Louis Greaves
★★★☆☆
Hot on the heels of her record-breaking Eras Tour, pop megastar Taylor Swift is back with a new studio album. The Life of a Showgirl may be her most cringe-inducing album title since The Tortured Poet’s Department, but for a performer whose tour was attended by 10 million screaming Swifties and which earned over US$2 billion in ticket sales, it may well be an accurate one. Even more radically – it might just include her best song in a decade.
What challenges did the billionaire singer/songwriter face while on the road? And how does her new life as a (now engaged) showgirl coexist with her reputation of bouncing between A-list celebrities, then using their inevitable break-ups to write TikTok-ready revenge anthems?
Let’s dive in.
‘The Fate of Ophelia’
Seventeen years after her spin on Romeo and Juliet in ‘Love Story’, the tortured poet has turned her pen back to Shakespeare references – adapting Hamlet’s tragic figure into a story of a fate narrowly avoided. It’s fearlessly Swift – building up the pace with her cautious steps into a relationship that saves her from madness and unlocking a triumphant new sound.
The verses flow from witty set-ups to breezy melodrama (“And if you’d never have come for me, I might’ve drowned in my melancholy”) and lands with a hook-filled chorus designed for shouting along to the matching choreography: “Keep it one hundred on the land, the sea, the sky”. These are the six seconds destined for TikTok audio – and it’s admittedly an ear-worm.
Charged with live drums, haunting backing vocals and a genuinely groovy electric guitar line, this song definitely feels more tangible than her synth-heavy previous record. It’s understated, but a welcome step back into live-sounding music from the world’s biggest popstar.
The accompanying music video gloriously wraps up the more ham-fisted Shakespeare references into a sweeping, dazzling and (sometimes literally) kaleidoscopic tour through the dressing rooms and setpieces that have come to define her Eras tour. In addition to the whopping US$197 million in bonuses she gave to her tour crew, she’s apparently singlehandedly keeping the wig industry alive with half a dozen drastically different looks. The Busby Berkeley-inspired sets and elaborate group choreography cement this as the beginning of her Showgirl era, and so far, it’s surprisingly fun.
‘Elizabeth Taylor’
The storytelling continues with a glimpse into the life of this classic Hollywood actress, and Swift weaves both showgirls’ experiences together with sincerity over a head-nodding chorus. Max Martin’s effortlessly cool production is back in force after spending a few years subbed out for Jack Antonoff, whose jangly ear-candy fluff have been traded for a simply great beat.
“Be my NY when Hollywood hates me” – One of Swift’s most recent Hollywood outings was in the 2019 trainwreck musical Cats, often described as the worst thing to happen to cats since dogs. Just something to think about.
‘Opalite’
This is a Red-era throwback about the woes of dating in your teens, reframed with the rose tint of finally finding someone who makes the sky shine like opalite. Indeed, Swift’s fiance and NFL star Travis Kelce’s presence looms large over this album, with references scattered across it like glitter and feeling about as synthetic as the manufactured gemstone of the song’s namesake. This feels like her ‘Death of a Bachelor’ – celebrating the start of a new chapter through reflections in grandiose pop songs.
It’s a by-the-numbers song that’s unlikely to be anyone’s favourite – it’s about as shallow as Swift’s bath in the album cover – but it is a perfectly enjoyable filler track.
‘Father Figure’
‘Father Figure’ is another lyrically dense one about money-hungry managers and music industry moguls. It makes you wonder where her own father – who, at one point, owned a 5% stake in the label to which his daughter was signed – fits into this equation. It’s on the nose and otherwise doesn’t leave much ambiguity. There’s also an ugly plosive microphone goof that somehow made the cut at 1:20 (“My dear protégé”).
‘Eldest Daughter’, ‘Ruin the Friendship’ and ‘Actually Romantic’
‘Eldest Daughter’ is a slow, personal romp about meanies on the Internet, and how her childhood toughened her up to face the bullies. But by her own admission, she isn’t a bad bitch, and Kelce is in safe hands. This might be a gem for the Swifties, but if you want anything remotely interesting it’s probably worth skipping.
The next couple are more charming (if not slightly fluffy) returns to form, with country-inspired acoustic guitar in ‘Ruin the Friendship’ sitting nicely behind a simple beat and a plot out of a high-school movie. ‘Actually Romantic’ is largely the same, except with a guitar riff that wouldn’t be out of place in the 90s – probably because it’s eerily similar to The Pixies’ now-iconic ‘Where is My Mind?’. But this is far from the most egregious piece of musical plagiarism on this record – watch this space.
‘Wi$h Li$t’
‘Wi$h Li$t’ brings some much-needed scathing wit and humour to the tracklist. Swift might be a literal billionaire, but she’s surprisingly good at dunking on celebrities that flex on the Internet. The showgirl has some strong words for girls that show off. The production is razor-sharp and catchy, and the barrage of roasts is balanced by a delicate honesty about just wanting a normal life (“dreaming about a driveway with a basketball hoop”) with her new family.
‘Wood’ and ‘CANCELLED!’
Someone owes The Jackson 5 some money for ‘Wood’, which is less of an homage and more of a straight copycat of the intro of ‘I Want You Back’. Even among that era of disco, where artists were more than liberal when it came to lifting sounds from one another, this is pretty ridiculous. The lyrics are so hilariously out-there that I wish there was a shred of originality to the music, because it’s a fun direction and this nu-disco sound has been slowly making a comeback.
Despite what we heard in ‘Eldest Daughter’, she reassures us throughout ‘CANCELLED!’ that she is, in fact, a bad bitch. This angle, which we’ve heard before in ‘Bad Blood’ and ‘Look What You Made Me Do’, is done without as much abrasiveness. If you can wade through the embarrassment until the middle eight, this track does have some quite good lines, like: “A shattered glass is a lot more sharp”.
‘Honey’ and ‘The Life of a Showgirl’
The album wraps up the with sweet and simple ‘Honey’, which cleanses the palette before the title track featuring Sabrina Carpenter. Probably the best out of this set of story-focused songs, it chronicles meeting their showbiz hero (potentially modelled on Dolly Parton), her advice to avoid this lifestyle and their growing up to be just like her. This is Sabrina Carpenter at her least outrageous, and it feels like an old-school duet between singers who both enjoy the songwriting – and you can hear the fun in the theatrical tempo changes and tongue-in-cheek end-of-the-night outro.
Final thoughts
Overall, this is an album bookended by such brilliant highlight singles that you can easily forget that it doesn’t quite live up to the hype.
Is it better than The Tortured Poets Department? Yes – even ‘Eldest Daughter’ doesn’t get anywhere close to being as jarring as ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’.
Does it live up to her prime run of records a decade ago? I’d argue that it’s mostly a great return to form with simple, fun and infectiously catchy pop. Even better, ‘Fate of Ophelia’ pushes the boundaries of her mainstream appeal with a dance and hook that’s sure to be omnipresent on TikTok and Reels – while still being a genuinely great song.
Either way, as the hordes of Swifties argue about the album’s merits and weaknesses, Taylor Swift will be increasing her vast wealth while sipping whiskey sours on her private jet (and planning a blowout wedding that’ll make Bezos’s Venice takeover look like a Vegas elopement).
And, baby, that’s show business for you.
