Taylor Goodyear

Staff Writer

This post was originally published on October 15.

There’s no denying that Taylor Swift is one of the biggest stars in the music industry. With eleven previous albums under her belt, not counting the Taylor’s Version remakes, her twelfth, The Life of a Showgirl was extremely anticipated by Swifties, radio channels, and grocery stores looking for new ambience alike. From its official announcement on Aug. 13 to its release on Oct. 3, half of the world has been preparing for the album to blow them away.

And then the album was released, and people had thoughts about it.

The Life of a Showgirl has twelve songs and runs for about forty-two minutes, a drastic change from the two-hour, thirty-one song tracklist of her previous album The Tortured Poets Department. The music itself is also changed; while The Tortured Poets Department was a deviation from Swift’s usual sound, The Life of a Showgirl veers too far back into generic upbeat pop. So generic, in fact, that fans have pointed out extreme similarities between Swift’s music and other pop songs. The witty lyricism of The Tortured Poet’s Department that some deemed ‘too much’ has been dialed back into simple, catchy choruses and basic rhymes. All of these factors led some people to one conclusion: This album felt like Taylor Swift didn’t try. It felt uninspired, lifeless. It felt contrary to the titular song— all of the glitz and glam of the life of a showgirl, without any deeper message or hidden secrets underneath.

The first song, “The Fate of Ophelia,” is a perfect example of this. The music is catchy but generic, and though the song’s title is a direct reference to the tragedy of Hamlet, the lyrics suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material. Contrary to what the song might say, Ophelia did not die of a broken heart, or go insane because of love. She went mad because people took away her autonomy, and she was not allowed to make her own decisions. While this is not the first time Swift has turned a Shakespearean tragedy into a love song, see “Love Story” from her Fearless album, centered around Romeo and Juliet, Ophelia is an odd choice. Additionally, in “Love Story,” the entire song revolves around this metaphor. In “The Fate of Ophelia”, the story is only mentioned in the chorus, bridge, and the second verse. Even then, it’s brief; vague mentions of ‘drowning in the melancholy’ and the titular ‘fate of Ophelia’ are the only times Hamlet is actually discussed. If not for the title, listeners probably wouldn’t have connected this song with Hamlet at all. It sounds like any number of pop songs that have been released in the past twenty years.

The next two songs, “Elizabeth Taylor” and “Opalite,” are perfectly forgettable. “Elizabeth Taylor” sounds like any number of slower Taylor Swift songs, and “Opalite” could be any generic pop song about finding love. “Elizabeth Taylor” is at least better than “The Fate of Ophelia” in that the titular woman is featured much more prominently, with allusions to White Diamonds, violet eyes, and Portofino— all things associated with Elizabeth Taylor. For “Opalite”, there really isn’t much to say. It’s a perfect song for radio: simple, cheery, and catchy. There’s no substance to it. It just exists.

The fourth track, “Father Figure,” feels the most on-theme of the album. It’s one of only two songs that could apply to show business and the underside of the industry, talking about younger up-and-coming stars getting taken in by managers with dubious intentions. While the music sounds, once again, like basic 2010s pop, the lyrics have some meat to them. It seems like she might be making a genuine critique of the industry. However, even this song feels somewhat shallow; the metaphor hits you over the head to make sure you understand it, and lyrics feel unnecessarily complex and mind-numbingly simple at different points in the song. However, this song does feel like an attempt was made, and I appreciate that.

“Eldest Daughter” is another song that feels like Taylor Swift tried. However, the emphasis is on the word tried. Most of the points she was trying to make fall very flat. One example of this is with the overuse of slang. Some fans have stated that she was trying to make a statement with it, using slang in a satirical manner. However, it just feels out of place in the piano ballad, and after the first verse it almost completely drops out of the song. This track also falls into the trap of not relating to the title. The words ‘eldest daughter’ aren’t even in the chorus, and while that in itself is not a sin, the topic daughterhood is barely touched upon. When you hear the phrase eldest daughter, the first thing you think of is the way eldest daughters are typically forced to act like parents to their younger siblings, and they don’t get the typical childhood experiences. However, none of this plays a part in the song, and it instead becomes a lament of how people are toxic on the internet and she wishes she could find love. And while both of these topics could make good songs, they don’t fit in a song titled “Eldest Daughter.”

