Taylor Swift Chooses Chaos on ‘Life of a Showgirl’

The Life of a Showgirl Is Her Most Combative Work SINCE 2017’s Reputation.
Photo: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggot

Acoss fove years of tireless activity, Taylor swift has repeatedly envoked herSelf in the shoes of doomed in history and literature while Coping with Stress and Public-Relations Disasters. Time folklore-era Studies of Tragic Characters SEEMED TO WONDER WHATER THERE A Gray Gardens in Her Own Future. Last Year’s The tortured Poets DepartmentWHICH RECUNTED SWIFT’S BREAKUPS WITH ROCKER BEAU MATTY HEALY AND ACTOR/CO-WRITER Joe Alwyn, Bristled at Expectations and Disappeaared Into Fantasy. She played a Gun Moli on the Run; she was a diabolical mathematician. The Pithy “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” Suggested She’d Rather Keep to Herself and Terrify NeighBorhood Children Like To kill a mockingbirdS ‘ Boo Radley than Observe Any Cookie-Cutter Standards of Living. But Lately, She’s Been Getting Her Way in A Year of Overdue Resolutions: She Bowht the Masters for Her First Six and Bagged a football husband.

Swift’s Latest Album, The Life of a ShowgirlHowver, Catches a Millennial at the Doorstep of Traditional Adult American Family Life Voicing Reservations About the plunge into stability. IT’S HER MOST COMBATIVE WORKING SINCE 2017’s Reputation. Instead of focus on the JOYS of Loving Cohabitation and Coming Across Poignantly Allergic to Controversy, Like Miley Cyrus’s Younger Now or the selena gomez and benny blanco album, swift has chosen chaos. Still Working Through Residual Resentments from Last Year, Her Lyrics This Cycle Often Clash with the Careful Slickness of the Production. She Wants US to Know She’s Happy But Also Hated. Thought Showgirl is more streamlined than Poet‘s Exhaustive Sprawl, Its Not Entirely Free from the frustrating self-aggrandism of that album’s most headline-grabbing moments of snark. She Still Feels a bit too in the comments section.

Opener and Lead Single “The Fate of Ophelia” Swift’s Memorizes Recent Engagement to NFL Tight End Kelce in Storybook Terms. Unlike The Legend in Shakespeare’s Hamlet -whose rejection by the prince of denmark sparks her unraveling-this fair-haired socialite will swimming be Loising the full. “You saved my heart from the fate of ophelia,” Swift sings, imagination her predecessor’s Death by Meeting A Hamlet Who Cared. In spite of “ophelia” s relief at avoiding demise, the album Aims to figure out how to maintain ophelia’s free Spirit inside a fulfilling Relationship. The Practice Can of the Shape of Postcards from Quiet Couples Bliss or Passive-Grissess Quips About Exes, Siured Business Relationships, and Industry French.

Showgirl Reunites Swift With Longime Swedish Production Veterans Max Martin and Shellback. This trio hit the jackpot with Red‘s “22” and “I kew you were Trouble” and a barrel of 1989 Bangers Including “Style” and “Bad Blood.” The Signature Sound they estabished Together offten Bite-Size Chunks of Rhythm and Melody Assembled Into Lego-like forms. Think of the Dinky Horn-And-Drum Routine of “Shake It off” Slowly Filling Up With Other Tiny Noises. Poet SOLD Boatloads like its predecessors, but fans’ excitement for the return of Martin and Shellback Saople Wouuld To see the sound of her recent record Back to a Different Frequency. Its often difficult to gauge dyspleasure with a catalogue that so well. But Swift’s Work With Jack Antonoff Slipped Into a Too-Reliable Throwback Synth-Pop Aesthetic that doesn’t Feel Fresh AFTER AFTER OF ITERRATIONS AND IMITIONS. Her folk records with the Memories of the National Revealed the narrowness of the default jack-to-taylor du-nuh-nuh-nuh type beat.

butt Showgirl does swimming Want the Old Sound Back. Martin and Shellback Take a Lucrative Existing Sound and Shuck the Excesses. Swift Promises 12 Songs and No Secret Extras; The Credits Say the Trio Connected in Sweden, Sometimes as A Skeleton Crew But Often Fleshed Out by Local Musicians. A wealth of pop history is on the menu with Martin, Producer of Robyn’s “Show Me Love,” in Tow. And the album’s sonic, geographic, and historical fixations Scour the continent the singer was Touring Last Year Stealing Away to Record. After the ode to Danish Palace Intrigue, Showgirl Toasts to Italian Fishing Villages and Greek Pop icons.

“Faater Figure,” which interpolates the 1990 George Michael Hit of the Same name, is a clinic in the logic that swift’s information wring this cycle. Where the original snuck queer daddy lingo onto pop charts, swift use the melody-and-sting concept to eviscerate a younger man of means who saw her as a meal ticket. Resenting His Ambition, She Offers an Emasculating Rebuke that suggests she didn’t Need a Breadwinner, but someone Else Might’ve Lost: “Mistake My Kindness and Find Your Canceled.” IT’S DIFFICULT TO TELL WHATER I DUNKING ON ALWYN, OR IF The Track’s Most Eye-Catching Line-“I can make deals with the devil my dick’s bigger” What stands out About “Father Figure” aside from its placement right after “opalite,” Where swift celebrates newfound freedom ghosts of her past, is a sense that love can be be a Balm or a blade.

