Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” is already on track to sell more than 3.5 million copies—including more than one million on vinyl—in only its first week of being released. It also secured the top 12 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, a first-ever achievement. Ever since Taylor Swift went on her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s podcast “New Heights” and announced her new album “The Life of a Showgirl,” fans, including me, have been anticipating the latest releases from her. In total, there were 12 new songs with a listening time of 41 minutes and 40 seconds. All of the songs are very different from her last album, “The Tortured Poets Department.” They are all much more upbeat and showy; they have a sense of flamboyance that is unlike her more recent works. The beat of every song had me feeling intoxicated by the music and rhythm throughout the whole listening experience. I find myself listening to “CANCELLED!” the most out of any song on the album because of its ominous feeling and catchy beat that automatically made the song stick in my head.
There are some controversies to this album as well: in one article published by the Rolling Stones, Mel Wang makes her opinion very clear, “Although the album’s 12 songs are sonically of Swift’s past caliber, the lyrics reveal a side of the pop star that her hardcore fans may call ‘raw’ or ‘vulnerable,’ but that I will call ‘clumsy,’ ‘foolhardy,’ and, at times ‘Tumblr-core cringe.’ Another makes a mention of its lack of depth, and how it’s very unlike Swift’s classy lyricism. In my opinion, the idea of Taylor Swift is more heavily anticipated than her work. We hear her name and think of a pop princess who dominates the music industry, but she really is just a person who has her own musical ups and downs, like with every artist.
The album has its own flashiness and distinctiveness that could be hard to notice at first, but after several listens, I found myself understanding the style of this album and its themes. The album reflects her life during the Eras Tour, which was her 21-month-long tour, showcasing both her public success and the more introspective, behind-the-scenes experiences of her more private life.
Sabrina Carpenter was the only featured artist on this album, in the title track “The Life of a Showgirl” though the lyrics were not my favorite, and I found myself becoming bored, their voices flowed very cohesively together and portrayed how show life isn’t just all glitter and glam, that some hardships and other struggles aren’t as advertised to an average person about show life.
Swift perfectly ended the album with her title track, “The Life of a Showgirl,” and she did so by putting actual crowd noise from her last show of the Eras Tour in Vancouver, Canada, into the song. Overall, I will definitely be adding the new album to my playlists and listening over and over again. “The Life of a Showgirl” was a fabulous twelfth studio album to add to Taylor Swift’s discography.
