This past weekend marked the release of Taylor Swift’s twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. In the time leading up to the album, an emphasis on the showgirl aesthetic was heavily promoted. Swift released an abundance of variants and materials, featuring photos from a photoshoot with her dressed and posing in showgirl attire, all seeming to relate to the narrative that this album would give the audience greater insight into the life of a showgirl.
And although the album is very fun and catchy, I found it ultimately disappoints in what it promised to deliver; a look behind the scenes at what the life of a showgirl looks like. The actual album, however, was not that. In fact the use of ‘showgirl’ in this context appears to be purely aesthetic, rendering the album misleading in its marketing tactics and leaving a lot of fans disappointed in the process.
so what’s up with taylor swift’s marketing?
My main gripe with the marketing is the disconnect between what the aesthetics of the album title and promotional material say about the album. All of the marketing for this project has been really highlighting the glitz and the glam of the showgirl life and strongly emphasizing the visuals, which promotes a certain idea to set your expectations to.
If the title is meant to be the thesis of the album, the songs do not do an appropriate job at providing an argument. Very few of the songs actually provide any insight into what the life of a showgirl is like, whether onstage or behind the scenes, so the album leaves something to be desired in terms of what message the audience is supposed to take away from it.
The album cover itself also sells a different idea of its contents. It presents as though it’s supposed to represent something greater. The cover, which features Taylor Swift partially submerged in water, with parts of the image clipped and superimposed over top in a collage of sorts, gives off the idea that perhaps the main concept of the album will be about her relationship with fame or the public’s general perception of her, an idea of which parts of herself have been selected and highlighted in order to create the ‘showgirl.’
Had the lyrics delivered any message of that sort, this could have been a great cover and worked very well to accentuate the title and theme.
Instead, the lyrics to most of the songs have very little to do with showgirl life.
In interviews, when describing the main ideas of the album, Swift described it as “everything that was going on behind the curtain,” but these lyrics don’t suggest anything about what was happening offstage except her romantic life.
being a showgirl
That’s not to say that there are no songs on the album that talk about being a showgirl. The title track featuring Sabrina Carpenter tells the story of a showgirl named Kitty who has been exploited by the entertainment industry and on the song Elizabeth Taylor she sings “you’re only as hot as your last hit, baby,” which touches upon one aspect of the industry but is ultimately a love song and does not comment much further on showgirl life. As such, although these lyrics do seem to give us a small glimpse into the elusive world of the showgirl, there is not enough actual commentary or relevant anecdotes to justify calling it ‘The Life of a Showgirl’.
What is also disappointing about this album is that Taylor Swift is fully capable of writing a song about what it’s like being in the entertainment industry, particularly as a woman. With songs like Nothing New, The Lucky One, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, and more, she has several songs in her discography that are able to fully encapsulate the life of a showgirl a great deal more than this entire album promises and fails to do.
Lastly, and what I find might be the most important part of why the marketing feels so misleading is this:
Taylor Swift is not a showgirl.
A performer? Yes. A pop star? Absolutely. A showgirl? Not so much.
categorizing showgirls
Historically, showgirls have been defined as dancers, oftentimes chorus girls or burlesque dancers and while they did sometimes sing or act, that wasn’t the main focus and they were a bit more provocative in their performances.
For the duration of her career, if you were to try to categorize Taylor Swift, she could be described as the girl next door or America’s sweetheart in the early stages, a witchy lady in a cabin in the woods during Folklore and Evermore, and a pop star above all else. But she has never been a showgirl. Even when she was performing on the Eras Tour.
So, in positioning herself as a showgirl, it feels a bit disingenuous and misleading in its branding, as though she’s trying to manufacture an era for herself. This creates a strong disconnect from her typical brand, which further highlights the deceptive qualities of her marketing and adds to the lack of cohesion within the whole album.
In the chorus of the title track, Taylor Swift sings maybe the truest line of this entire project: “You don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe,” and after listening to the album all the way through, I feel that that sentiment rings entirely true. We don’t know the life of a showgirl and perhaps we never will, since this album certainly doesn’t tell us.