Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life Of A Showgirl” was released Oct. 3, just 18 months after her last album, THE TORTURNED POETS DEPARTMENT. The album included 12 brand new tracks and resulted in a 41-minute run time. The album gathered very mixed reviews across the board.
This album was- for lack of a better choice of words- incredibly lazy and out of touch. Nobody should be surprised. Not only does this album showcase Swift’s worst song-writing capabilities to date, it also lacks good production value and genuinely feels like a cash grab on her end.
Prior to the release, this album had a great concept. The promotion for the album gave the impression that this was going to be a drastic shift from any genre of music she had tackled before. The photoshoot and album design was a completely different form of Taylor Swift as a brand as well as a person. She appeared on the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights” podcast on Aug. 13 to promote the album and in doing so, also announced the track list. This was when all hopes for this album being somewhat good exponentially dropped for myself. When I saw track names like “Wi$h Li$t” and “CANCELLED!” I could not help but sigh.
And just when I thought my expectations couldn’t get any lower, I woke up the morning of the release day to an utter bombardment on TikTok with audio clips of the album and took notice that every single clip I heard had some of the worst writing I have ever had the displeasure of hearing. To those who rebuttal this with: “You just can’t handle a fun record! Not everything has to be serious all the time!” Does the lyric, “Her name was Kitty, made her money by being pretty and witty,” sound fun or clever to you? Unfortunately, that isn’t the only poor lyrical choice on this album.
The 10th track, “CANCELLED!”, stands out as one of the worst songs on the album. For context, this track is suspected to be about Swift’s friendship with either Blake Lively or Brittany Mahomes. Both Lively, who was in legal trouble with actor Justin Baldoni earlier this year, and Mahomes, who has been facing backlash for her alleged political beliefs amongst other things, were publicly “cancelled” and dragged through the press the first half of this year. This track is an unfortunate masterclass in millennial cringe; I genuinely cannot fathom the thought of someone listening to this unironically. It just doesn’t make sense when the song is made up of lyrics like “Did you girlboss too close to the sun?”, “Good thing I like my friends cancelled, I like ‘em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal” and “Welcome to my underworld where it gets quite dark.” Not only are these lyrics genuinely lazy, but it also shows how incredibly out of touch she is. The only slightly redeeming quality of this song is that it isn’t the worst sounding song, sonically that is. I’ll admit it is extremely mediocre, but there are worse.
The first song that comes to mind when I think of the terrible production value on this album is “Actually Romantic”. The song comes across very disconnected and rushed, but not in the sense that it’s a quick-paced song. Fans have drawn similarities between the opening guitar riff on this track and The Pixies “Where Is My Mind”; and this is not the only track they’ve noticed this in. “The Life Of A Showgirl” title track draws extreme similarities to the Jonas Brothers “Cool” and “Wood” does the same with The Jacksons “I Want You Back”. In recent weeks, rumors and speculation have surfaced that The Pixies and The Jacksons are allegedly planning on taking legal action against Swift for this reason, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
“The Life Of A Showgirl” is Taylor Swift’s worst album to date. It sounds like it was written and produced entirely by AI with its subpar lyrics and production value. Additionally, it lacks any true depth or artistry. It gets to a point where it feels like this album is just fan service, but is it even considered fan service if the fans don’t even like the album?