As much as her eras capture chapters in Swift\u2019s own life, they also reflect ours. So what chapter does Life of a Showgirl capture, do you reckon? Being a billionaire fianc\u00e9 with a couple of weird bones to pick?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Us trying to figure out what\u2019s going on here.<\/p>\n
LWS: I haaaaaate how bitter she sounds on this record. I get that the life of a showgirl is lonely beneath the lipstick and lace and that the best showgirl is always a diva, but girl, you are literally the richest, most powerful pop star in the world, who wrote this album while on the world\u2019s biggest-ever musical tour. Who cares what C****** x** says about you when she\u2019s had a few lines, you\u2019re literally untouchable! That\u2019s the biggest letdown for me: the number of songs where she\u2019s showing off that Matty Healy-sized chip on her shoulder. I\u2019m gonna just come out and say that \u2018CANCELLED!\u2019 is probably one of her worst releases, next to \u2018Me!\u2019<\/p>\n
AC: Did you girlboss too close to the sun??? Look, to be a Taylor Swift fan is to evolve over many years to be able to swallow the occasional clanger lyric, but that was a test for even the steeliest of Swiftie stomachs. What grated on me too is her oscillating between being a braggadocious big shot who \u201cpays the check before it kisses the mahogany grain\u201d (Quick Eze please!) while also purporting to be a humble basketball-hoop-driveway wanter who sneers at people for coveting \u201cthat yacht life\u201d and \u201cBalenci shades\u201d. Girbloss, you just spent a whole song dropping Portofino, Plaza Ath\u00e9n\u00e9e and \u201cthe best booth at Musso and Frank\u2019s\u201d! <\/p>\n
Which I think brings me to my central and perhaps extremely obvious gripe: Taylor Swift can no longer hide the fact that she is an out of touch billionaire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Taylor Swift at night one of the MCG Eras Tour shows (image: Graham Denholm \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
LWS: Which is something I never wanted to accept, no matter how many times I see her announce another TLOAS limited edition available for 48 hours at the price of your firstborn child. I think that braggadocious approach works for stars like Ariana Grande (see: \u20187 Rings\u2019), but I pictured Taylor\u2019s take on the excess of showgirl stardom to be a bit more sneering and self-deprecating (see \u201cI can read you like a magazine\u201d from \u2018Blank Space\u2019), or a bit disillusioned by it all, like \u2018The Lucky One\u2019 or \u2018Nothing New\u2019 2.0. <\/p>\n
I think the title track really captured that complexity by way of passing the baton down to Sabrina Carpenter, but why is it the only song that does that, and why is it at the end of the album? It should\u2019ve been the opener for the record, with the rest of the tracks building on that sound and narrative.<\/p>\n
AC: 100% agree, Taylor Swift herself said this was going to be an album about \u201ceverything that was going on behind the curtain\u201d during the Eras Tour, and I was genuinely excited for that. She had already given us a few morsels of backstage introspection on some of the best songs on TTPD \u2013 \u2018Clara Bow\u2019, \u2018I Can Do It With a Broken Heart\u2019 and \u2018Who\u2019s Afraid of Little Old Me?\u2019 \u2013 and I thought this would be an extended universe of that world. I was expecting something dramatic, self-reflective, theatrical and narrative-driven, but instead on TLOAS we just got\u2026 Travis Kelce\u2019s Wanger: The Musical. <\/p>\n
Even if she doesn\u2019t go anywhere near as deep as was promised, I must admit I have caught myself singing \u201ckeep it 100 on the land, the sky, the sea\u201d a lot over the last few days. What\u2019s got its hooks in you?<\/p>\n
LWS: I am truly sickened by how often I\u2019m finding myself humming the melody to \u2018Wood\u2019 already. What a hook: \u201cnever did me any good, I ain\u2019t gotta knock on wood\u201d. The production on that song is so great I can almost forgive her for comparing Travis\u2019s penis to a redwood tree. For all of the album\u2019s faults, I think the title track is a new career all-timer for Taylor: incredible narrative, incredible that she\u2019s found her match in Sabrina, thank you for the lovely bouquet. \u2018Ruin the Friendship\u2019 is another track that will stand the test of being on TLOAS and become a Taylor classic, and as someone who has a niece called Honey, that was great too. But the thing that really bugs me is that the highs are weighed down by the lows. \u2018Father Figure\u2019 is a great concept as a song (love seeing Taylor wave her dick around) but, like \u2018Actually Romantic\u2019 (which is actually really growing on me), it\u2019s just too self-pitying for where she is in her career.<\/p>\n
