Pop icon Taylor Swift released her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, in October. This marks the third album in a disappointing trilogy of albums she has released in the past three years. Inconsistent and uninspired, and featuring some of the worst writing of her career, The Life of a Showgirl is a monument to the bare minimum of pop music.
The album starts off promising, if a bit unadventurous. Tracks such as “The Fate of Ophelia,” “Opalite,” and “Father Figure” are very nice pop songs, even with the few lyrical missteps in the latter. The song “Wood” is also a highlight, with its on-the-nose analogies and euphemisms for Swift’s sex life.
These early instrumentals are bright and upbeat, with some expertly done guitar and drum sections from producers Max Martin and Karl “Shellback” Schuster. Aside from those four tracks, though, this Swift album is the musical equivalent of staring directly at a beige wall for 41 minutes.
The lyrics on the album take an immediate nosedive on the track “Eldest Daughter,” which sees Swift taking on her internet haters and twisting it into this tacky love song which goes over about as well as an elephant on a swan boat.
The track “Ruin The Friendship” is just as unlikeable, telling the story of Swift wanting to pursue a friend whose “girlfriend was away.” Swift describes her high school prom on the song as if she isn’t pushing 36 years old.
The track “Actually Romantic” somehow makes Swift come off even worse than the last track, acting as a sort of diss track against her contemporary, Charli XCX. The song misses the entire point of the song it’s replying to and comes off as bitter and spiteful. The only thing worse than the lyrics on this track is the instrumental, which sounds like a bad interpretation of some early 2010s alt rock.
The track “Wi$h Li$t” is some of the most comatose and uninteresting “synthpop” to have released all decade, with some generic and thoroughly uninspired lyrics about what “the haters” want from her.
“CANCELLED!” has perhaps some of the most tone-deaf lyricism of the entire project, a song in which Swift tries to act like she is some martyr of the underworld, in some kind of underground club where she hangs out with her “cancelled” friends. The song comes off as really obnoxious and frankly one of the worst she’s released, period. The song “Honey” follows with a bizarre instrumental but continues the streak of horrid lyrical choices throughout the album.
The album finishes with the title track, a stomp-clap song which tries to manufacture a triumphant moment when Swift has done nothing to earn a win on this project. The instrumental is tacky, Swift’s vapid lyrics and very average singing create an absolutely drab atmosphere which not even the album’s only feature, Sabrina Carpenter, can save.
What Taylor Swift does with The Life of a Showgirl is not only create mediocre music, but it’s the final nail in the coffin for any hope that she still cares about what she releases.
