The Life of a Showgirl… and The Death of a Lyricist

Taylor Swift’s 12th Studio Album Lacks Depth

By Bailey Tolentino

 
 

It’s always a big day for the music industry when Taylor Swift drops an album. Before I get into my overall disappointment, let’s start with the good stuff. The production in this album is of the highest quality in Swift’s entire discography (Thank you, Max Martin and Shellback). Standouts include ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ and ‘Wood’ — tracks which also have the highest potential for radio success. The former has an especially catchy hook — “Elizabeth Taylor, tell me for real, do you think it’s forever?” — a slightly more mature version of ‘Ready For It…?’ from reputation. It should have been chosen as the lead single.

‘Wi$h Li$t’ and ‘Actually Romantic’ are clean and fresh in a way that she has previously failed to nail. The former is a completely new sound from her (with the exception of the entrance line to the chorus, “I just want you”, which is reminiscent of “I think there’s been a glitch” from ‘Glitch’, which is one of her best synth-pop songs ever.) ‘Actually Romantic’ is one of her easier sassy moments to digest, and I appreciate the clever bait-and-switch of the title. Both are, sonically, massive improvements from Lover’s attempts at their sounds (‘I Think He Knows’ and ‘I Forgot That You Existed’, respectively).

I also must admit that I have been relentlessly replaying one song, ‘Opalite’. I am obsessed with the melody and production. The chorus is adorable and addictive; it’s one of those songs that makes you believe in love. It is also the only song on the album that doesn’t contain any lyrics which take you out of the illusion.

That leads me onto the main issue of the record: the lyricism. Swift is happy and she wants us to know it. She wrote the whole album with her “glitter gel pens,” but we need the quill and ink that wrote folklore to return. Her other pure pop records, 1989 and reputation, have some lyrical clunkers sprinkled throughout, but Showgirl is fatally encumbered by them. 

Swift was very busy on The Eras Tour in 2023 and 2024, which sparked lots of inspiration about her legacy as a musician. In her appearance on her fiancé Travis Kelce’s New Heights Podcast, Swift advertised this album as an exploration of all the different sides of the kaleidoscope that is being a “showgirl”. It’s a very interesting concept, but disappointingly, it falls short, with all the songs being easily categorisable into these two subsets: 

 “I Love You Travis, You Saved Me, and I Can’t Wait To Have Your Babies”:

  • The Fate of Ophelia

  • Opalite

  • Wi$h Li$t

  • Wood

  • Honey

“Being Famous Is Hard / Here’s What I Have To Say About That Feud”:

  • Elizabeth Taylor

  • Father Figure

  • Eldest Daughter

  • Actually Romantic

  • CANCELLED!

  • The Life of a Showgirl

* ‘Ruin The Friendship’ is the only outlier here; seemingly about a crush she had in high school that sadly passed away, and she writes about regretting not spending more time with him. However, it feels extremely irrelevant to the album concept, and she already has a better song about this (‘Forever Winter’).

The point Swift is most insistent on making is that she thought she was destined to eternal loneliness despite her limitless success, after the seemingly life-ending breakup portrayed in The Tortured Poets Department. This sentiment is clearly stated in TTPD track ‘The Prophecy’. In every song listed in the “I Love You Travis” category, she mentions the fact that he saved her from this dreadful fate. We see a return to Fearless Taylor, who believes in marriage, kids, and happy endings. As she says in ‘Wi$h Li$t’, she has found herself “dreaming ‘bout a driveway with a basketball hoop.” While lyrics specifically about a white picket fence life and having kids are new to the Swift lexicon, the idea that all she wants is a simple love despite the chaos of her life is far better expressed in songs like ‘Sweet Nothing’ from Midnights or ‘Call It What You Want’ from reputation. 

Swift’s general feeling about Kelce seems to be, “when you know, you know,” as articulated in ‘Opalite’. Even if there is truth to it, that is easily one of the most annoying phrases in the world because of its lack of explanation. Just as annoyingly, Swift offers absolutely no introspective lyrics on why she loves Travis. This is the man that America’s Sweetheart is going to marry, and we don’t even know why she’s doing it (other than that she wants her kids to look like him)! We know he is handsome. A Google Search could tell us that, Taylor… But I guess Google’s AI Assistant could have written some of these lyrics, too.

