Please use this megathread to post your thoughts on The Life of a Showgirl, as well as any articles, news or reviews relating to the topic. Separate threads will be created for certain reviews/reactions from notable publications at the mod team's discretion. This will be sorted by new and pinned for a while to allow for further discussion.

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Reviews:

• The Guardian: Taylor Swift: The Life of a Showgirl review – dull razzle-dazzle from a star who seems frazzled - 2/5

• The Telegraph: Taylor Swift’s new album is as sickly sweet as a Barbara Cartland fever dream - 3/5

• The Independent: Taylor Swift review, The Life of a Showgirl: As compelling as she’s ever been – the star, the ringmaster and the circus all in one - 4/5

• Rolling Stones: Taylor Swift Conquers Her Biggest Stage Ever on ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ - 5/5

• Billboard: Taylor Swift Brings the Bangers on ‘Life of a Showgirl,’ But Don’t Call It ‘1989, Pt. 2’: Critic’s Take

• Variety: With ‘The Life of a Showgirl,’ Taylor Swift Has Made Such a Contagiously Joyful Record, Even Her Score-Settling Detours Sound Sunny

Interviews:

• The Telegraph: Taylor Swift: I thought I had to be sad to write songs

Articles:

• The Guardian: Taylor Swift’s Charli xcx hit job misses the point – and underscores her tedious obsession with conflict - Opinion piece by Laura Snapes

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The people bashing the album are missing what The Life of a Showgirl is really doing. The criticisms about “juvenile lyrics,” “weak themes,” and “misleading marketing” are exactly the kind of reactions the album was designed to provoke. This record isn’t confused or careless; it’s deliberate satire, and it’s brilliant.

Think about how it opens with The Fate of Ophelia. That name alone is a warning label. Ophelia is the archetype of a woman destroyed by performance and perception, someone rewritten by everyone else’s story until she loses her own. Taylor starts the album under that shadow for a reason. She’s saying: you’re about to project onto me again.

Throughout the record, she filters her real emotions like regret, love, pettiness, and defiance through this sparkling, exaggerated “showgirl” persona. The showgirl is loud, flirtatious, maybe even ditzy on purpose. She’s a caricature. So when Taylor sings lines that sound “cringe” or “surface-level,” that’s the point. It’s the same emotional core we’ve always gotten from her, just told through a lens built for stage lights and sequins. She’s mocking the very expectations people hold her to and doing it with a wink.

The satire becomes participatory. The detractors claim she is shallow or unserious, and in doing so they become part of the show. They’re reacting exactly as she predicted, proving the thesis of the album: that the audience demands authenticity but punishes it the moment it stops looking like their fantasy.

Then the final track, The Life of a Showgirl, brings it home. She tells us the life of a showgirl is to be ripped apart and thrown away, paying for fame with pain, yet still choosing to perform. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she sings, and that’s the key. She’s not a victim; she’s in control. She’s owning the transaction, accepting that the tearing-down is part of the art.

That’s why I think The Life of a Showgirl might be one of her most daring albums yet. It’s not about being a showgirl; it’s about living as one in a world that only loves the act.

Curious what others think:

On the one hand, Taylor Swift is an extremely productive artist with an impeccable work ethic. She has proven time and again that she can deliver massive cultural moments, and no one can deny her bona fides. But for a few albums now, I have been asking myself if she is rushing through her album cycles, maybe aiming for the 13th record (for whatever “Swiftian” reason), and if that pace is starting to come at the cost of quality.

Personally, I think her songwriting peaked with Folklore and Evermore. Since then, while she is still obviously talented, something feels different. The universality she used to capture, even in her most personal songs, feels harder to consistently find. Lately, the music comes across almost like ads or “mass-produced” content. It is polished, yes, but not always profound or made with the same care.

Of course, she has every right to control her output and her brand. There is something empowering about how strategically she runs her empire. But I keep circling back to the bigger question: at what point does being too prolific start to undercut the art itself?

And then I randomly think about something Kendrick said about Drake during their beef: that Drake is great at making bangers but lacks real growth or maturity. That critique echoed in my head when I listened to “Actually Romantic” and “CANCELLED!” on Taylor’s latest album. Obviously, Drake’s trajectory is very different from Taylor’s and he is a different type of artist altogether, but it still made me wonder if her recent work reflects more productivity and commercial success than genuine artistic evolution.

