Album Review: The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift

The new Taylor Swift album was released a few days ago, and I thought it would be interesting to attempt a more contemporary album review than is usually the case on this page. Although I wouldn’t describe myself as a hardcore fan by any means, I do like several of her songs, as well as a few of her albums, particularly 2019’s Lover. Lover was a genuinely great pop album, full of lush production and interesting sounds, and I was hopeful for a return to this kind of pop songcraft. Although there were a few tracks worthy of praise on this new release, I’m saddened to say it ultimately was not the return to form that I had hoped for.

The Life of a Showgirl is notable for the return of Max Martin and Shellback, who last worked with Swift on Reputation as co-producers and co-writers. Their influence is keenly felt on a track like “Elizabeth Taylor”. It’s a midtempo stab at an anthem, the kind that could soundtrack any number of self-empowerment TikToks and YouTube fan edits. Still, it lacks the power of similar Reputation-era tracks. The chorus is melodically weak, with little in the way of a hook. It feels like an attempt to evoke an image that is not complemented by the actual content of the song. The music doesn’t seem to be inspired by the classic Hollywood era of Elizabeth Taylor’s heyday, and the lyrics fail to draw a satisfying comparison between the iconic actress and Swift herself, whom I would presume the song is about.

“CANCELLED!” is the other track that harkens back to Swift’s earlier sound, this time with better results. The chugging electric guitar immediately provides a more aggressive musical base to build from, and the strings that begin in the second chorus add genuine dramatic weight to this slice of melodrama. The lyrics are, admittedly, a little on the nose. “Did you girlboss too close to the sun?” Swift asks, before welcoming listeners to her “underworld”, where it gets “quite dark”. Not completely dark or course, don’t be silly, she can afford a few desk lamps here and there. Her anger and frustration with “masked crusaders” feels a little bit like when a comedian rails against cancel culture on a multi-million-dollar Netflix special, but I’ll take a catchy melody over an unfunny joke any day of the week.

The album is full of clunky lines like these, but only occasionally do they negatively affect an entire song, as is the case with “Eldest Daughter”. From a musical standpoint the track is a nice change of pace, with a simple mix of piano and acoustic guitar that differentiates it from the rest of the album. As piano ballads go it’s still a little too glossy for my liking, but compared to the chokingly moody atmospherics of Midnights and (especially) The Tortured Poets Department, it’s an incredibly refreshing choice. As for the song as a whole, well… I don’t doubt the sentiment, and her understated delivery suits this kind of low-key ballad, but the lyrics (especially in the chorus) distract me from the rest of the song with how clunky they are. I think this issue is that it’s hard to tell whether these cringey phrases and metaphors are being used ironically or not. When Swift laments that everybody is “punk on the internet” or complains about memes and comments, it just feels embarrassing. She might as well be saying: “how do you do, fellow kids?” Given how earnest the arrangement is, it makes me think that these lyrics are meant to be taken seriously, but that only makes their inclusion feel all the more jarring amidst such emotional music. The song swells, the music rises, before Swift announces that she isn’t a “bad bitch” and that “this isn’t savage”, and it just leaves me cold.

Martin and Shellback may have returned to co-produce the album, but they don’t imbue every track with the same level of drama and excitement. Several of these songs suffer from boring arrangements that ultimately make them feel like filler. A track like “Opalite”, for example, is fairly mediocre, with a predictable major-key jump of a chorus that seems best-suited to a supermarket playlist or a “feel-good” movie trailer. It’s a song that fails in part thanks to some infuriatingly flat production. None of the instruments, or Swift’s voice, really jumps out at me. It just has no energy. Swift is a good singer, and can belt when she wants to, but she chooses a softer style here which hampers what is meant to be a big, bouncy pop song. It’s neither big nor bouncy, and this is a shame because the melody and chord progression of the chorus are actually pretty catchy. It just took me several listens to appreciate it, and I feel like a more bombastic arrangement could have made the hook so much more immediate.

“Ruin The Friendship” is another song that I would struggle to compliment beyond it simply being “nice enough”. I do enjoy the instrumentation, at least. The bass is thick and bouncy, and there’s some nice acoustic guitar in the mix, but it’s another weak track that fails to make a lasting impression. “Wi$h Li$t” also falls under this category. The introduction of some trippy backing vocals when Swift sings “they want a contract with Real Madrid” is a great little addition, and one that benefits from listening to the track with headphones, but aside from that it’s another bland track that fades from memory as soon as it’s over. Then there’s “Honey”, which is somehow even more lightweight and features a two-second oboe line that stands as the only memorable part of this three-minute song.

