A dozen albums in, Taylor Swift\u2019s never been bigger\u2014and her music\u2019s never been less compelling.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a 1976 Eve Babitz essay about a magazine reporter who noses into a scoop while watching Elizabeth Taylor eat room-service caviar with onion, right in front of the used car salesman whom she\u2019s supposedly dating. Surely, the reporter thinks, the one and only Elizabeth Taylor would not subject a lover to onion breath? Indeed not\u2014the telltale allium portends that at this very moment, dear Liz is deep in secret negotiations to remarry Richard Burton! That\u2019s world-historic gossip. I don\u2019t usually go as far out of my way to think about Taylor Swift\u2019s upcoming wedding to Travis Kelce, but then she announced her new album on his podcast, and one track on it is a song-length dick joke. At least everyone\u2019s having a giggle\u2014I don\u2019t even know what happened to the poor used car salesman.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the harm in a little fun, I thought, as I headed off to a screening of The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, a music video premiere and behind-the-scenes documentary that played at all 540 AMCs in the country this past weekend. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize we were coming here for one music video,\u201d said the woman behind me on the out escalator, with no appreciation for the other 85 minutes\u2019 worth of making-of clips, artist commentary, and lyric visualizers (the clean versions). Taylor Swift fans are eating, catered by Target exclusives, TikTok effects, a \u201ccontent capture activation\u201d at the Century City mall in Los Angeles, and \u201cShowgirl Era\u201d-inspired cupcakes that come in \u201corange vanilla\u201d and \u201cteal vanilla,\u201d which are the same flavor.<\/p>\n
New Swift songs are prized commodities, and we\u2019re insatiable. \u201cYou\u2019re only as hot as your last hit, baby,\u201d she warns in the new song called \u201cElizabeth Taylor,\u201d pondering fame, exposure, and the ever-tenuous nature of celebrity marriage. But, like most ordinary rules of pop music stardom, this one doesn\u2019t fully apply to Swift: Her 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department, had a big hit in the Post Malone adult-contemporary duet \u201cFortnight,\u201d but in the same year, the Eras Tour and savvy marketing sent her 2019 song \u201cCruel Summer\u201d to the top of the charts, too. More than any other pop singer, Swift has the luxury of setting her own agenda. Even before it came out, The Life of a Showgirl was already the biggest pop album of the year.<\/p>\n
This is music for Taylor Swift fans and I am one! I like the Swift of \u201cLeaving like a father\/Running like water\u201d and \u201cI have this dream my daughter-in-law kills me for the money\u201d and \u201cI got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time\u201d and the Swift who dissed John Mayer and who is never ever getting back together and who wrote about her house in Rhode Island, and I will especially always love her collaborations with Swedish pop superproducers Max Martin and Shellback at the firework highs of 1989 (2014). When I am sick and tired of Taylor Swift, \u201cWildest Dreams\u201d wins me back.<\/p>\n
Lately I notice, though, that my favorite pop-loving Pilates instructor is putting dance remixes of \u201cLook What You Made Me Do,\u201d \u201cCruel Summer,\u201d and, yes, \u201cWildest Dreams\u201d on his playlist\u2014that is, nothing later than Lover (2019). Though the Eras Tour was an explosion, in recent years the mood on record has felt more restrained. In The Official Release Party, Swift describes The Life of a Showgirl as inspired by that tour\u2014the glitz, the hard work, the thrill of the crowd. With a bold shift from black and white photography to tangerine glitter and rhinestones, the album\u2019s presentation seemed to herald the return of big, fun pop bangers with a retro twist. The original record, released October 3, is a classic 12 tracks (compared to 31 on Tortured Poets\u2019 Anthology Edition) and Jack Antonoff is nowhere in sight. Shellback back? I said, Max Martin on deck? Sign me up. But now we got prob-lems.<\/p>\n
