Taylor Swift’s new album doesn’t quite deliver

By Chloe Kowalyk 
(Image above: Mert Alas, Marcus Piggott & TAS Rights Management via Instagram)

As most of the world already knows, Taylor Swift released a new album on Friday titled “The Life of a Showgirl.” 

I found myself extremely excited for this album. 

I really enjoy Swift’s music, celebrated when she regained her masters, I hardly skip her songs, she even landed second spot on my top Spotify artists for the last 12 months.

“Guilty as Sin?” from her previous album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is my third most-listened to song in the past year.  

I love a lot of her earlier work, especially albums like “Fearless” and “Speak Now” and “Lover,” but I honestly still don’t categorize myself as a Swiftie. 

I didn’t have any urge to attend the Eras Tour, never saw any of her movies, never purchased an album. I don’t look for Easter eggs in her posts or count letters and words to match her famous number “13” (although the release date of the album, 10/3, does add up to 13). 

With all of this in consideration, I’d say I’m a moderate fan of Swift. I respect her songwriting and I adore her art. I admire how she stands up to adversity and is true to herself. 

When “The Life of a Showgirl” (abbreviated TLOASG) was announced, I was both excited for the release and saddened that it was so far away and I had to wait. I was ready for the album right away, and found myself looking forward to the release date. 

Perhaps I am coming off the high of Sabrina Carpenter’s new album release of “Man’s Best Friend” or Chappell Roan’s long-awaited release of “The Subway,” but I must admit, I was pretty disappointed with TLOASG. 

I waited until midnight for the album to release, and when it did, I quickly listened to a chunk of each song before turning in for the night. The next morning, bright and early at 7:30 a.m., I was ready to listen. 

I was ready for this album to make a statement. I was ready for Swift to do it again, in the same way she had stunned listeners for all these years with her incredible writing and perfect singing. 

When the tracklist was officially released, with titles like “The Fate of Ophelia” and “Elizabeth Taylor” and even the title track and name of the album “The Life of a Showgirl,” I was expecting some form of a feminist statement and commentary on how she is a woman in the public eye and a performer. 

There is a popular phrase in feminist ideology, “to be a woman is to perform,” that relates to the idea that women are constantly under the public eye and watched, objectified, undervalued or not valued at all. 

Because of this, women have to act in certain ways and fit into certain gender stereotypes and gender roles, as well as to meet the male gaze. 

I figured that TLOASG would nod to this, or something similar, as Swift is one of the most publicly watched women in our society, constantly criticized for having many romantic partners throughout her life, for her music and for pretty much everything she does. 

What I love about Swift is how much she stands against those negative perceptions and holds true to who she is, even in the face of adversity, so that is what I expected to get with a majority of this album.

With the press shots of Swift in showgirl outfits and the album cover representing the death of Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s “Ophelia,” as Swift lays in water, surrounded by flowers and her head hardly afloat, I think I primed myself for something that just didn’t quite deliver. 

Of course, it is possible I misinterpreted the imagery of the album, but I honestly felt there was a mismatch between the name of the album and what we actually got from the content. 

The lyrical content in TLOASG didn’t really deliver “showgirl” to me. As I sat through the album, I listened closely to the lyrics and the instrumentals. I liked the sound of the first three songs and sonically, some of the songs were OK.

But as I kept listening, I almost felt I was waiting for a sheet to be pulled and for the true sound of the album to be revealed. It felt like love song after love song after love song, and hardly any separation from that for a majority of the album. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love Swift’s love songs, and I think they can be beautiful and poetic. The outright desire expressed in “Guilty as Sin?” from her first album was unmatched.

However, the first song on the new album, “The Fate of Ophelia,” is a major offender of the showgirl mantra and actual content mismatch.

Swift compares her life to Ophelia, whose fate was drowning after famously trying to please the men in her life and wearing herself down as a result. As Swift matches herself to Ophelia, she puts a twist on the song, singing about a love interest who rescued her from Ophelia’s fate. 

She writes, “If you’d never come for me / I might’ve lingered in purgatory,” admitting she wouldn’t have gotten out of this fate without her love interest (who we can assume to be Travis Kelce, who she was engaged to a few weeks prior to this release).

Not to go overboard with my feminist ideals, but I thought it a bit odd for Swift to sing about avoiding Ophelia’s fate by being saved by a man. 

I could forgive this, but Swift’s love interest is present in a majority of the songs in the album where I instead think deeper meaning could be explored about, you know, Swift’s experience living “The Life of a Showgirl.”

The song “Elizabeth Taylor” references the actress who was famous for her talent, but also for having many relationships, including seven husbands. 

In the song, Swift sings to Elizabeth Taylor, asking if her lover is the right one this time. 