Aside from “Ruin the Friendship”, they all seem to be about the joy of her life with fiancée Travis Kelce and her happiness within this relationship after the pain of her previous unsuccessful ones. I don’t doubt the sincerity of her feelings towards Kelce, but similarly lovestruck songs on Lover had far more energy and excitement to them than these later offerings.

There are some decent tracks on offer, however. “Actually Romantic” is a minor highlight even if it does feel a little too reminiscent of “Where is My Mind?” by The Pixies, with a dash of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” thrown in for good measure. It eventually turns into another slick pop track, but until the backing vocals kick in it’s more of a pleasingly retro garage-rock throwback, as well as the track that best suits Swift’s sultry choice of vocal delivery.

An even better stylistic throwback, though, is “Wood”, which emerged as a welcome surprise thanks to a seventies-inspired arrangement full of chicken-scratch guitar and funky basslines. Alongside the title-track, this is the song that best complements the style promised by the album’s title and associated imagery. Even if the chorus abandons this funky instrumentation for a more traditional “Taylor Swift” sound, the song is still catchy throughout and a retro, glittering pastiche of a bygone era. The lyrics don’t quite fit the 70s aesthetic like the music does — seriously, I feel like I could now make “Travis Kelce’s penis” my specialist subject on Mastermind — but it’s pretty harmless overall and doesn’t detract too much from my enjoyment of the music. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a great set of lyrics. The innuendos aren’t sly enough to be sexy, nor are they blatant enough to be funny, but the music at least tries to pick up the slack in an attempt to replicate the fun of a passionate romance.

Speaking of throwbacks, “Father Figure” goes one step further by actually interpolating the melody of a retro classic, namely “Father Figure” by George Michael. It’s nice that George Michael’s music is still inspiring fellow musicians, but it unfortunately means that Swift’s interpolation invites comparison with a much better song. That’s not to say that every George Michael song is better than any Taylor Swift song; I don’t believe that, but Swift’s “Father Figure” is still nothing more than a middling pop track and hardly her best work. When the most interesting thing about a song is a dick joke, then I’d say you’re in trouble.

It’s not all bad, though, as the album is bookended by its two strongest songs. “The Fate of Ophelia” opens the album, and it begins with some faint piano before transitioning into a bouncy, bass-driven pop track. Although the lyrics were initially too fast to fully appreciate, I found myself becoming swept along in the momentum of the chorus. It doesn’t pack as much of a punch as it should do, at least not when played out loud on speakers, but it was still stuck in my head after a few listens. The rhyming of “grave and” with “fate of” also impressed me with how naturally it was done, and the song itself is one of the few instances of impressive lyricism on the album. The piano chords from the opening return in a perfunctory bridge, before the chorus comes back into full swing to close out the song. As mentioned, it took a few listens to really get into, but I wouldn’t hesitate to call it Swift’s best album opener since “Willow”. Unfortunately, the rest of the album fails to replicate the energy and melodicism of this opener, because it really is a gem.

As is the closer, and title track, “The Life of a Showgirl”. It’s a duet with Sabrina Carpenter, who provides some nice vocals, although with less of the character that she exhibits in her own music. The song has another strong set of lyrics, exhibiting some genuinely witty storytelling, and feels like the best encapsulation of the album’s themes and imagery. The acoustic guitar and pedal steel evoke a gorgeous image of faded Americana, helped by Carpenter’s country twang. The bridge is charming and dynamic, and the song feels like a genuine evolution of Swift’s sound, matching the folksy lyricism of her lockdown-era albums with her best pop sensibilities. As with “The Fate of Ophelia”, though, the quality of the song is something of a double-edged sword, as it sets a high standard that isn’t met anywhere else on the album.

Overall, The Life of a Showgirl is an underwhelming release, and one which plays like a slight detour rather than a step forward creatively. It doesn’t feel like the execution of a coherent vision, with only a few of the songs doing the theme and imagery of the album justice. It feels instead like a grab bag of songs and sounds, with several of them only paying lip service to the “showgirl” theme. Although I appreciate its shorter length, a slew of unmemorable songs makes the album feel slight as a result. The inclusion of two genuinely great tracks only makes the mediocrity of the rest of the album all the more apparent.

Those two tracks are great, though, and I want to give credit where I think it’s due. I also know that the quality of the album will hardly affect its standing in the eyes of Swift’s adoring fanbase or its commercial performance. I thought The Tortured Poets Department was boring and overlong, but that didn’t stop it from becoming the biggest-selling album of the year. I thought Midnights was similarly underwhelming, and it won Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. Although I don’t think it’s her best album by any means, The Life of a Showgirl is still an improvement, and easily Swift’s best album of new material since Evermore.