I speak as a girl whose favorite Swift song is “the lakes,” so a large part of Swift’s appeal to me is her lyricism. I enjoy picking apart the lyrics of her music to find her hidden meanings that she intentionally encodes into her songs, but I found myself understanding this song immediately. I am incredibly disappointed in this record’s track five.
This song is the sixth track on the album, and it is more confusing to me than anything else. She encourages her listeners to “ruin the friendship” and fall for their friends, but in the biographical trail of the song, she reveals that the person the song is written about has since passed away. I understand that a portion of the point Swift tries to communicate is that you never know what might happen, however, it feels tasteless and insensitive. Swift has written songs about love, death, and grief before, but the point of this song feels incredibly shallow. It’s tacky in that it seems like all she took from the death of a childhood friend is that she wishes she would have kissed him in high school. I’m not a fan of this song, as it is, again, incredibly flat in its lyricism and tone-deaf in its storytelling, something Swift has done incredibly well in the past.
“Actually Romantic” is the seventh song on the album. The song is widely believed to be a diss on Charli XCX, artist behind the hit album brat and so many more, however, we may never know who it’s directed at, or if it’s meant to be directed at anyone at all. Swift hasn’t shied away from diss tracks in the past, and many listeners theorize that this song is a response to XCX’s “Sympathy is a knife.” In “Sympathy is a knife” XCX expresses feeling insecure and like she’s receiving fake sympathy for it, but doesn’t diss anyone directly. If this song is actually about XCX, it feels deeply unnecessary in my opinion. Swift uses a quirky tongue-in-cheek approach to the hate she’s received feeling more like romantic obsession, but generally, the lyrics are, once again, cheap and surface level.
“Wi$h Li$t,” yes, with the dollar signs, is the eighth track on the album. I have a slew of problems with this song. The song itself is very sweet and cute in theory, but the undertones of all of the lyrics come off as quite problematic to me. I understand, and agree with the fact that everyone has their own desires and goals for their lives, and that all of these are incredibly valid, because it is their life, afterall. However, listening to Swift dog on people who “want those three dogs that they call their kids,” when that was Swift and her cats that I watched growing up, is interesting to me to say the least. The line, “Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you,” as well as the usage of the dollar signs in the title scream wealthy, white privilege to me. The intentions behind the song may not be poor, however, it is impossible to ignore these points.
Track nine. I wish I could say more but I truly don’t have the words to express how I feel, nor do I think it is at all necessary. In all honesty though, this song is unfortunately catchy, and while I don’t love it, it is clever. At the end of the day, I’d much prefer a “Dress” or a “False God.”
“CANCELLED!” is track ten on the record, and while, production-wise, the song is quite good, the undertones stick out like a sore thumb. Over the course of Swift’s career, I’ve watched her work with and be friends with so many other incredible artists and individuals, many of which identify as queer. It’s then, very interesting to me, that Swift writes, “Good thing I like my friends cancelled,” and posts photos from parties with notable MAGA influencers and celebrities. This song, alongside “Wi$h Li$t,” seems to erase the advocacy for disadvantaged and minority groups that Swift used to be incredibly outward about. I’m not here to tell an artist that does not know who I am who she can and cannot be friends with, but it paints an image that may feel like a slap in the face to other listeners and artists, beyond just being ‘cancelled’.
With a step down from my soap box, “Honey” is the 11th track on the album. I don’t feel quite one way or the other about this song. It’s incredibly sweet and sentimental, as it is another love song. It’s beautiful to see Swift in a place where she feels like she can write these fluffy and fun songs, rather than pouring into soul-crushingly sad lyrics, and I think that this song captures the essence of that very idea well. She compares times she’s been called “honey’’ in a backhanded or demeaning way to her current experience, where the word is meant in a genuinely endearing way, and I think it’s lovely. I do, however, feel like the lyrics are, again, relatively flat, and the song is extremely repetitive, making it overall, a little bit boring.
“The Life of a Showgirl (feat. Sabrina Carpenter)”
“The Life of a Showgirl (feat. Sabrina Carpenter)” is the 12th and final track on the album. Similarly to the last song, I don’t feel significantly strongly about this song in one way or another. I was anticipating something a little more exciting, especially with a Sabrina Carpenter feature, but this song — production, lyrics, and meaning — felt incredibly bland to me. As an album closer and a title track, I was left wanting so much more than was delivered. The song tells a story, but the rhymes are basic, and it captures a portion of the vibe of the album, but at the end of the day, it sounds like “Cool” by the Jonas Brothers and “The Other Side” from The Greatest Showman had a baby. This song had the potential to encase every thought, feeling, and vibe from Swift’s life as a showgirl, but I felt that it was left unfulfilled by the end of the album.
In conclusion, the lyricism is my biggest peeve with this album. I’ve been a long time fan of Taylor Swift, I grew up on her music, I attended the first leg of The Eras Tour, and I will not stop loving her and her music. However, the biggest reason I’m such a fan of her music is highly credited to her incredible lyricism and wordcraft, leaving me feeling seen and heard by her music. She works from such a creative and poetic standpoint, and I felt that this album did not hit anywhere close to the mark on that front. My least favorite part about this is that I know she’s entirely capable of writing beautiful lyrics, she just didn’t on this album. I’m thrilled for Swift and where she is in life and that she does not feel like she needs to make every one of her songs a layered and dark sad girl anthem, and that she can write about love as freely as she wants to. However, Swift has written lovey-dovey pop bangers over and over again, but after listening to The Life of a Showgirl, was left craving the energy from 1989 or Lover. I’m not here to tell anyone what to think about the album or impose any form of politicized or otherwise opinionated blindfold over those who do enjoy the album. In fact, I say more power to you! I am also not here to tell Swift how to write an album, as there is no good or bad in the music industry. The creation and enjoyment of music is entirely subjective, and though I did not love the album, there are certainly millions of other fans who did, and that in itself, is where Swift’s power as an artist lies.