As Swift has been so frequently shamed for her love life, I was expecting this song to be a powerful statement about who she is and not taking these criticisms to heart as women are faced with resentment for many relationships, while men are praised (which Swift actually explores in “The Man”). 

Instead, she asks Taylor if this man is the right one, and hopes it outlasts the major spotlight on both Kelce and Swift. 

For an artist who also wrote “The Man” and “Mad Woman,” I was pretty shocked to hear the pretty consistent themes of being saved by a man, rather than saving herself.

Yes, her relationship and past is a part of the industry, but I think a lot of the love songs fall flat when considering the theme (and the fact that there are SO many of them). 

The songs “Opalite,” “Eldest Daughter,” “Ruin the Friendship,” “Wi$h Li$t,” “Wood” and “Honey” join “The Fate of Ophelia” and “Elizabeth Taylor” in being about Kelce, or in the case of “Ruin the Friendship,” are in the very least about a romantic relationship. 

As someone who likes Swift, I am happy to see her in a happy relationship with someone she truly feels is different. She has definitely had her fair share of negative experiences in relationships, and she deserves to be happy. 

In that sense, the love songs are great and heartwarming, although I don’t love the lyrics of many of them.

“Opalite” is by far my favorite song on the album because it is just so catchy and I like how it sounds sonically.

Despite this, I don’t see how the consistent love songs fit into the TLOASG theme. What exactly about her relationship with Kelce has to do with “the life of a showgirl?” 

The songs that aren’t about her relationship with Kelce (which are a minority) seem tone deaf and out of touch. 

For an album titled “The Life of a Showgirl,” only think three songs relate to the topic and theme. 

“Actually Romantic” is a harsh diss track that many believe to be about pop star Charli XCX. To me, the piece doesn’t quite hit.

It comes off as overly mean and targets the person’s drug use with emotionally immature lyrics and slight misogyny. Swift writes lines such as “How many times has your boyfriend said / ‘why are we always talking about her?’”

That’s not to say there aren’t feuds in the industry and Swift isn’t allowed to write a diss track against another woman, but it was done in poor taste, bringing up addiction and a romantic partner. 

The song “Father Figure” actually seems to explore some ideas of manipulation and control in the music industry, and the parental dynamic between a wealthy figure and an artist.

Fans speculate that this could relate to her early days and contracts under Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta, and her fight to regain her masters, or her mentorship of Olivia Rodrigo that ended up with the two going their separate ways and a copyright dispute after Rodrigo and her team interpolated Swift’s “Cruel Summer” for Rodrigo’s “Deja Vu.”

The jury is still out on who the song is actually about, but there is at least a sense of irony as Swift’s “Father Figure” is actually an interpolation of George Michael’s 1987 song “Father Figure.”

Swift’s piece is an empowering example of a woman taking control of her music (if interpreted in the Borchetta and Braun sense), but some of the lyrics came across as cringy and distasteful. Swift outwardly stating “my dick is bigger” took me out of the song completely. 

Off-putting lyrics aside, the underlying message of women having control of their own work and their own rights in music is crucially important. 

“CANCELLED!” is another track that relates directly to the theme of the album. 

This piece focuses on cancel culture and many of the criticisms she has faced that are based in misogyny. She writes, “Did you girl-boss too close to the sun / Did they catch you having too much fun” and “Did you make a joke only a man could?”  

I think Swift’s underlying message of keeping friendships through the relentless cancel culture public figures face is good, but the lyrics just seem so out of touch and honestly a little cringey. 

I feel like we almost cannot relate to Swift in the same way we can relate to other artists. 

She writes, “Good think I like my friends cancelled // I like ‘em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal.” 

In “Elizabeth Taylor,” she has a similarly unrelatable, and kind of distasteful lyric, “Babe, I would trade the Cartier for someone to trust … just kidding.”

The title track of the album is the last song on the album, and a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter. 

“The Life of a Showgirl” actually does explore what the life of a showgirl is like, delving into the less than favorable aspects of a life of fame. But why are we getting this at the end of the album?

I feel like I had to trek through dozens of love notes about Kelce and Swift’s relationship to get to the meaning of the album. If that was the goal of the album, then the theme and title should be different. 

Part of being a feminist is supporting a woman’s goals, even if they fall into traditional gender roles. The problem is not Swift’s dreams of marriage and a family with Kelce, and how he changed her perspective on pet names. The issue is that we didn’t get much about “The Life of a Showgirl.”

Instead, we got overall weak lyricism and instrumentals that do not match the catalogue Swift so strongly presents. 

Many of the lyrics were off-base, unrelatable and dare I say, cheugy. 

This is by far Swift’s weakest album, and yes, that includes “Debut.”

Hopefully there is an expansion to this 40-minute mismatch, and we can get a deeper dive into the lyricism and talent we all know Swift is capable of bringing.