On October 3rd, I sat in a Cineplex theatre watching Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, completely perplexed. Now, when artists put on listening parties, it is usually through an exclusive concert or even secret sessions—not a movie. I wondered, of all the albums, why she chose this one to put in theatres, as if she were an actress—or possibly a showgirl.
Now, over this past week, I’ve seen more hate for Taylor Swift circulating on the internet than anything else, as if Kim Kardashian just leaked that voice recording. In fact, my campus English Literature Club pre-planned a “Tortured Poets Party” all the way back in August, to follow the October album release. My team and I were sure it would be a great way to bank on the hype of Swifties from all programs, but the release put a damper on any hype around Swift. Immediately, people took to the internet to share their thoughts that Taylor Swift has forgotten how to write, or could never write to begin with, she is a capitalist Barbie, she cannot come up with original rhythms, and that her album is pushing conservative, trad-wife rhetoric. The tide of hate was overnight, and the new wave of Taylor Swift hate has swept over pop culture…but this time, it might be manufactured.
No one, especially Taylor Swift, who has “seen this film before,” rises to the magnitude of fame that she did while on The Eras Tour, and does not have the metaphorical ‘other shoe’ drop. Swift knew this, and I posit that she dropped it herself. The method to her madness? A satirical portrayal of the showgirl that the general public has made her out to be. A critique on entertainment culture, overconsumption, the commodification of the female artist, the commercialization of authenticity, or, my personal favourite, that The Life of a Showgirl is a meta project where Taylor Swift shows us the behind the curtain, or the brand, rather than the woman.
To put this all into perspective, I’ll begin with the definition of satire, which is “the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in […] and other topical issues.”
TWO SIDES OF THE SAME ARCHYPTAL COIN: POET & SHOWGIRL
Now, Swift hits all these marks in various ways, starting with crafting archetypal personas. The concept of an archetype, though not coined as such in Shakespeare’s time, is how he created his characters, representing timeless patterns of behaviour that are universal. For example: Hamlet, the hero who is torn between indecision, his duty and doubts.
Archetypes are easy for audiences to consume. Shakespeare would likely employ them to ensure that his work could engage diverse crowds, rather than just the learned and wealthy of the time.
In a recent interview with Zane Lowe, Swift states, “I welcome the chaos. The rule of show business is, if it is the first week of my album release and you are saying my name or my album title, you’re helping.” The Taylor Swift we have seen in the public eye is not so often nonchalant about criticism, especially about work she considers confessional. Her nonchalance could stem from character growth, or that she planned for this, quote, “making this album was really something I’ve been wanting to do for my entire career. I have always wanted to have fun in this type of way […]” or that this album is not confessional at all. In fact, when speaking about her 2024 release with Zane Lowe, she says, “[…] the character attributes I was highlighting in that writing process were much more serious and sensitive and introspective and oftentimes more earnest and stoic… the characteristics of a poet”. The descriptor, earnest, meaning sincerity, possibly implies that her newer release is less so. Her use of the word “character attributes” implies that she writes with a persona, character, or archetype in mind.
Bear with me, in The Life of a Showgirl, I argue that Swift is playing an archetype of the entertainer, the showgirl–and pushing it to extreme thresholds. When you think showgirl, you think “mischievous, fun, scandalous, sexy, flirty, hilarious”, and in fact, these are the words that Swift herself uses to describe a Showgirl. The fun, hilarious aspect is where her lyrics sound ridiculous, ie: you can call me honey if you want because I’m the one you want, or how they sound exactly like how her haters describe her discography. The mischief and the scandal are the hate she is receiving around the album and her personality. Almost every song on the album has an ulterior motive, but she is aware of how it can be perceived badly and embraces it, ie: CANCELLED! , which has created immense discourse around her political stance, but has lines that are incredibly self-aware if we can believe she has some kind of Miltonian prophetic strain, Tone-deaf and hot, let’s [*******] off her.
The concept of an archetype, I’d further argue, is something that she has experimented with before, and the crowd, though in a more minuscule fashion, has attacked it. Following the release of her 2024 31-track album The Tortured Poets Department, the primary complaint fans and the general public had was that she was trying too hard, the album sounded pretentious, and with the release of the double album, the complaint became that the project was overconsumptious cash grab… but what if it was her attempt at being prolific, like a tortured poet, ie: Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, who produce large amounts of work about their pain. Another complaint was that some of these songs needlessly used big, thesaurus-like words just to prove that she could write, but what if this was her taking on this grandiose concept of what the general public perceives a poet to be?
THE MIRRORBALL
Swift uses the archetype of a Showgirl, to make this album a ‘mirror’. The main album artwork depicts her in shatters of the reflection of the mirror, and each shard mirror a different part of her body.
Furthermore, at the beginning and end of the official release party, Taylor Swift addressed the audience in an empty orange room, with an endless mirror effect behind her. Later, she posts a promotional video for “The Fate of Ophelia,” using the same effect. In her recent Zane Lowe interview, Swift states that, “[…] our goals as entertainers to be a mirror.”