What do you all think?

This thread will remain locked until midnight. Use this thread to discuss your thoughts, reactions, and theories on the album. We will be removing all future self-post discussion threads about the album in order to consolidate discussion to this thread.

If you want to talk about a song in particular, you can use the single song discussion threads that you can access by clicking on the track name below.

Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl

Release Date: October 3, 2025

Label: Republic / Taylor Swift Productions

Genre: Pop

^{info from wikipedia}

Purchase / Streaming Links

Interviews

Trying to cut through the noise of release day.

This isn’t for the people who adore the album and think it’s her best yet, but it’s also not for the people who hate it and think it’s her worst flop to date.

For those somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, what were your thoughts? Which songs stood out to you, which ones were skips? Where do you see this sitting in your overall rankings of Taylor albums?

Per Business Insider:

In many ways, "The Life of a Showgirl" is the spiritual successor to "Reputation."

Both albums are written by a Swift who's in love, headstrong, and determined to defend her relationship from cynics.

Both are co-produced either partially or entirely with Max Martin and Shellback, who tease out some of Swift's stickiest hooks. Both are pop albums that lean hard into the drama and commit to the bit.

Alas, both albums are devastatingly front-loaded, starting off strong before taking a turn for the worse in the latter half. In the case of "Showgirl," Swift spends way too much time treading tactless or redundant ground, from a banal suburban fantasy ("Wi$h Li$t") to a slew of corny sex puns ("Wood") and an eye-roll-inducing ode to scandalous starlets ("Cancelled!"). Swift famously described herself as a mirrorball, and if this is her reflecting the crowd's demands and cultural obsessions back to us, I'm morbidly fascinated by the result.

As the album title suggests, "Showgirl" is more concerned with gloss than substance. The few times it succeeds are when Swift doesn't undercut her own craft.

The first four songs, which are also the album's best, manage to prioritize melody without dumbing down the language. "The Fate of Ophelia" and "Elizabeth Taylor" evoke a network of associations — madness, tragedy, seduction, glamour — which Swift then subverts through her own perspective and personal plot twists. "Opalite" reflects the shimmer and relief of a freshly cloudless sky, while in "Father Figure," Swift adopts an alpha-male persona to explore power dynamics, ego, and betrayal.

Swift has acknowledged that she is where she is and has what she has because of her keen lyricism. She has effectively applied that to moments of love and happiness in the past, yet the bulk of "Showgirl" is deprived of that gift.

Much like its pop predecessors "Reputation" and "Midnights," it wouldn't be fair to call "Showgirl" a bad album; Swift is far too smart and skillful to make one of those. It simply falls short of the high bar set by her own work.

I totally get that music is subjective, but everything around Taylor Swift right now feels incredibly reductive. I’ve always stayed off the hate train because, honestly, you can just turn it off or ignore it. But this latest wave of controversy is impossible to avoid - it’s everywhere, and all anyone’s talking about is this album.

The fact she chose a showgirl/burlesque concept irks me. A concept that is raw, vulnerable, empowering and that has 👐🏻 political roots and dimensions 👐🏻 (something Taylor consistently shies away from. Add to that the fact that she’s a billionaire (and let’s be real, there’s no such thing as an ethical billionaire) Yet it’s been rebranded into a sparkly pop package and turned into a commodity. In addition to this the concept fades by the 2nd track.

What could’ve been a meaningful, subversive artistic statement has been polished into a glittery, marketable commodity. At this point, she’s basically the Shein of music, in my opinion

Forgive me, as this is going to be a long post, but I’ll do my best to break it up into subheadings for easy reading.

I’d like to preface everything I am about to say with saying that if you don’t like this album, that is perfectly valid and you don’t need to justify your not liking it. You should also be able to freely express your dissatisfaction with it without others claiming that you simply “don’t understand” it. I’m in no way trying to invalidate anyone’s dislike of TLOAS with this post; I simply want to contextualize the critical response that I have been seeing online for those of you who have been taken aback by the seemingly overwhelming negative response.

