After lots and lots of anticipation from fans, Taylor Swift has finally dropped her newest album The Life of a Show Girl. When she announced it in August on her now fiancé Travis Kelce’s podcast, it was like the whole world had stopped just to talk about the album.

When the album rollout began, everyone was really living for it. The constant album cover variations seemed a bit excessive, sure, but they were pretty enough (aside from what had, in my opinion, an ugly font with awkward text placement) and she looked good, so what’s the issue? Then came the hyped up countdown that only led to a video clip of her staring at the camera for less than five seconds, the tracklist and lyrics leaked, and Swift announced a movie that was really just a compilation of music videos and lyric videos at its core.

But the Swifties still had hope. With all the glitz and glamour of the photoshoots that came with the album cover reveal, it was hard not to! Just look at how beautiful the shoot was!

There’s no way that a photoshoot this stunning could possibly come with a disappointing album. Nope. None at all. Simply not a possibility, especially not when talking about the Taylor Alison Swift.

Fast forward to October 3rd: The Life of a Showgirl drops at midnight. Millions of Swifties everywhere stay up for the release, excited to see what Swift has in store for them this time. Perhaps a poppy love song for Travis Kelce, á la Reputation’s “Delicate”! Or maybe a slower song, like 2019’s “Lover”!

What these Swifties don’t know is that most, if not all of them, will be more disappointed with Swift than they were angry at Charli xcx fans for suggesting that Swift might have been trying to block Brat from number one.

The Life of a Show Girl Is the Weakest Link in Swift’s Discography

Ronald Woan from Wikimedia Commons

Like many Taylor Swift fans, I was excited for The Life of a Show Girl. I loved the aesthetics, I loved the album covers, and I found myself intrigued by the track list. However, after giving the album multiple shots, I simply cannot get into it.

The lyrics are surface level and some are boring, which is frustrating. Swift has shown that she’s capable of so much more, so many times. Yet we get lyrics like “Did you girlboss too close to the sun”.

Lyrics like these feel like poor attempts of resonating with Gen-Z and older Gen-Alpha audiences. You just can’t help but cringe when you hear the lyrics “So we all dressed up as wolves and we looked fire”. Swift also manages to name drop luxury brands like Cartier, Balenciaga, and Gucci respectively throughout the album, which added very little, if anything, to the songs.

There were a few songs I enjoyed on the album. “The Fate of Ophelia” and “Opalite” are cute little synth tracks, and the lyrics “Be my NY when Hollywood hates me” from “Elizabeth Taylor” have been stuck in my head all day. But other than that, the rest fall flat for me.

Swift makes references to Old Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor in her song of the same name

In the Public Domain, from Wikimedia Commons

It’s like Swift doesn’t have anything left to sing about anymore. After 19 years of writing about her own experiences — the love, heartbreak, friendships, and the fame, she’s run herself dry. It seems like now that the Eras Tour is over, the only thing that’s really happening in her life right now is Travis Kelce.

The album was supposed to be about her life as an entertainer, but most tracks just feel like they reference Kelce one way or another. Not to even mention the absurdity of the album’s ninth track, “Wood”, which feels like a “how do you do, fellow kids” attempt at Sabrina Carpenter-esque lyricism.

The album wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard, though. Most of the criticism falls onto Swift’s lyrics on the album, but if you turn your head off for a bit and are just there for the vibes, then it’s pretty alright. It’s the first time in a while that Taylor Swift hasn’t worked with producer Jack Antonoff, which makes The Life of a Show Girl a change of pace from her more recent work. It’s no doubt that the duo definitely needed a break from each other, with many users online commenting that all of Swift’s songs had become “Antonoff-ed” in recent years.

Instead, Swift got back with producers Max Martin and Shellback. The backtrack is fun, but realistically nothing to write home about — just your basic pop sound that falls flat on some tracks but is just good enough on others.

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The Boring Barbie In the Room

The Life of a Show Girl features a song titled “Actually Romantic”, and users online have decided it’s a diss in response to Charli xcx’s song “Sympathy is a Knife” from Brat (which is allegedly about Swift), and it’s kind of hard not to read it as such.

Justin Higuchi from Wikimedia Commons

The song opens with the line “I heard you call me boring Barbie when the c**e’s got you brave”. This immediately led people to believe it’s about the British pop star, considering the past criticism she’s faced for her drug use.

Taking what Charli wrote on “Sympathy is a Knife” into consideration. “Actually Romantic” feels mean spirited. “Sympathy is a Knife” was a track about how insecure Charli feels in comparison to the mega star Taylor Swift. Meanwhile, on “Actually Romantic” Taylor writes about how she loves the attention Charli is giving her.

While Charli xcx has had her fair share of rude comments, and there’s a very real possibility she has been being nasty to Swift behind the scenes, but this track makes Swift look like a mean girl. The song is in poor taste, and it looks like Swift is trying to emulate the buzz that her other diss tracks “Thank You Aimee” (capitalized to spell “Kim” in the title, referring to Kim Kardashian, and later changed to spell out Ye) and 1989’s “Bad Blood” (commonly believed to be about Katy Perry) made.

Bottom Line

Paolo Villanueva from Wikimedia Commons

The Life of a Showgirl is by far Taylor Swift’s most uninspired to date, and a huge disappointment to her fans. It started off strong, but went downhill from there.

At its very worst, the album is a poor attempt at rebranding Swift as a more mature pop star through its visuals, and is the embodiment of Swift’s recent musical decline as a result of her oversaturating herself in recent years. Taylor Swift has not gone a single year without releasing albums since Lover in 2019.

At its best, however, it’s shopping mall and radio station muzak. It’s something people will listen to when there’s nothing else good on, or when Spotify will inevitably autoshuffle it into non-premium user playlists. You won’t rush to turn it off, but you probably won’t necessarily be trying to play it yourself either.

Taylor Swift is a great writer, and she knows it. It just doesn’t show on The Life of a Showgirl. The album is supposed to be a contrast to its predecessor The Tortured Poets Department.

Where the former is meant to be deeply profound, The Life of a Show Girl is meant to be lighter and not as serious. Unfortunately, the lyrics instead come off as way too juvenile.

The best thing for the pop star right now would be to take some time off to refresh her mind. It would be a shame to see Swift’s legacy be tainted by poor songwriting in the latter half of her career. Her thirteenth album deserves the very best afterall.