Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, is a fine effort with all the elements that give her music the Tay-Tay stamp: Witty, simple and, at the same time, dramatically intense. The 35-year-old’s album is arriving weeks after her engagement to her American football star boyfriend, Travis Kelce. She wants everyone to know about her beau rescuing her from “the melancholy” (The Fate of Ophelia).
If albums had personalities, this would be a “funnier” one. “It was like coming off Tortured Poets Department. The character attributes I was highlighting in that writing process were much more serious and sensitive, and introspective, and oftentimes more earnest and stoic, and the characteristics of a poet. This one was like showgirls are mischievous, fun, scandalous, sexy, fun, flirty, hilarious,” Taylor Swift told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1.
The harmony portrayed by Swift and Kelce is something the world needs amidst all kinds of uncertainties. The news of their engagement may not have been very surprising, for the couple have been dating for two years.
Taylor Swift celebrates with Travis Kelce after the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championship Game in January 2025. Picture: Getty Images
Yet, it’s a joyous moment that proves love ultimately wins. It is also a comeback of an old pairing of a beautiful female star and a successful male athlete. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were the couple America took pride in. It’s another matter that the marriage didn’t last.
“When I met Travis, I started to feel a little bit like I could be a person who could have romantic whims and have these dreams. And the song Wish List is like that chorus, like you were just talking about the verses, which were so fun and funny to write, but it gets very sincere in the chorus,” Swift told Apple Music. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Happy Gilmore, but he has this happy place where he goes into this utopia of this is exactly what he would want, and this is where he escapes to mentally in times of stress, pressure, anxiety or chaos. And that chorus of that song is me just describing what my happy place is.”
The 12th studio album also has a bit of settling scores, clearly heard on Father Figure, a determined effort to dismantle a person who tried to leverage power and experience over her. She told The Zane Lowe Show about how tough the life of a showgirl really is.
“That’s the kind of toughness that I have tried to aspire to for the last two and a half years of my life that I’ve been preparing for and being on this very exhaustive tour. But there’s also this kind of cultural thing now where we sort of talk about softness and sadness, and these feelings of being hurt and feeling like…. Those feelings, we talk about them, but we’re not allowed to express wanting love, wanting these things in life. There’s this aversion to actually seeming like you could need anything or that you could need or want anyone. You’re supposed to accidentally have love. You’re supposed to accidentally end up on holiday,” said Swift.
Musically, the album can be stacked next to Reputation. It also captures the spirit of her Eras Tour. It is, in some ways, more compelling than Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department.
“Making this album was really something I’ve been wanting to do for my entire career, because I have always wanted to have fun in this type of way. To have fun, to exhibit mischief and be flirty, and fun, and make jokes, and get to have that side of my personality. That’s a huge part of my personality. A lot of people who are friends with me, and when we meet in person and stuff, people realise that, oftentimes, I get so serious or I’m really known for a lot of my sad songs, my cathartic songs or breakup songs or whatever because I love to write those things, but that’s not the place I’m in in my life. So what I have left behind is something that really exhibits who I am in this moment, pays homage to the most important moment of my life, which was the exuberance and electricity of The Eras Tour,” Swift said.
She also told Zane Lowe: “I’m so proud of this songcraft. I’m so proud of these melodies and these lyrics and these stories, and going in and out of character and kind of playing with your style speak. It’s interesting, I oftentimes have a recorder going while we’re writing, and me and Max [Martin] and Johan [Schuster (Shellback)], our vibe is very like a stream of consciousness. ‘You sing this line, I sing the next line. Wait, wait, wait, wait, what did you say two minutes ago? That second note was better in that. Can we go back? Run it back. What did you say there?’”
And as always, her love for the Voice Memos app gets reiterated. “I actually just put this out on the iTunes as Voice Memos from when we were writing, because you actually get to hear us come up with these ideas, stream of consciousness, in the moment, in real time, and it’s pretty wild.”