\u02dcThe Life of a Showgirl is not really a new musical or thematic direction for Swift in the sense that Reputation (2017) or Folklore (2020) were. In most ways, it is a predictable continuation of her catalog: There\u2019s personal memoir with a veneer of poetic license, a pretty obvious diss track, an extended meditation on memories from high school, a touch of Shakespearean drama, and a singular focus on romantic love and a happily-ever-after that\u2019s happily ever closer. But it is simply untrue to claim, as Rolling Stone did on Friday, that Showgirl represents \u201cnew, exciting sonic turns.\u201d Granted, there\u2019s never been another Taylor Swift song that sounds so much like the Jackson 5\u2019s \u201cI Want You Back\u201d (\u201cWood,\u201d with the spiritual energy of bachelorette-party penis d\u00e9cor), or so uncannily like both Pixies\u2019 \u201cWhere Is My Mind?\u201d and Weezer\u2019s \u201cSay It Ain\u2019t So\u201d (\u201cActually Romantic,\u201d allegedly alleging that Charli XCX calls her \u201cBoring Barbie,\u201d which might stick).<\/p>\n
These aren\u2019t obscure soundalikes\u2014they are several of the most famous songs already ever made, now recreated in the genre of \u201cTaylor Swift song.\u201d Whatever vision Martin and Shellback set out to realize here is not really serving her strengths and, intentionally or not, appears to signal a disinterest in evolution. \u201cFather Figure\u201d has some of the album\u2019s strongest writing, with the signature Swiftian heel turn at the bridge, and I could not be less excited about how the production sounds, which is unremarkable compared to its inspiration, the 1987 George Michael song that\u2019s still so hot you remember it from Babygirl. It\u2019s not worth being mad about \u201cCANCELLED!,\u201d a swagless \u201cLook What You Made Me Do,\u201d even when Swift hits us with, \u201cDid you girlboss too close to the sun?\u201d<\/p>\n
I can sort of recommend \u201cOpalite,\u201d a better-days-ahead anthem for gemstone lovers that sounds like a stage adaptation of Post Malone\u2019s \u201cCircles,\u201d or maybe it\u2019s Maroon 5\u2019s \u201cSugar\u201d? \u201cHoney\u201d is quite sweet\u2014a simple hip-hop beat flecked with bass, clarinet, and banjo, it finds room in the spotlight for the extensive live instrumentation that\u2019s sometimes overshadowed on other songs. The same is true of Swift\u2019s charming detour back to country-pop alongside Sabrina Carpenter on the closing title track, which ties a bow on the theme of A-list drama and glamour with lines like, \u201cThey ripped me off like false lashes\u201d and a Swedish guy playing pedal steel guitar. (He\u2019s Anders Pettersson and he also appears on \u201cThe Fate of Ophelia,\u201d far and away the most convincing song overall, and normie dream house \u201cWi$h Li$t,\u201d in which Swift imagines a future where, apparently, everyone looks just like Travis Kelce.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Life of a Showgirl\u201d is a little schmaltzy, but it\u2019s proactive about introducing an independent personality with a story to tell, and Carpenter is a real asset. It\u2019s one of the moments when, musically, The Life of a Showgirl brushes up against a much better idea\u2014a big, glorious pageant that inspires organic passion and camaraderie; a concept album with the ambition to do something familiar like it\u2019s never been seen before. The rest of the time, Showgirl sounds like much of the pop music you have heard over the past 10 years and throughout your lifetime; it asks that this time, you listen more closely, because this is Taylor Swift, with the enormity of commercial power and cultural significance and algorithmic rank that implies. \u201cIn my industry, attention is affection,\u201d Swift says in her video commentary introducing \u201cActually Romantic.\u201d That\u2019s the showgirl\u2019s job: making you pay attention. It\u2019s working, and if this is the only pop album you hear this year, maybe it\u2019s good enough.<\/p>\n
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A dozen albums in, Taylor Swift\u2019s never been bigger\u2014and her music\u2019s never been less compelling. There\u2019s a 1976 Eve Babitz essay about a magazine reporter … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"\n