Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl
Taylor Swift
The Life of a Showgirl
Release Date: October 3rd, 2025
Label: Republic Records
For the first time in a very long time, Taylor Swift doesn’t seem to be sad. Even though albums like Folklore and Evermore featured fictional accounts inspired by Swift’s penchant for storytelling and making up literary worlds during the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than pulling from her own life story, there was an aura of sadness about those albums. Midnights was an introspective album, inspired by sleepless nights and pondering questions about life, love, and happiness. The Tortured Poets Department, an epic double album, proved to be Swift’s prosiest release, a sprawling thirty-one song tracklist written in collaboration with indie darlings Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff that featured some of her most memorable lyrics and somberest melodies. There were sincere moments of sadness on songs like “Loml”, “So Long, London”, and “The Black Dog”.
But now, a year later, removed from her record-breaking Eras World Tour and fresh off an appearance on her now-fiancé Travis Kelce’s podcast New Heights, she seems to be glowing and effervescent. This is evident on The Life of a Showgirl, an album that was written in the midst of said record-breaking tour. Gone are the black-and-white covers and muted color tones; in are rhinestones, glitter, vivid color hues, and straight-forward yet minimalistic pop songs. Even songs like “The Fate of Ophelia”, the epic opening number with a chorus that will ring in your head for days long after Swift finishes letting the last “a” in “Ophelia” echo through the studio microphone, is not as “in-your-face” as the pop hits Swift has produced on albums like Red and 1989. There is a simplicity that Swift found when writing her last four albums, and she seems to have taken the “less is more” approach with all of the songs on Showgirl. It works well.
This time around, Swift collaborated with producers Max Martin and Shellback, both of whom have been responsible for helping her bring songs to life on albums like Red, 1989, and Reputation. All three work well together - every song on Showgirl is infectious and catchy, all twelve songs coming in at a tight forty minutes. There is a lot of focus and very little meandering on Showgirl. While Swift has done a good job of avoiding discussing the exact subjects of her songs over the last several decades, it’s undeniable that many of these songs are about her relationship with Kelce, a tight end for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. Some songs are sweet declarations of happiness (“The Fate of Ophelia”, “Honey”, “Opalite”) while others are not so innocent (“Wood”, I’ll let you listen to it for yourself and see if you can find all of the metaphors).
Elsewhere, songs like “Ruin The Friendship” find Swift in her traditional storytelling element, honed in by years of country songwriting and careful attention to detail, telling a tale of regret. “Actually Romantic”, a guitar-driven track at the album’s halfway point, is a call-out on the world’s biggest stage to a hater, flipping the hatred on its side and reveling in the attention. “Father Figure”, which incorporates part of George Michael’s song of the same name, is about a power dynamic, using tongue-in-cheek humor to contrast references to betrayal and deceit. Swift says, “I can make deals with the devil ‘cause my dick’s bigger”. Even in moments that lack the poetic subtlety that have made up albums like Tortured Poet’s Department, Swift is more acerbic in nature these days. Whether she’s writing like Patti Smith and Dylan Thomas, or making a kitschy song about her fiancé’s “size”, Swift has a penchant for turning heads and making people listen.
The album’s title track closer features a guest spot from Sabrina Carpenter, and is maybe the closest thing to a country track we’ve had from her in decades. The song acts as the grand theatrical closer to Showgirl, pulling out all the stops with wordplay and an epic chorus that matches Carpenter and Swift perfectly with one another. The era of showgirls on the Las Vegas Strip still exists, just not with giant feather-plumed headpieces, color-coordinated outfits, and high kicks. Instead, they focus on a singular showgirl, in arenas and stadiums throughout the world, their lives played out before thousands of people on a carefully curated stage with larger-than-life production and set pieces. The Life of a Showgirl is an apt name for an album from perhaps the most popular showgirl in the world.