The worst instances, while we’re at it:

  • “they said she didn’t do it legitly” (‘The Life of a Showgirl’) — Either make room for ‘legitimately’ or find a different word.

  • “spring break that was fuckin’ lit” / “Balenci and a fat ass” (‘Wi$h Li$t’) — I was left speechless.

  • “vibes” (The Fate of Ophelia) — We need a copyeditor in the studio.

  • “Every joke’s just trolling and memes” (‘Eldest Daughter’) — Put the phone down. Wow.

  • “I like ‘em cloaked in Gucci and scandal” (‘CANCELLED!’) — Nearly as tacky as wearing a full monogram Gucci outfit… which she has also done. 

Okay, sorry. Let me cut her some slack. We do get a smidgen of insight in ‘Opalite’, where she sings about how both she and Travis were shining bright (making their “own sunshine”) in their separate fields and she feels fate has brought their light together to make this bright, beautiful sky of love. It’s a much more successful endeavour for the “Ooh, you and me, we got big reputations” thing she tried to do in ‘End Game’ — a song about a man who, infamously, did not have a reputation as big as Swift’s. This slight depth hidden under the irresistible melody is why ‘Opalite’ is my favourite track.

‘Wi$h Li$t’ and ‘Honey’ — though the other two songs in my Top 3 because of their faultless melodies and production — are downtrodden by internet slang and both contain a repeated rhyming of the word “want” with itself, which is a massive oversight that any writer should be embarrassed by. 

The cringiest of all the tracks is ‘CANCELLED!’, which also has one of the worst lyrics in her entire catalogue: “Did you girlboss too close to the sun?” This line is shortly followed by a sequence of terrible ‘clap backs’ in the chorus. She is displaying sass even more childish than that seen in ‘Bad Blood’, which came out ten years ago; at which point, such immaturity might have been acceptable. The production also fails this one time, attempting to capture the triumphant energy of ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ by Lorde — which is an outdated sound, anyway. 

‘Father Figure’ has the best bridge in the album, so far as melody is concerned. The “I saw a change in you” entrance is mystical, and the exit is enticing, with a hint at a key change. However, the illusion is ruined when she sings, “Turns out my dick’s bigger”.

The biggest offence, however, is ‘Eldest Daughter’. Swift has established an intentional trend in her albums of making the fifth track the most vulnerable — the assigned ‘deep cut’. Yet, this song sounds like it was written by a middle schooler. The piano chords are the ones you learn on the first day of music class, and the hook of the chorus is “I’m not a bad bitch,” as if that’s touching or confessional. It’s already the worst song on this album, but it is made even worse when you put it in the context of other “Track 5s,” which include the likes of: ‘So Long, London’, ‘mirrorball’, ‘All Too Well’, and ‘Dear John’… Some of the greatest lyrical ballads of the century — and I am not being dramatic.

Okay, she has had some corny lyrical letdowns in the past, like: ‘ME!’, ‘Gorgeous’, ‘So High School’… but at least all of those songs were surrounded by masterpieces rather than ten more songs of the same ilk. Plus, the Taylor who wrote ‘So High School’ is the same one who wrote this album. And don’t say that she just can’t write good songs when she is in love. Happy Taylor has also brought us beauties like: ‘Invisible String’, ‘Sweet Nothing’, ‘Slut!’, ‘London Boy’, and ‘Begin Again’.

I have no doubt that she will redeem herself in the next record, and that some songs will grow on me (because they always do). I haven’t always been amazed by her records the day they are released. Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department both took several months to settle in for me, at which point I realised a handful of tracks were genius. That said, I am used to the kind of disappointment I dealt with for those releases: the weaker melodies and choppy production felt rushed (eg.: ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’), or the concept felt contrived (eg.: ‘Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince’). However, I have never once been taken aback by the lack of lyrical quality in Swift’s music. Her lyricism was the one thing no one could ever take away from her. Yet, here we are.

Showing us these two surface-level aspects of her life as a showgirl was not worth the death of the legendary lyricist that she has always been. Twenty years ago, Swift sang in ‘Fifteen’: 

 “In life, you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team.”

The Life of a Showgirl reveals that, deep down, she is not currently prioritising doing greater things than marrying the man on the football team. While it plays well into the prophecy that she has always wanted for herself, this full circle moment — from a musical perspective — ain’t for the best. She’s lucky her reputation has never been better.