As she sits in her hazy, rippling mirror room at the end of her release party, she is aware that she is a mirror. She is placing an image of a showgirl in a show where she sings about being a showgirl. She is mirroring the stereotype of a showgirl back at viewers. She is giving the audience, as listeners, what they assume a showgirl is. People, even hardcore Swifties, have been saying that “this album sounds like what everyone says Taylor Swift sounds like”, and what if I told you none of it was accidental?
On her third track, the stone she references, Opalite, is a man-made stone, and she sings about how the sky is opalite, almost like the sphere we live in is man-made, manufactured, and how this is a storm inside a teacup engaging the temporal aspect and the illusion that is being created. Swift, at least, Showgirl Swift is constructed by the way people perceive her and she is playing into that. She, knowing that this album would be a magnet for hate, makes space for it, and for what is to come–her thirteenth album. Swift is putting a mirror up to those who say these things and believe these things about her. Trapping them in a funhouse of their own parroted opinions and narrative about these things. After all, Swift did write, I want you to know / I’m a mirrorball / I’ll show you every version of yourself tonight.
SHAKESPEARIAN REFERENCES IN THE BARD OF OUR TIME
The connection between Hamlet and The Life of a Showgirl is made primarily through the title of the opening track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” and goes even deeper when looking at the cover of the album.
However, I’d argue that the similarities do not end there. During this album rollout, Swift got engaged and broke the internet. In the oddly brief caption to her engagement announcement Instagram post, she wrote, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” It is an interesting statement to make when teachers specifically teach the Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet.
The general public was swift to mass criticize this caption choice, because in the explanation of the track “The Fate of Ophelia” in the movie, she explains Ophelia’s life and death in Hamlet inaccurately. Swift must either be foolish… or framing herself as foolish, similarly to how Hamlet simply feigns his madness, putting on an antic disposition for strategic reasons. Is Swift doing the same, playing a bit for a greater reason? Is this a greater aim of performance art? Is she proving a point about the lives of showgirls?
Interestingly, Hamlet’s Ophelia lacks agency; she did not live a lavish life, the way that Swift is saying that she did in her explanations of the album. In fact, the only times we truly hear about Ophelia is through others, characters who tend to unreliable narrators. Unreliable narrators, like Hamlet, or Taylor Swift herself. Hear me out now, if this album is meant to be a satiric representation of the life of a showgirl, and these lyrics are less earnest, it would make sense that she tells “The Fate of Ophelia” incorrectly, she is yet another person explaining away Ophelia. But some sourdough for thought… in the music video, aired in the Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, Ophelia’s fate still ends the same. She, Swift as Ophelia, lies in the bathtub, or lake, and drowns in the body of water. After the show, the afterparty, she is still alone. Could the poet part of her be Ophelia? Does the showgirl side of her stifle the poet?
Before I listened to the record in theatres, I listened as my classmates and coworkers express with palpable sadness that this is her worst album to date and that they simply cannot believe she released it. Upon first listen in theatres, I was confused. It didn’t feel like any of Swift’s other albums, and I could definitely place these critiques; however, I knew that Swift is a more self-aware artist than the general public gives her credit for, especially when they hate her. Why, other than the monetary recompense, would she choose to put it in theatres? It is because, like in Hamlet, Swift is putting on a play within a play, or more accurately, a movie within a movie. Swift is putting on a “mise en abyme,” which refers to “the double mirroring effect created by placing an image within an image […] repeating infinitely.”
In Act 3, Scene 2 of Hamlet, a critical moment occurs when Hamlet hires actors to depict the death of his father, the previous king. In the play, Hamlet intentionally has the character of the King poisoned in the same way that the ghost of Hamlet’s father told him that King Claudius poisoned him, through the ear canal. In this scene, King Claudius is, in fact, affected and rises to ‘exit’ the theatre. In a recent Target ad, Swift is promoting yet another vinyl variant, with director Taylor standing in a suit with a megaphone with a huge ‘exit’ sign behind her. In her recent Jimmy Fallon appearance, the room she was in had a bright green ‘exit’ sign and finally, in “The Fate of Ophelia” music video, there is a clear shot of another ‘exit’ sign in minute 3:26 of the video. One of the vinyl variants, the Summertime Spritz Pink Shimmer Vinyl 2(which is a lyric in honey), is called “The Crowd is Your King”. If we adhere to the version in Hamlet, this positions the audience as a ruler, as King Claudius, implying that an artist’s success and reception will depend on the audience’s will. Importantly, in the mise en scene, King Claudius exits the theatre; if the crowd is your king, the crowd is exiting the theatre. The fans that she gained in exuberant numbers in The Eras Tour are leaving. They are guilty. They will turn on her when given a reason. Were fans meant to be affected by their disappointment in Taylor’s release? Did she anticipate that they might exit the theatre upon watching Swift transform into the surface-level archetype of the showgirl?
