‘The Life of a Showgirl’: Taylor Swift’s Sunny Ode To Love and Settling Scores

Alci Rengifo

All attention is once again on Taylor Swift. As the dominating pop star of our time, a release of a new Swift album is akin to the arrival of a much-anticipated blockbuster movie. Production for “The Life of a Showgirl,” her 12th studio album, took place during the European leg of the singer’s record-breaking “The Eras Tour,” and Easter eggs have been dropping for fans throughout this past year. Last October, while in New Orleans, Swift flashed all 10 fingers three times onstage. In December, at the final concert of “The Eras Tour,” she changed her show exit from using a stage elevator platform to heading towards a bright orange door at the back of the stage. At this point, following what Swift is doing next feels like deciphering an upcoming Christopher Nolan film. “I wanted to give a little subliminal hint to the fans that I may be leaving “The Eras Tour” era, but I was also entering a new era,” Swift said while announcing the album this past August on “New Heights,” a podcast hosted by her football star fiancé, Travis Kelce, and his brother, Jason.

Much can happen in the span of a year. Just 13 days after appearing on Kelce’s podcast, Swift made the pop culture world stop when she announced her engagement to the Kansas City Chiefs tight end. “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” the couple wrote in a joint Instagram post brimming with an all-American suburban flourish. In 2025, the Swift saga has continued to burst at the seams with an announcement in May that she had finally regained the rights to the master recordings of her first six albums, and an “Album of the Year” Grammy win in February for “Midnights.” The release of “The Life of a Showgirl” is its own beast, with premiere parties being held at hundreds of AMC movie theaters this weekend for the album’s release, consisting mainly of 89 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage and an exclusive viewing of the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia,” before it releases to the public on Sunday. CD and vinyl editions of the album have been on sale on Swift’s site, boasting various designs, some bundled with merch. An artist of Swift’s scale now operates as both performer and a walking, breathing brand empire.

It is no secret that part of Swift’s mass appeal is the personal nature of her music. However many styles she experiments with, her albums are a chart of her bad (and sometimes good) romances, the woes of fame, and musings on life, love and the industry. Fans feel like they partake in her journey, like a friend who lets you read their diary. So what does “The Life of a Showgirl” say about where the queen of the pop world is now? “This album is about what was going on behind-the-scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” said Swift on Kelce’s podcast. Its sound and contents are certainly a shift from her 2024 album, the massive and moodier “The Tortured Poets Department.” Here she reunites with producers Max Martin and Shellback, who began working with Swift on her career-shifting album “Red,” had any even stronger presence on her career-changing album “1989,” where we first heard her collaborations with Jack Antonoff, and helmed “Reputation,” along with Antonoff. Those three albums were records that helped solidify Swift’s place in the cultural pantheon. With its vibrant pop sound and album cover featuring Swift in Vegas showgirl glittery attire, “The Life of a Showgirl” is another TS testament to living in the spotlight, while confirming that Swift has grown a little older (and a little wiser). 

The title of “The Life of a Showgirl” has an intriguing bit of irony, since Swift opens the album from the point of view of a noblewoman who, in her reference, escapes her written fate after a hero rescues her heart. In “The Fate of Ophelia” (an obvious nod to Shakespeare’s most famous play, “Hamlet”), Swift sings, “I might’ve drowned in the melancholy / I swore my loyalty to me, myself, and I / Right before you lit my sky up.” After Swift became a fixture at her man’s games it’s no surprise she would pen the lyrics, “Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes.” A lot of this album is essentially a celebration of finding love amid the hurricane of fame and an intensely scrutinized life. In this record’s most memorable moment of self-reflection, Swift opens “Opalite” with “I had a bad habit of missing lovers past / My brother used to call it, ‘eating out of the trash.’” At 35, Swift is still young but after two decades of living quite the life in the spotlight, she has learned enough to reflect on her battle scars with the maturity of someone who is truly well-rounded. Instead of acting up and acting out like many a pop star has done, she remains refined. And now that she has found a type of almost effortless love, she acknowledges her mother’s words. “My mama told me / It’s alright / You were dancing through the lightning strikes / Sleepless in the onyx night / But now the sky is opalite.” 

While much of this album is a loved-up, sunnier affair, the malevolent “Cancelled!” gets witchy as it references cancel culture while seemingly winking at the Blake Lively saga, in one of this record’s darker moments. Here Swift confronts the idea, as the title suggests, of living at a time where our culture can easily shut someone out. Swift seems to target the self-righteous who are quick to call for the cancelling of a public figure. “You thought that it would be OK, at first / The situation could be saved, of course / But they’d already picked out your grave and hearse / Beware the wrath of masked crusaders.” She grows playfully defiant with the coda, “Good thing I like my friends cancelled / I like ’em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal / Like my whiskey sour / And poison thorny flowers.” It’s a statement of solidarity more than anything else since Swift has surely attracted detractors, yet has never been embroiled in the sort of scandal that could derail a career. When taking a political stance, Swift has been extremely careful not to be incendiary or intensely partisan.

