The Life of a Showgirl

What’s a girl gonna do after the record-smashing Eras Tour? Well, its success sparked the flame inside Taylor Swift that led to a reunion with former collaborators Max Martin and Shellback for her 12th full-length The Life of a Showgirl. Indeed, in a very showgirl manner, Swift flew back and forth to Sweden between stops on her European leg—remember, the singer-songwriter believes “jet lag is a choice”—to join Martin and Shellback, Swift’s co-writers and producers on some of the most memorable and popular hits of her career (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, “22”, “Shake It Off”, “Blank Space”, “Don’t Blame Me” and “Delicate”, to name a few). The result? A confident, dazzling, at times elegant, at times cheeky, at times sensual pop explosion that examines Swift’s relationships and her fame, which is both deeply personal yet extremely relatable...mostly. (The struggles of “Elizabeth Taylor”—with its thumping rock vibes—can understandably be reserved for the uber-famous showgirls in the room.) “This album, by personality, was a funnier album,” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “It was coming off of TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT—the character attributes I was highlighting in that writing process were much more serious and sensitive and introspective, and oftentimes more earnest and stoic, and the characteristics of a poet. This one was like, showgirls are mischievous, fun, scandalous, sexy, fun, flirty, hilarious.” On the album’s first single “The Fate of Ophelia”, Swift tests that theory by dipping back into the Shakespearean well that earned her crossover success and adoring fans, and once again, she turns the Bard’s tale into a romance rather than a tragedy. But this time, it’s more mature and fierce—as the acceptant heroine resigns herself to solitude before the hero ever comes around: “I swore my loyalty to me, myself and I/Right before you lit my sky up.” Her muses, of course, will be well-dissected. The aforementioned saviour in “Ophelia” is most likely Swift’s husband-to-be, the three-time Super Bowl champion Travis Kelce. (She did, after all, announce the album on his podcast.) And he probably has a few more cuts dedicated to him—the most direct being the saucy, ’70s-funk-infused “Wood” and its “new heights of manhood” revelation. “When I met Travis, I started to feel a little bit like I could be like a person who could have romantic whims and have these dreams,” she says. “Actually Romantic”, with its semi-stripped-down production, deals not with a lover but with a certain hater. “You think I’m tacky, baby/Stop talking dirty to me/It sounded nasty but it feels like you’re flirting with me/I mind my business, God’s my witness that I don’t provoke it/It’s kind of making me wet,” Swift teases. And “Father Figure” pays homage to George Michael with Swift’s breathy vocals, ending with a menacing act of betrayal by a protégé: “You made a deal with this devil/Turns out my dick’s bigger/You want a fight, you found it/I got the place surrounded.” Importantly, though, remove Swift’s own personal inspirations and score-settling and you get what she does best: vibrant songs that speak to universal emotions through her storytelling. The buoyant “Opalite” shows two people finding each other at the right time; baroque-pop “Wi$h Li$t” portrays someone who knows what her heart desires. And “Eldest Daughter”, the famous track 5—generally one of Swift’s most vulnerable on each of her albums—reveals a promise of devotion. Swift ends the record on its title track, an epic duet with Sabrina Carpenter where the women volley back and forth about a girl named Kitty, perhaps alluding to their own places in the world. “And all the headshots on the walls of the dance hall are of the bitches who wish I’d hurry up and die/But I’m immortal now, baby dolls, I couldn’t if I tried,” Swift sings proudly. In other words, as she’s proven time and time again, she’ll never go out of style. “Making this was really something I’ve been wanting to do for my entire career, because I have always wanted to have fun in this type of way,” she says. “To have fun, to exhibit mischief and be flirty and fun and make jokes—that’s a huge part of my personality. Oftentimes, I get so serious, or I’m really known for a lot of my sad songs, my cathartic songs or breakup songs or whatever, because I love to write those things—but that’s not the place I’m in my life. So what I have left behind is something that really exhibits who I am in this moment.”