Just after the fanfare from the renowned Eras Tour faded, Taylor Swift returned to the spotlight Oct. 3 with her 11th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” Brimming with commentary on her fame, friends and foes, Swift masterfully gives fans a look at her life beyond the glamour and grandeur of the stage and screen.
“The Life of a Showgirl” is a career-defining portrait of everything that Swift does best encapsulated into one album. It combines the wonder and whimsy of her early works with the edginess seen in later works such as “reputation” and “Midnights.”
As Swift said in an Instagram post, “If you thought the show was wild, perhaps you should come and take a look behind the curtain.”
While producers Max Martin and Shellback contribute to the album’s quintessential pop sound, it is not spared from Swift’s poetic lyricism and storytelling. The album features the best of both worlds — catchy, glitter gel pen pop melodies with witty lyrics that dig far deeper than the surface.
The lead single, “The Fate of Ophelia,” draws inspiration from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” Ophelia’s death in the play is a result of her descent into madness following an unstable relationship with Hamlet. Swift sings of how her relationship with her lover, presumably her fiancé and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, saved her from a similar fate.
Similar songs such as “Opalite” and “Honey” express Swift’s appreciation for her newfound love with Kelce and how she has finally obtained the type of love she had wanted for so long.
Other tracks also reference this desire for genuine love while discussing materialism and the cost of fame, a battle Swift knows all too well.
In “Elizabeth Taylor,” Swift expresses how difficult it is to create genuine connections amid the superficiality of the public eye: “Oftentimes, it doesn’t feel so glamorous to me.”
Track 5 on each of Swift’s albums is the most vulnerable and emotionally charged, and “Eldest Daughter” is no different. Swift discusses the inauthenticity she feels when trying to seem cool. Keeping with the showgirl theme, it considers the topic of performativity but on a micro level.
Additionally, no Swift album is complete without a diss track or two. “Actually Romantic” and “CANCELLED!” speak out against her critics and prove that success is the best revenge.
In “Father Figure,” Swift sings about reclaiming her masters earlier this year, clapping back at her former record label by proving that she can take care of herself and her own work.
“It’s a very different way of using the idea of a father figure to kind of talk about power, power structures and the flipping of the power dynamics,” Swift said in an interview with BBC Radio.
Finally, the title track featuring Sabrina Carpenter ties the album’s themes together. The two collaborate to sing about how women in entertainment are often misunderstood as much as they are adored.
The final chorus spins the song in a positive light with the lyric: “I’m immortal now.”
