Taylor Swift’s anticipated new album The Life of a Showgirl is finally here — and it’s a glittering spectacle, filled with a cast of characters that includes close friends, rumored foes, and her football-playing fiancé.
The record was created with Shellback and Max Martin in between shows on the career-spanning Eras Tour, which lit a fire in the singer-songwriter that blazes across each of its 12 tracks. With her returning production partners, she throws it back to the Nineties, wears George Michael’s influence like showgirl feathers, and brings Sabrina Carpenter into her spotlight. She also tosses out her old adage about not getting lost in petty things and letting her nemeses defeat themselves before she gets a chance to swing. Instead, Swift sets off in search of a knockout. Here is everything we learned from The Life of a Showgirl.
Everything Is Actually Romantic But Sympathy Is Not a Knife
Looks like there’s more bad blood in the Taylor Swift extended universe. “Actually Romantic” takes some pretty cutthroat shots at another pop star who has written music about Swift, one who knows an ex-boyfriend of hers and who may have called her a “boring Barbie.” Fan speculation both before and after the album arrived pointed to one potential new foe: Charli XCX.
Charli recently married George Daniel, whose bandmate and best friend is none other than The Tortured Poets Department muse Matty Healy. When Brat dropped, Charli had the internet buzzing with speculation about who Charli was comparing herself to on “Sympathy Is a Knife,” a song about her own insecurities when faced with the megastar she kept running into at her boyfriend’s shows. On “Actually Romantic,” Swift sings, “High-fived my ex and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me/Write me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face” before concluding that no man has ever loved her like this person does.
Neither song is really all that subtle but, for what it’s worth, Charli explicitly said there were no diss tracks on Brat and that the song was more about her own insecurities. And when fans chanted “Taylor is dead!” at a show, she also spoke out against them and said she would not “tolerate” it. When Swift was asked to comment on the song and the state of her friendship with Charli, who opened on the Reputation tour in 2018, she lauded the British singer’s writing as “surreal and inventive.” —B.S.
There Is Nothing Taylor Does Borchetta Than Revenge
Sometimes there’s a little bit of mystery over who Swift might be singing about. Aaand then there’s songs like “Father Figure,” which sure sounds like a scathing portrait of Scott Borchetta, her former label boss at Big Machine. Borchetta was the mentor who discovered her as a kid singing at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe — “When I found you, you were young, wayward, lost in the cold” — but then betrayed her by selling off her catalog to her arch-enemy, another S.B., a story she’s told in several songs, from “My Tears Ricochet” to “It’s Time to Go.” There’s a lot of Godfather-coded mobster imagery in the song, like “I protect the family,” “All I ask for is your loyalty,” and most brazenly, “You’ll be sleeping with the fishes.” But today, Don Swift settles all family business. —R.S.
All Hail Glam God George Michael
George Michael died nearly a decade ago, but his impact is larger than ever. This year, he was sampled on songs like Haim’s “Gone” (“Freedom ‘90”) and Karol G’s “Cuando Me Muera Te Olvido” (“Careless Whisper”). And now we have The Life of a Showgirl, because it’s only right that the Eighties glam legend appears on Swift’s most glam album yet.
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Michael is listed as a co-writer on “Father Figure” — a not-so-flattering portrait of a mentor figure that most fans believe is about her former label boss, Scott Borchetta — which interpolates his 1987 classic of the same name. (It’s possible Tay saw Babygirl and got inspired.) Michael’s estate already gave their salute to the usage, writing that they had “no hesitation” and knew the late star would have felt the same. Michael also would have loved “Elizabeth Taylor,” as he was a longtime fan of the actress, performing at her AIDS benefit concert in 1992, and even describing her as “the last of the Hollywood greats” when she died in 2011. It’s the kind of pop culture history lesson that Swift loves to teach us — just make sure you do all the extra credit and get graded on a curve. —A.M.
Sabrina Carpenter Can Hold Her Own As a Showgirl
Last year, Sabrina Carpenter told Rolling Stone that Taylor Swift’s music is always there for her, even before she knows that she needs it. But on The Life of a Showgirl, it’s Carpenter’s turn to show up: Swift pulls the blazing pop phenom into the title track for the only guest feature on the album. “I hold her to such a different echelon,” Carpenter said after opening four shows on the Eras Tour. “I could never compare my life, my career, my trajectory to anything close to what she’s done.” But “The Life of a Showgirl” makes the case that she could draw a few more comparisons than she gives herself credit for.
Carpenter’s role on the record isn’t to just throw in some backing vocals. Instead, she leads with all the best parts of her pop formula — ambitious vocal runs, cutting humor, high-scale theatrical drama — without shrinking herself. The song is part cautionary tale, part recruitment ritual. Someone who wants it badly enough won’t be scared off by Swift singing, “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.” Here, Carpenter is the bravest of them all. —L.P.
She Wants to Shine a Spotlight on Fiancé Travis Kelce
From the very first song on Showgirl, the pop star revels in how things have changed since her last album with a nod to Shakespeare (you know the same playwright she referenced in “Love Story.”) Travis Kelce saved Swift “from the fate of Ophelia,” and this love seems to have opened up a whole new world she didn’t know was possible.
She’s clear about this across the LP: Forget blue skies, he has painted her universe the minty, iridescent shade of “Opalite.” On “Honey,” she sings, “But you touched my face, redefined all of those blues,” letting everyone hear the newfound serenity in her trill. Swift even owns up to how badly she’s always wanted the 1950s shit, like a wedding and marriage. “Things I said were dumb/’Cause I thought that I’d never find that beautiful, beautiful life that/Shimmers that innocent light back/Like when we were young,” she sings on “Eldest Daughter.” For Swift, Kelce has made sure everything has changed for the better. —M.G.
From Rolling Stone US