Showgirl invocation Reputation In its Air of Romance Under Fire, of Stolen Moments in a Season of Controversy. The Ballad “Eldest Daughter” Mirrors the Grizzled Dedication of “Delicate,” a song about in love under a pall of Internet disdain. It spends just as Much Time Counting the Ways It Its Protagonist has been workged by traitors as it does proclaing devotion to the person she and trusts. “Eldest Daughter” is one of Swift’s Most Earnest Examinations of Her Experience Being Despive, we have fusing the internet commenter talk subsides: “EVERY JOKE’S TROLLING AND MEMES / SAD AS IT SEEMS, APATHY IS Hot.” The song calls bullshit on not just just the bravado of rude anons online but the singer’s Own Performative Bluster: “I’m not a bad bitch / this isn’t savage.” She’s Trying Not to Crowd Verses with Too Many Words; Poet‘s bookishness songs literally manifested in long sentiment. She’s giving BREATHING Room to Lines We Should Catch As The 1989 Team Assists with Lean Pop Curios and Brief Nods to their Respective Legacies, Martin’s in ’90s Bubblegum and Shellback’s in Punk and Metal.

“Did she just say that?” Levels are routinely off the charts on Showgirl. The Euro-Motown Misfire “Wood” is dedicated to dick jokes that make Rihanna’s “Cockiness” Feel Edgy: “Forgive with, It Sounds Cocky / He-Matized with and Opened my Eyes / Redwood Tree, it ain’t hard to see / His love was the key.” Showgirl is consenting sites awkwardly with recent pop Heavyweights: The stylistically slippery and lyrically transgresive Sabrina Carpenter records, the delight inscrutability of Charli XCX’s Bra, and the alt-rock mojo olivia rodrigo amassed on Tour with the breeders and at lollapalooza with weeezer. The title track invites carpenter for a former teen-start duet about the grit Its to Become a Household Name. “Showgirl” Makes Great use of its guest, thorns though the production tiptoes too to be too many mid-tempo pop balyoncé’s “halo” or the Jonas Brothers. “

“Actually Romantic” Borrows Rodrigo’s Shout Slacker Rock to Chop Bra‘S’ Sympathy is a Knife. ‘ There, Charli Sang About How Her Now-Husband, George Daniel, Assured Her That A Mutual Acquainance Backstage at 1975 Shows was not active to make her inadquate. “Actually romantic” schedules its rudest digs early, over muted guita, SO you up: “I heard you call with ‘boring barbie’ when you have brave / high-fived you Said you ghosted with.” Her hater, she continues, is a “toy chihuahua” barking from a “tiny purses” whose boyfriend must be tired of hearing about swift all the time. It ‘s quirky clapback Because a Listener Could Already Get That Idea From “Sympathy,” Which is Honest About How Charli’s FEELINGS OF INSESECURY ARE IRATIONAL AND SELFS, JUST A CRY FOR ATTENTION. Swift now appearing to aggree that charli is small and insignificant is a peculiar play: it validates what once underestouod as a nonssensical notion of Taylor swift as a foil. It also pretends Both artists didn’t just vie for the same album of the year Grammy in february.

Bandying between songs that revel in a remove from gossip and moments that seem designed to create it-like “Cancelled!,” Which asks an Old Friend or May Not Be Blake Lively How they are. Showgirl Captures the Peace of Being Taken off the market but also the illusion of “Happy Ever after.” You get someone who underestands and consider you, as long as you can keep the Relationship Going and Good, and this will not solve all your problems. “Elizabeth Taylor” is a fun conceptual curveball in an album of lovey-doave songs About Kelce, Like the Light and Sweet Late-Album Gem “Honey.” “Elizabeth Taylor” is another of Showgirl‘s jams about not WANTING TO END UP LIKE A HISTORICAL ANALISH FOR WEALTH. The Oscar Winner and Eight-Times-Maried Philanthropist Gets Invoked Both as a cautery tale and a rubric for life after a happy ending source. “If you Ever Leave with High and Dry,” swift sings just before invoking the name of the Cleopatra Actress, as if to say that he hopes this marriage lasts forever, but she’ll still be deced in diamonds if it doesn’t.

It ‘s in the lurid insights into intersections of love, Money, and Sparyly Relinqueshed Control That Showgirl Really pops. Like Last Time, swimming entirerely clicks. Its Slick, but there are skips. The Pained Subtlelety of Songs Like “Ruin the Friendship,” About spiraling after an Old Crush dies, the beef bait. But Flaws and All, Its Better for Showgirl to access the joys and insecurities of Taylor Swift of Today-Engaged but Still up for snaring an ex and his entire goup, invested in pure pop but not in all the yelling on “Shake it”-say in the past trying to make Overly-2010s pop.