Taylor Swift has stood atop the pop world, glittering in a sequined midnight-blue bodysuit with rainbow confetti falling at her feet. She has mesmerized stadiums packed with fans, whose screams and cheers registered on the Richter scale. She’s broken streaming and chart recordsshe herself has set. She’s released a career’s worth of music in a span of five years. Nearly two decades into her career, spinning in her highest heels, she has reached a whole new artistic and personal peak, each time reaching higher and higher than her last. Just when the world thought Swift couldn’t climb any further, she did. Earlier this year, she bought back her masters, effectively owning everything that has ever been, well, hers. She also locked it down with a cowboy like her in football star Travis Kelce; the pair are now engaged, and it’s like she has finally found herfairy-tale ending.
So there’s no imaginable way she could possibly get any bigger, right? Well, that’s where The Life of a Showgirl comes in. Only a sucker would think the curtain close of the Eras Tour marked the end of Swift’s almighty reign in the pop sphere. With her 12th studio album, the musician shoots into a fresh echelon of superstardom — and hits all her marks.
Unsurprisingly, The Life of a Showgirl is a stark departure from last year’s deeply personal, prosaic, and tortured-as-hell The Tortured Poets Department. “There’s nothing I hate more than doing what I’ve always done,” Swift wrote in The Eras Tour book. Where TTPD was a greige and drawn-out 31 songs, Showgirl is bursting with iridescent color and a tight 12 tracks. That’s all by mastermind design, of course. No one could’ve known that when Swift played her Martin-era masterpiece “New Romantics” during the final Eras Tour surprise-song set, it was an Easter egg for the soundscape of this album.
“You’re only as hot as your last hit baby,” Swift quips against the thunderous glamour of “Elizabeth Taylor.” With that in mind, the singer makes scorching sonic choices. “Actually Romantic” is built around a Nineties rock riff in the vein of Weezer. That edge she never had on TTPD’s “Clara Bow” — she’s got it here, and it makes lines like “It’s kind of making me wet” hit that much harder. It’s exactly the kind of song fans have been clamoring for since Swift brought out electric-guitar versions of Red for 1989’s world tour.
Meanwhile, “Father Figure” interpolates George Michael’s song of the same title. But those Prince-like snares are rounded out with a full string orchestra of Swedish musicians. The same ensemble is present in totally different capacities across Showgirl highlights like the title track and “CANCELLED!” The horn section on “Wood” saves the song, which would be a misstep on its gauche lyrics and thinly veiled metaphors alone.
“I want to be as proud of it as an album as I am of the Eras Tour, and for the same reasons,” Swift told Martin while they were in Sweden making the album. With its spotlight concept and showstopping production, Showgirlis the direct result of Swift’s all-encompassing career feat — and an extension of it. She handpicks elements from all of her eras, just as she did on tour, and combines what works best. “Honey” is a sultry reclamation carried by both a Speak Now-style banjo and hip-hop beat from 1989, as a Midnights-esque Wurlitzer twinkles in the background.