“Ruin the Friendship” marks the halfway point of the album, and it’s… fine. The overarching story is interesting, and the title makes sense for the song. However, the music is underwhelming, the message isn’t necessarily the best, and the singing lulls you into monotony instead of catching your attention. The biggest problem with this song is the rhythm; many of the lines have too many syllables, messing up the pulse and causing Swift to stumble when forcing them all to fit. While this has been an occasional problem in the other songs on the album, it’s most apparent in “Ruin the Friendship.” The song ends and you wonder if you’re getting near the end of the album, only to realize that you’ve still got halfway to go.

“Actually Romantic” is track seven, and one of the better songs in the album. Believed to be a diss track towards Charlie XCX, the music of this song is arguably the best in the album. It progresses nicely throughout the song, starting off quiet and growing in intensity. While this song feels a bit harsh as a response, especially considering that Charlie XCX had only released a few lines alluding to Swift before this song dropped, it works as a song. The title is relevant, the lyrics are catchy, and it’s overall a decent track.

The next song, “Wi$h Li$t,” takes us right back to mediocre. The music is minimal, the lyrics are inconsequential and shallow, and the song overall feels unimportant and forgettable. There’s no metaphor, no catchy chorus, nothing that makes it stand out. Which makes the next song on the album, “Wood”, so jarring. “Wood” is one of Taylor Swift’s most explicit songs, being one large sexual innuendo. Even the title, “Wood,” alludes to this. Coming from one of the most boring songs on the soundtrack, this song catches your attention for what might be the wrong reason. The sexuality of this song feels out of place in Swift’s music, and especially in this album. Additionally, fans have pointed out how similar the backing track sounds to The Jackson 5’s “Want You Back.” Whether intentional or not, this only adds to the fact that every song on this album is similar to other pop songs.

“CANCELLED!” is the tenth song on Life of a Showgirl, and it would have done numbers on the YouTube AMV community in the early 2010s. And, with a little more time, it might have done numbers in 2025. It raises many valid points about the mob mentality that the internet sometimes possesses, and how ‘cancel culture’ has been corrupted over the years. However, instead of going into these issues, she skirts around them and presents herself as both a victim and an offender at the same time. This schism gets confusing after a while, and the song suffers for it.

The penultimate track is called “Honey,” and it suffers from many of the same issues as “Opalite” and “Wi$h Li$t:” It’s just boring. There isn’t much substance to the song, just a somewhat decent beat and forgettable lyrics. It’s these songs that give the impression that Taylor Swift simply didn’t try with this album. The radio plays songs identical to this one ten times an hour.

The final song on the album is, funnily enough, the song that the album is named for. “Life of a Showgirl,” featuring Sabrina Carpenter, is supposed to be the showstopping finale, the twelfth song of Swift’s twelfth album. However, it was underwhelming at best, and has conflicting messages within the song. The chorus claims that the life of a showgirl is a bad thing— a good message, had it not been for the eleven songs before this doing nothing to back up this claim— yet the music stays upbeat and happy, and the final chorus makes it seem like, despite the warnings of the main character “Kitty,” Swift has become a showgirl and enjoys it. It contradicts itself. Additionally, if you don’t know Sabrina Carpenter is featured on the song, you won’t figure it out until the end. The song also has the problem of “Wood”, where the music sounds very similar to “Cool” by the Jonas Brothers. All of this leads to an unsatisfying finale to an unsatisfying album.So how was Life of a Showgirl? It was fine. As someone who doesn’t listen to a lot of Taylor Swift, it was mediocre pop songs that sounded like all the rest. But to Swifties who were expecting the carefully crafted and relatively clean lyrics of Swift’s previous albums, this album was a letdown. The content had little to do with the album title, every song sounded like something else, and the words were shallow and in some cases lazy. The album, in other words, was disappointing. A solid 4/10— perfectly forgettable and removed from my playlist.