AC: I also love \u2018Ruin the Friendship\u2019 because it makes me cry every time, but it also feels like it is on the entirely wrong Taylor Swift album \u2013 the what-could-have-been wistfulness rings a tad false wedged between so many songs about her loved-up present day. Honestly, I really enjoy the 2000s RnB vibes of \u2018Honey\u2019 and the Trolls 2 soundtrack\/Christmas song cheer of \u2018Opalite\u2019. I went along to The Official Album Release of a Showgirl at Hoyts EntX with my friend and her 12-year-old daughter and I will say that listening to the whole album in cinema surround sound possibly does the production a few more favours (you would have loved the \u201cknock\u201d sound in \u2018Wood\u2019 sneaking up behind you).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Was it worth the $23 ticket price to see a music video 48 hours early, some behind-the-scenes stuff, and then wall-to-wall Youtube lyric videos with Taylor blowing a kiss on loop? Possibly not, but there was something moving about all coming together IRL for a big weird moment like this. There were heaps of little girls dressed up in sequins and flapper headdresses, and some people even trading friendship bracelets in the cinema. \u201cI can\u2019t remember the last time I went to the movies,\u201d a frazzled Mum next to me sighed at one point. In classic meek New Zealand style, nobody sung a word but everyone did a polite little golf clap at the end of every song.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Where has this chapter left your Swiftie status, Lyric?\u00a0<\/p>\n
LWS: The last time I truly felt so tested in my identity as a Swiftie was in July 2016, when Kim K forever changed the course of pop culture history. But we survived that and many other scandals together, so I\u2019m sure Taylor and I can survive this too (thank fuck for those 11 other albums). But I feel like the illusion of her genius has been kinda shattered for me, which is maybe ironic for someone who is also constantly writing for their career and knows that you can\u2019t produce your best work when you\u2019re always leaving the tap running.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The old Taylor can\u2019t come to the phone right now etc<\/p>\n
I really hope that from here, she takes a well-deserved sabbatical, has her dream wedding, pops out a few babies to have the whole block looking like Travis, and comes back to us in 2-4 years with a wisened POV \u00e0 la Joni Mitchell coming back to \u2018Both Sides Now\u2019. From win and lose and still somehow, realise she didn\u2019t really know the career ramifications of singing about Travis\u2019 penis at all.<\/p>\n
Which makes me think, can one bad album truly unsettle an entire empire? It\u2019s one thing for me to admit the album is mid, but will the tide turn against Taylor forevermore?<\/p>\n
AC: Seems like she\u2019s going to be just fine. On the drive home from the Taylor Swift movie, I turned on the radio and More FM was playing \u2018The Fate of Ophelia\u2019 while ZM was blasting \u2018Opalite\u2019. Later that night I went out for dinner for a friend\u2019s 40th and absolutely everyone was talking about the new Taylor Swift album. By the end of the day, the album had become Spotify\u2019s most-streamed album in a single day in 2025, and \u2018Ophelia\u2019 the most-streamed song in a single day in Spotify history. Just yesterday, she released four new editions of The Life of a Showgirl CD with different acoustic tracks scattered across each, as well as a limited edition sparkly cardigan boxset thing which sold out instantly. <\/p>\n
In the words of Swift herself, this empire belongs to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Taylor Swift fans wrestle with Taylor Swift\u2019s polarising new album, The Life of a Showgirl. Alex Casey:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[492,156,157,111,139,69,1066,6456,51191,37241],"class_list":["post-62680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-comments-enabled","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pop-culture","tag-taylor-swift","tag-the-eras-tour","tag-the-life-of-a-showgirl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}