GHOST NOTES & RHYTHMS
Now, Swift has been working with Jack Antonoff and, more recently, Aaron Dessner in a handful of her albums, including Taylor’s Versions. For this record, she returns to her 1989 collaborators, Shellback and Max Martin—a calculated choice as she intended to set out to make a perfect pop record… or a satire of what a perfect pop record looks like. Importantly, both Shellback and Max Martin are lauded for their extensive work with interpolation, in which producers revisit existing melodies and famous chord progressions to formulate new hits. Thus, when people are quick to point out Swift’s “ripping off and reciting” different songs, melodies, and chord progressions from other popular songs, they criticize her inability to be original and authentic. Considering her previous eleven albums, we know this is inaccurate. For example, “Wood[‘s]” opening rhythms sound exactly like “I Want You Back” by The Jackson Five. “The Fate of Ophelia” sounds like the introduction to “She-Wolf” by David Guetta, and “Father Figure” is publicly a George Michael sample. What all these artists have in common is pushback in the showgirl or show business industry. I argue that Swift leaves these easter eggs purposefully so listeners can discern their roots. For example, Michael dealt with similar issues of control over his music through his Sony record label; stuck living a double life as a closeted queer person, he expressed how fame distorted his sense of self, issues that Swift herself has alluded to.
Swift is aware that the album might sound recycled; she intentionally does this to illuminate the overarching theme and archetype of the Showgirl. She highlights the stereotype of showgirls creating recycled bubble-gum pop music with no originality, only using their beauty and sex appeal for fame.
POETRY BEHIND THE BASIC PROSE
The poems that prelude the album on some of the physical media that she puts out are interesting. The Life of a Showgirl is the only album of hers that did not contain a written prologue. Some Swifties have figured out that if you combine the fragments, the prologue to the album is in poetic form. In these fragments, the writing is of the same masterful quality that she has been hailed for in the past several years.
My friend “Substack Celebrity” sent me her vinyl variant poem and it says, “you would do all of it again / no matter how the story ends / with the ugliest boos or the loveliest bouquet / they sat thar love is a choice you make every single day / and that is how you love the life of a showgirl”. The writing here implies that the speaker puts on the showgirl persona, that the speaker would live it again, it is a choice, or a mask that she chooses to don.
Interested in hearing the full poem? A Swiftie lays it out in full in this TikTok.
SABRINA & SATIRE
Apple Music casually captions the post promoting the Zane Lowe x Taylor Swift interview as “Life as a Satire,” and in this interview, she talks about how the first part of track five, “Eldest Daughter” is satire, stating that she will “use specific vernacular to be satirical”. Swift goes on to speak about the lead music video, “At least a hundred easter eggs to put in that video. I was just going through my list and checking them off one by one as we were going through our production design process” . Now, if we are to believe that Swift meticulously placed over one hundred easter eggs into one project, why is far off to believe that she planned this elaborate rollout to be meta, and prove a point, and put a mirror to what our inner dialogue about what lives of showgirls are, or are not.
Since the concept of satire is already in her mind, would it be such a stretch to conclude that the project itself is a satire?
This past August, Sabrina Carpenter released her newest album, Man’s Best Friend, which sparked discourse even before fans listened due to the album cover. The cover in question features Carpenter in a tight black dress on all fours while a man’s hand pulls her hair, mirroring the image of a dog with its leash. After the cover became a topic of internet discourse, two groups seemed to arise: those who found it degrading and offensive to women, and those who thought that was the point—that it was satire. Now, The Life of a Showgirl features many lyrics that are ridiculous, “New Heights of manhood”, or “redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see, his love was the key that opened my thighs” or lyrics so straightforward that they felt suspicious, “life is a song, it ends when it ends”. The same artist who wrote lyrically lush and complex albums like Evermore must be aware that the level of lyricism in The Life of a Showgirl simply does not match up. Swift features Carpenter in her song “The Life of a Showgirl,” the album’s final track. Why might this be? Why, of all the artists she could work with, would she choose to work with Carpenter? Maybe because Carpenter has experience in the world of satire? Maybe because, like Carpenter, she has produced a satirical album? Swift also ends this album with outtakes of her last show in Vancouver and the conclusion to The Eras Tour, saying, “thank you for an incredible night […] and of course, Sabrina. I love you, Taylor. That’s our show. We love you so much. Good night”. Concluding the album with this outtake stating that this listening experience has been “our show”, implies a level of satire and insincerity.
People are taking these theories or interpretations that I have presented here as simply handing Swift too much credit, but if we are to trust an established unreliable narrator, she says, “I have such an eye on legacy when I’m making my music. I know what I made. I know I adore it. I know that on what the theme of a showgirl is, all of this is part of it”. Not to mention, in the song 13th track off her poet-persona alum, I Can Do It with a Broken Heart is the essential precursor to The Life of a Showgirl. She writes, the lights refract sequin stars over her silhouette every night, I can show you lies”.
From interviews we know that the poet counterpart album was more confessional, and she is not above showing lies especially to preserve the pearly, bouquet-filled, fishnet life of a showgirl.
After all, sequins are forever…
P.S: those are mirrors too.
Work Cited
“Taylor Swift: The Life of a Showgirl and Writing Process.” YouTube, uploaded by Apple Music, 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUZ9T-hstUI.