In 2014, Taylor Swift’s “Sparks Fly” was the first song to be added to my Pandora radio playlist. In 2023, my car ride to homecoming was filled with the tunes of the re-release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version). In 2025, when I hit play on The Life of a Showgirl (TLOASG) after months of anticipation, it was decidedly… disappointing.
Many self-proclaimed “Swifties” had the same idea, claiming that The Life of a Showgirl was her worst album in a discography lasting over 20 years. They speculated that her popularized sound and impressive lyricism had come to the end of an era (see what I did there?).
On Sept. 25, 2026, almost a year after the album was released, she dropped four more songs, titling the Deluxe version of The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore. This included “Patient Zero,” a song that was originally marketed on her Instagram as a stand-alone single.
Swift announced the single with a collection of photos and a clip of the soundtrack that seemed to be an entirely different aesthetic from TLOASG. Many fans were speculating about a new album, or even that it was a vault track from Swift’s 2017 album reputation.
“Patient Zero” is now a part of The Life of a Showgirl album, and, to say the least, I wouldn’t say it’s anywhere close to her best work. Although I was disappointed, I was reluctant to be sour about one of my favorite artists, so I listened to the song repeatedly until I got a feel for the message and lyrics.
The First Listen
I hit play on this song at 12 a.m., hands around my face as if I could shield myself from horror. I took notes as I listened, and I found the subject matter messy and the production to be subpar. After many re-listens, I stand by this opinion.
I actually don’t hate the second verse lyrics: “I bet he burst into your life like fireworks / I bet he even said, ‘I love you first / And when you saw another woman coming out of his place / I bet he kissed the rain off your face.” It mirrors imagery from her earlier albums Speak Now and Red.
Additionally, the chorus is catchy; don’t get me wrong. In Swift’s appraisal, where I usually love her bridges, this one fell flat. It’s presented like the run-on sentence of a fifth grader, and it’s almost insufferable. She writes, “And I know you thought it’s ‘cause he loves you / But it’s ‘cause he loves how everybody else loves him.” She might be a master at the repetition of a metaphor, but in this song, the repetition feels lazy and childlike.
The rest of the song is demanding to be seen as a more mature approach to a loveless relationship. However, this moment, where she’s supposed to be relatable, feels more like she’s trying to be quirky.
Its predecessor
Part of the problem is the mature and skillful lyricism of Taylor’s prior album, The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD), setting the bar high for any album that followed it. To be clear, not all of her songs on the album are without their imaginative and high school vibe that she usually writes with, but when looking at the similar subject matter, the comparison between a song from TTPD and “Patient Zero” is laughable.
For example, songs like “So Long, London” and “loml” are assumed to be about the same person Swift writes about in “Patient Zero,” yet the lyricism is astoundingly sharper in the former two. Obviously, perspectives change with time, but I assume growing apart from pain would make it easier to write about creatively. “Patient Zero” doesn’t fulfill this.
Now, when Swift says, “When the toxins take their hold, you’d rather die than let it go,” it echoes TTPD, where she depicted heartbreak as the death of her very soul. She wrote, “I stopped CPR, after all, it’s no use / The spirit was gone, we would never come to,” in “So Long, London.”
She continues in “How Did It End?” to compare her pain to a physical toll: “Say it once again with feeling / How the death rattle breathing / Silenced as the soul was leaving.”
I’m just confused how one could write, “And you say I abandoned the ship / But I was going down with it / My white-knuckle dying grip / Holding tight to your quiet resentment,” and then explain as simply as, “Take it from somebody who lost his games and won the race.”
In conclusion
Swift has written songs about moving on from heartbreak so often that it’s become part of her brand, so why isn’t this as stellar as those? Why is it that her lyricism was only prevalent up until now? Many claim that she’s allowed to write happy songs! I counter with the fact that Swift has written happy love songs before without a strange millennial humor twang to them.
In my brave opinion, I don’t think this is getting added to my playlist. The bridge is choppy, and symbolism is reused. Her lyrics used to be deep and relatable. Now, they feel unrhythmic without a solid beat. I can’t dance to this music, nor can I use it to get in my feels, so what’s left? I’m really hoping that, if and when Swift drops her next album, it’ll be much better than this.
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