I’ve been a staunch TS fan since Speak Now, and have been actively participating in online fandom spaces since Red (see my reddit history). I must’ve deleted it because I can’t find it anymore (I did delete it, but I found proof), but I remember making a post on this very subreddit over a decade ago about the critique that 1989 was getting at the time about how the album could’ve been made by any popstar, and how I didn’t think that was fair. I also made a (also now deleted, but here it is for proof) post about how I was so happy for her and Calvin Harris because maybe now we’d get happy love songs! Lol. All this to say, I’ve been here since this subreddit was very, very modest in size. Seriously, look at this insane trajectory: https://subredditstats.com/r/taylorswift

This has been one of the more interesting critical responses to a Taylor Swift album I have seen, but I have to say that since I’ve been watching, her releases have ALWAYS (with the exception of Folklore/Evermore; I’ll get there) been divisive. I will say though, there are factors at play that have made this release feel a little bit more negative overall. Let’s get into it.

• The rise in popularity of Reddit and Tiktok

Again, I’ve been on Reddit for a minute. Reddit was by no means underground when I started using it 11 years ago, but it also wasn’t so mainstream. I knew a few people with a reddit account, and now practically every normie of a particular age has one. Things are simply getting discussed online more by way more people than they were a decade ago. Add in Tiktok, and the “everyone is a content creator” thing we’re doing these days, you’re getting A LOT more hot takes. Back then, the only place where commentary/ criticism might’ve breached the mainstream was Twitter. Now I have my non-Taylor Swift-liking friends asking me about Wood. This shit never used to happen lol.

• Lack of promotional singles, skewed expectations

Since Lover, Taylor has stopped releasing promotional singles. Folklore and Evermore were surprise releases, so people didn’t have time to really ponder on what they thought the album would be, but midnights, TTPD, and TLOAS seemed to all have suffered from this. Based on the visuals, and how Taylor herself has promoted these albums, it’s fair to say that some people have felt misled, which I’m not here to say they’re wrong for. But her refusal to relieve some of the anticipation with a promotional single has definitely led to a lot of whiplash for fans. I honestly never go into an album with expectations for how it’s going to sound, so this hasn’t happened to me personally, but I’ve seen it often enough from other Swifties that it should be acknowledged.

• The Charli XCX of it all

Charli XCX is absolutely having her moment, and so it probably wasn’t the best time to release Actually Romantic. Especially when people are taking it as a response to SIAK, which makes it look especially petty. I’m sure there was more stuff that happened BTS that is actually inspiring the song, but perception is reality. Now we have entire pockets of the internet feeling like Taylor is “punching down,” and like the song is in poor taste. From my perspective, I think we might be babying Charli a bit much since she’s also come for artists smaller than her, but alas, Charli simply has more “goodwill” in online spaces at the moment. It was never going to go over well. That being said, Actually Romantic slaps. I think this is one that people will come around to.

• Folkmore, and the “Taylor Swift is a poet” mythmaking

Taylor Swift has always been a wonderful lyricist. Always. Since the start of her career. She has always put a heavy emphasis on her lyrical capabilities. So when she released WANEGBT, y’all. People were UPSET. 22 and I Knew You Were Trouble being the other singles from that album certainly didn’t help, but if you were a fan and actually listened to Red, you still got a lot of the lyricism you loved from the previous albums. At this point in her career, when I told any non-fan that she’s a really great writer, I’d get dismissed. I really tried to show SEVERAL people that the impression that they got from her singles weren’t indicative of her talent, but not one person was having it. 1989, while generally liked upon release (except from the fans who were upset that she was departing from her more verbose, expressive storytelling), definitely wasn’t the album to change that narrative. Neither was reputation. Neither was Lover.

And then came folklore. I say this as someone who might actually consider folklore my favourite album of hers, but it really did usher in a new set of expectations for what a Taylor Swift song should and shouldn’t be. Suddenly her music was being taken seriously by a wider audience, and the fandom, while already huge, really exploded. I remember at the time thinking that, while I loved the album to bits, it was frustrating that it took her doing a genre shift into a more “serious” genre of music for people to appreciate her artistry. Because anyone who was a fan pre-folklore knew that it was a departure, but not THAT big of a departure from what she was already doing.

But I think that Taylor (speculation, of course), was happy that people were finally recognizing how sharp her pen was, and maybe leaned into it too much. I do think she has to shoulder some of the blame for people’s newfound expectations with the whole, “bring a thesaurus,” “your English teacher,” type thing. Those are more recent examples, but post-folkmore, there was an expectation for all of her songs to have the same flowery quality to them, even though those lyrics don’t lend themselves well to a pop record.