Through her continued reign, Swift has not lost her fighting spirit. But instead of taking aim at past lovers on this album, she sets her sights on Charli XCX with “Actually Romantic.” After Swift brought her on as an opener for her “Reputation” tour, Charli showed her cards by allegedly insulting Swift’s younger fanbase in a 2019 Pitchfork interview. Then she struck again when she released “Sympathy Is a Knife,” a track on her 2024 hit album “Brat,” that was was clearly written about her secret hope for Swift and Healy’s demise, and largely believed to be about Swift’s supposed negative effect on Charli’s mental health from being in the shadow of such a massive figure. Both singers were dating members of the 1975 at the same time. Swift had a long and lingering connection to singer Matty Healy before they took the plunge again in 2023 and Charli began seeing drummer George Daniel about a year prior, with the latter eventually getting married this summer. Charli XCX was definitely asking for it and Swift pulls no punches on “Actually Romantic,” calling out Charli with blistering, revelatory fire. “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave / High-fived my ex and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me,” sings Swift, painting a picture of Charli as a coked-out troll. Swift’s continuing wordplay and images leave her opponent in the dust, “Hadn’t thought of you in a long time / But you keep sending me funny valentines / And I know you think it comes off vicious / But it’s precious, adorable / Like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse.”

One of the album’s strongest tracks, “Father Figure,” samples a George Michael song of the same name while it plays with ideas of gender roles and being a paternal figure with boisterous glee. “I’ll be your father figure, I drink that brown liquor / I can make deals with the devil because my dick’s bigger.” Could the song be a reference to Scott Borchetta, who signed her to his Big Machine Records? It was Big Machine who Swift had to fight for control of her masters. In “Official Release of a Party Girl,” Swift says she can relate to both sides of the song, the mentor and pupil.“ As Swift has described it, the effort to keep the rights to her own material was fraught with professional heartbreak. Big Machine essentially offered a Faustian pact where she would re-sign with the label and “earn one album back at a time” each time she recorded a new record. The frustration and sobering lessons come across when Swift sings, “This love is pure profit, just step into my office” and “Your thoughtless ambition sparked the ignition / On foolish decisions which led to misguided visions / That to fulfill your dreams, you had to get rid of me.”

As intriguing as the feuds and the settling of scores, is the deeper resonance in this material when it comes to understanding the inner workings and growth of Taylor Swift. “The Life of a Showgirl” can feel like two Taylor Swifts vying for attention, or at least functioning as a dual exploration of the singer’s evolution. There is the Middle America-bred woman who feels the pull of her roots, openly wishing for a standard, settled existence. On “Wishlist,” she alludes to this by singing that she wants to “have a couple kids,” as she dreams “about a driveway with a basketball hoop.” Then there is the more uninhibited Taylor Swift, the one that is becoming sexually adventurous, writing lines we would never have imagined from her a few years ago. On “Actually Romantic,” the idea of a standoff sexually excites Swift. “It sounded nasty, but it feels like you’re flirting with me. It’s kind of making me wet.” On “Wood,” she tells us the key to opening her thighs. These brief moments leave us wishing the girlboss Swift that the world has come to love, would push even further and leave all inhibitions at the door.

While “The Life of a Showgirl” is not one of the defining standouts in the Swift catalog, it hints at bolder territory she could and should explore further. At only 12 tracks, it still packs a punch, with Swift, once again, inviting fans to witness her intimate thoughts and moments. “Elizabeth Taylor,” named after the legendary actor, reflects on the perils of stardom through the struggles of finding big love when you have big fame. But “Honey” seems to evoke the truest sense of where Taylor Swift is right now in her life. The lyrics consider the insincerity of certain terms and cat calls when compared to someone the singer genuinely loves. “When anyone called me ‘sweetheart’ / It was passive-aggressive at the bar,” she laments. The song then becomes a vision of exuberant joy. “Summertime spritz, pink skies / You can call me ‘honey’ if you want because I’m the one you want,” letting us know that this woman, this pop culture giant, seems sincerely content. Don’t we all feel this way during the flushes of a romance that seems like it will last forever? There is no room left for exes when life is going so well. Life, however, is an ever-evolving story that keeps writing itself, and whatever turns Swift’s journey will take no one can guess. Rest assured, we will keep listening to find out.

“The Life of a Showgirl” releases Oct. 3 on Apple Music.