Showgirl Season

Taylor Swift's twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl is devoid of creativity and is 41 minutes of bland instrumentals and weak lyricism. The global superstar continues her downward trend of albums, as The Life of a Showgirl is Swift's weakest album yet.

Cash Over Critics

Firstly, I want to preface that I am not an avid Taylor Swift hater. Sure, I did not like her purposeful use of alternative variants to block certain artists like Billie Eilish and Charli xcx from hitting #1 on the USA and UK album charts, but that hasn't impacted how I view her music. In fact, I enjoyed her albums folklore and evermore, along with her older hits from the late 2000's and the 2010's. However, since her release of the sister albums, the quality of her albums has begun to drop significantly after each release, as it seems that she has become more concerned with the amount of money she can make instead of the quality of the projects she releases.

Certain users online have claimed that Swift's tactics are capitalistic, greedy, and chart-obssesed. I agree on some level, but I opine that if other artists could release as many versions that Swift does, they would, but they are not popular enough to do so. However, I criticize that Swift appears to have transitioned her fans into "cash cows." Her immense fame and prominence has resulted in millions of people being willing to buy whatever new variants Swift releases, no matter how good the music is, which Swift seems to have exploited.

The Life of an Out of Touch Popstar

Swift, who is currently 35 years old, doesn't seem to have evolved her lyrical style as she has grown into the industry. The Life of a Showgirl equivocates to that teacher who we have all had. The one who desperately tries to use modern lingo and trends to appear more relatable, but comes off looking corny and out of touch, instead of modern and cool. This is evident through lyrics like "Did you girl-boss too close to the sun?" and "we all dressed up as wolves and we looked fire," which poorly attempt to relate to Swift's younger audience, and dramatically weaken her lyricism prowess on this record.

However, the album is not all boring. "The Fate of Ophelia" was surprisingly interesting. The catchy pop song that alludes to William Shakespeare's play Hamlet as Swift notes that her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce, will save her from the same fate that Ophelia in the play faced, which was a descent into madness and ultimately death. A fresh instrumental and fun chorus have brought me back to this song a few times, but the same cannot be said for the rest of the album.

"Elizabeth Taylor" and "The Life of a Showgirl" were listenable and were among the better songs on the record, but were not amazing and I have yet to revisit them.

"Wood," "Eldest Daughter," "Ruin The Friendship," and "CANCELLED!" were terrible. I'm not trying to seem too harsh or hate without cause, but the songs were so boring, and honestly they were borderline offensive. I think I could've lived the rest of my life without a description of Kelce's "wood" and certain lyrics on "CANCELLED!" were so out of touch that it was shocking.

Swift's "disstrack" on Charli xcx "Actually Romantic," is tacky and is not a good look. Especially, when you factor in that the song that allegedly prompted this, "Sympathy is a knife" which was rumored to be about Swift, was not a diss, but rather Charli xcx noting how she is jealous of Swift for her successes and how she wishes it could be her as well, making Swift look even more out of touch than the album already made her out to be.

While, The Life of a Showgirl broke an insane amount of records and further cemented Swift as the most commercially successful artist of our generation, the album was lackluster on almost every front and was overall a disappointment. I hope Swift does not expect a fifth Album of the Year win at the Grammys because this album would not deserve it.

My Rating of The Life of a Showgirl

Top 3: "The Fate of Ophelia," "Elizabeth Taylor," and "Wi$h Li$t"

Bottom 3: "Actually Romantic," "Wood," and "CANCELLED!"

Overall Rating: 63/100