It’s impossible to talk about folklore without also mentioning that it happened during the peak of covid, and so, on top of being a wonderful album, it was also a case of right place/ right time. But alas, the world started to open up again, slowly, but surely, and TS wanted to make a pop record again, but pop was incongruent with this type of storytelling.

When midnights was released, I most commonly saw people call it “mid”nights, and chastise it for its “cringey” lyrics. It wasn’t until she released the 3 a.m. tracks, mostly produced by “folkmore God” Aaron Dessner that people started to give it its flowers. Same thing with TTPD and the Anthology.

• Time and perspective

Okay, okay. So you might be thinking, sure, folklore and the poet mythmaking has changed this fandom, but that doesn’t explain why we still love 1989, rep, and Lover, and consider the lyrics to be much stronger than they lyrics in TLOAS. Are those three better albums? Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been able to sit with them for years, and only this album for a weekend. But what I can offer is that this is far from the first time that people have been down on the lyrics. Let’s take a trip down memory lane...

• RED

As I mentioned earlier, WANEGBT, 22, and IKYWT weren’t particularly loved by the fanbase, and often chastised for their cringey lyrics. Now, whether you’ve grown to like them or not, they’re mainstays.

There’s also Stay, Stay, Stay, which was never a single, but also criticised for its lyrical content. I also remember people thinking that State of Grace’s chorus was too simple.

• 1989

Who else was there watching the livestream when she played Shake It Off for the first time? Again, the general consensus I was seeing online within the fandom at that time was simply not good. But beyond that, Welcome to New York, which was also a promotional single, was similarly not loved. Bad Blood? Nuclear. The repetitiveness in Out of the Woods? Criminal. Even This Love was considered simple with its “this love is good, this love is bad,” chorus.

So seriously, while this album has career highlights Blank Space and Style, there was a lot to point to if you wanted to dismiss Taylor’s prowess.

• Reputation

When LWYMMD was released, oh my God. I actually don’t think there has been a worse critical response to a lead single… maybe ME! was hated a teeny bit more. But beyond that, …Ready for It?, Endgame, and Gorgeous???? People had A LOT to say about those lol. I even remember commenting on a YouTube reviewer who was literally disgusted with Dress and Taylor singing about sex because I was like, is she not like, 27? Can we let the woman live? I also remember him deleting my comment haha.

• Lover

ME! Being the lead single off of Lover, and a song that didn’t even make the setlist of the Eras tour should tell you something. This song was absolutely reemed. REEMED. Enough so that she took out the “spelling is fun” part.

And then there came YNTCD, which got a mixed response at best. I do remember people taking particular issue with the “Why be mad/ when you can be GLAAD” lyric. The Man, and London Boy were the next lambs to the slaughter. And don’t you forget the humpty dumpty line in The Archer. People hated that shit lol.

All this to say that there are like, 4 songs off of these particular albums that people thought were bad lyrically. And maybe their opinion hasn’t changed about them. I certainly haven’t changed my opinion on Bad Blood or Welcome to New York. But I also don’t think those songs define that album.

With that, it’s interesting to me that since midnights people have generally glombed onto the same lyrics to dismiss the entire project.

For midnights, it was “sexy baby”, “karma is a cat,” “weird, but fucking beautiful,” “draw the cateye sharp enough to kill a man”;

For TTPD it was the entire second verse + bridge of The Tortured Poets Department, all of The Alchemy, all of thAnk you aIMee, “touch me while your bros play grand theft auto,” “you know how to ball, I know Aristotle, “but without all the racists”;

And now for TLOAS, it seems to be all of Wood, “my dick’s bigger,” “I’m not a bad bitch, this isn’t savage.”

All this to say that she’s always had “cringey” lyrics. But, to my last point, since folkmore

It’s become a bit more unacceptable. All I can say to this is give it time. You might always hate those lyrics. But I don’t think that they represent the album at large.

Rep was absolutely lambasted upon release. And yet, in the two times I saw her for Eras, that was by far the era the crowd was the loudest, most excited for.

• The current political climate

Much like you need to take Covid into account when discussing folkmore, this album cycle can’t be divorced from the current climate either. People have been starting to get frustrated with Taylor because of her associations, lack of speaking out about certain topics, and seeming to heel turn into “traditional values.”

