The promise of Taylor Swift’s 12th album was great. Featuring new production, a modest lineup of songs and an inside look on a peak moment in her worldwide career, it was hyped as a major cultural moment. However, the album disappoints in many of its most hopeful aspects.
Swift’s 2024 album “The Tortured Poets Department” met much criticism, mainly for its redundant production and bloated length of 31 songs. That, too, was an overhyped release of Swift’s that ended up being anticlimactic.
Now, when listeners look at the details of Swift’s newest release, “The Life of a Showgirl,” many of the artist’s decisions become clear. Sitting at a slim 12 songs (with clear statements that no more would be released) and switching up the production in a full collaboration with producer Max Martin, it’s plain that Swift has taken the feedback for her newest album. The only question was if these changes would truly bring her back to the right path. Unfortunately, that did not end up being the case.
A hallmark of Swift’s music has long been her lyricism. In past albums such as self-written “Speak Now” and pandemic albums “folklore” and “evermore,” she was praised as a storyteller through sound. However, the lyricism on “The Life of a Showgirl” simply falls flat.
Tracks such as “Honey” and “Wi$h Li$t” are painfully on-the-nose.
“Honey” plainly states, “You can call me honey if you want, because I’m the one you want.”
Compared to lyrical execution on “The Tortured Poets Department” and even her debut album at 16, this sort of lyricism reads like a childhood nursery rhyme. It detracts from otherwise interesting production, making such tracks unbearable.
Not to mention the awkward usage of slang in tracks such as “Eldest Daughter.” I have long felt that Swift’s work is timeless, much of which owes to her refusal to incorporate fads into her lyrics. It seems that this has been thrown out the window.
“Every joke is just trolling and memes,” Swift sings in “Eldest Daughter.” “Every hot take is cold as ice.”
For such an emotional ballad about growing up, these words are starkly out of place and take the listener out of the experience. If these words make listeners cringe in 2025, it will only get worse as the song ages.
The themes of the album are also tiring for longtime fans.
In comparison to “The Tortured Poets Department,” which explored themes of growing up, heartbreak and new romance, “The Life of a Showgirl” seems to impart on listeners one sole thing: Swift is in love.
For an album reportedly about Swift’s experience on The Eras Tour, its songs rarely touch on performance. Instead, lyrics of love infiltrate every song, even the ones that aren’t supposed to be focused on it.
For example, “Eldest Daughter”—a song that, according to Swift, is meant to be focused on the struggles of eldest daughters—has needless tangents on personal romantic experiences.
The album has a few standouts, of course. The lead single, “The Fate of Ophelia,” is a catchy tune with standard Swift lyrics. It is written around the Shakespearean play “Hamlet,” making allusions to the death of Ophelia. In fact, both the song and the music video are full of literary references, a relatively new trend in Swift’s work.
Overall, though, the production of the album was a highlight. Swift’s last collaboration with production team Max Martin and Shellback was in 2017, and the freshness in sound was much appreciated.
Even songs with bland lyricism were elevated by the variety in sound, which ranged from retro vibes to more powerful beats.
It’s a welcome reprieve from her last few albums, all of which were produced in some form by Jack Antonoff (a long-time collaborator and producer for other popular artists). It was commonly noticed by critics and casual fans alike that Antonoff seemed to use the same synths in many different songs, which led to a sense of redundancy.
That is not a problem with “The Life of a Showgirl.” Each song evokes a different feeling, giving the album a variety that shines throughout the work.
This is all to say that while “The Life of a Showgirl” glitters with the appeal of pop, new ideas and the promise of a fully-developed album, in the end, it pales in comparison to Swift’s past work. It’s clear to me that the sparkle of “Showgirl” appeal dulls when listeners observe it too closely.