Things are scary out there. We’re living in an increasingly polarizing time. And our expectations of our celebrities these days are just, well, different. We want to know that they’re “on the right side of history.” And I’m not here to debate the rightness or wrongness of this, because I see both sides, though I do generally wish she’d use her platform more. And Taylor certainly hasn’t helped herself with setting the expectation that she was going to speak out more on injustice during the Lover Era.

But things are bad bad now, and people (especially people online) aren’t exactly thrilled with celebrities, especially billionaire celebrities who are staying quiet. Taylor is a lightning rod for this type of critique because she is the biggest in the game right now. So, rightly or wrongly, the things that she does are handled with an extra layer of scrutiny.

Look no further than 2017 when we were going through the 45th presidency. People were saying LWYMMD has abuser language, and she was mocked endlessly for an IG post from 2016 or 2017 (I can’t find it, so if anyone who remembers can, help a girl out!) for daring to say that she had a good year, or something. People were saying she was doing N*zi dogwhistles.

I’ve seen people say that this album is giving “tradwife” and that she’s not a feminist because she wants a marriage and kids. It’s just a sign of the times. People are a lot more critical of Swift when things seem scary.

-

Woof, what a long post. To anyone who read this entire thing, you’re so real for that haha. I want to reiterate, there is nothing wrong with simply not liking the album! It’s clearly not for everyone. I just want to contextualize why the hate might seem so especially loud at the moment.

Being a fan of TS from Red - Lover was seriously uncool. Of course, she was extremely popular, but I caught soooo much flack for liking her. That shifted with folklore, and now a lot more people are dialed into the conversation. And people don’t know how to be normal about Taylor Swift, one way or the other. They never have tbf, but with my above points, it’s gotten especially loud.

Once the dust settles, I guarantee - yes, guarantee - you’ll see more nuanced, thoughtful takes. Whether those who dislike it now continue to dislike it remains to be seen; I am sure many of them will. But I don’t think it’ll be as hated as it seems at the moment.

What’s especially interesting to me, who’s been around for the leaks since 1989, this was the first time that the leaks threads (on Swiftly Neutral, no less) were honestly WAY more positive than negative. I think it’s because they had time to digest the lyrics. I wish that thread wasn’t nuked so I could present the proof. So, all in all, time will tell, but if her past album cycles are any indication, this is probably going to go the way of reputation.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Hi all!

Please use this megathread to discuss Taylor's new album! Feel free to share your thoughts, theories and favourite tracks! How does it compare to the rest of her discography??

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First 3 tracks has some topical focus on them and the hooks are passable . But right after this, the tracklist takes a nose dive.

Father Figure and Wood are uncomfortable concepts for songs. The song Eldest Daughter is straight up cringy, especially verse 1.

Her transitions from a low pitch to high pitch are poorly done.

Although the outro is a bright spot, that's because Sabrina Carpenter absolutely dominated the song with Taylor left in the dust. The production of this album makes it sounds like one big song.

Ill give the album a 6/10 with some bright spots

I have no idea what could possibly be the hit on this album lol

Taylor’s description of the album appears to be really disconnected with the marketing and imagery we’re getting so far. Famously, Taylor is not the most reliable source when it comes to describing the aesthetics/overall concept of her albums (for example, I love Rep, but it is not and has never been the punk album she now claims it is). But if the album is more upbeat and generally about how her life was doing well when she was off stage, why does the imagery feel much darker? Even the title The Life of a Showgirl feels like it’s referencing the more tragic stories about the darker side of the lights and glamour, like in Gia Coppola’s The Last Show Girl. And when she described how she came to work with Max Martin again, she mentioned wanting to pair the lyrical accomplishments of folklore with more pop-friendly beats. Generally, I wouldn’t describe folklore as a particularly upbeat album.

Does anyone else feel this disconnect, and if so, which do you think will be accurate?

Also, why do you think the tension exists? I’m torn between two theories — either they came up with the concept before they developed the album and she just really wanted to use it, even if it wasn’t a perfect fit (which is fair, because it is admittedly a unique and interesting aesthetic she has not done before) or her career and personal life are so intertwined that she’s trying to avoid a lot of personal speculation by repeatedly assuring everyone it’s a happy album. Either way, we’ll never really know, and it doesn’t particularly matter but I’m still curious on the sub’s thoughts.

Edit: typos