Taylor Swift’s new album balances glitter with grit

With The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift set out to do the opposite of her previous record, The Tortured Poets Department. Critics had called that sprawling 31-track project “unrestrained” and “imprecise,” and Swift herself admitted it was a “data dump.” This time, she wanted precision: a lean, 12-track pop record where every beat and lyric fit “like a perfect puzzle.”

When Swift announced that music industry legends Max Martin and Shellback were producers on her 12th studio album, fans wondered whether this might herald a repeat of her 2014 smash-hit album 1989. The duo helped craft that album’s glittering, synth-pop hits, including “Blank Space,” “Style” and “Wildest Dreams” and guided Swift’s transformation from awkward and endearing country sweetheart to New York It girl. For many fans, the album is her best work. When Swift said that her goal this time was to write songs with “upbeat,” “infectious” melodies, comparisons were inevitable.

These comparisons did not inspire me with confidence. 1989 is boring and shallow. Swift’s virtue lies not in her pop persona but in her songwriting, a craft she nurtured on her indie-adjacent pandemic albums, folklore and evermore – the records that convinced skeptics that maybe, just maybe, Swift possessed rare musical talent.

Fortunately, Showgirl is conceptually mature and compelling – a victorious celebration of love, an examination of the contradictions of fame and a feisty settling of scores, although it is not as lyrically polished as folklore and evermore. But perhaps that’s just the curse of pop.

The opening track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” is a return to form. As on her early hit “Love Story,” where Swift gave Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers a happy ending, she again draws on classic tragedy – this time comparing herself to Hamlet’s doomed Ophelia and celebrating the fact that she has been saved from meeting the same fate: “If you’d never come for me / I might’ve drowned in the melancholy,” she sings. The song, of course, is about her fiancé, Travis Kelce: “Late one night / You dug me out of my grave and / Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia.” Swift has always been shameless about how much she loves love.

On “Wi$h Li$t,” Swift pokes fun at people who “want those three dogs that they call their kids.” She sings, “I just want you / Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you.” Kelce has got her “dreaming about a driveway with a basketball hoop.” Swift wrote Showgirl while on the biggest tour of her life, which spanned five continents – and all the while, she was dreaming about a life in the suburbs.

It’s a curious paradox, one that exists in the album’s exploration of fame. Swift loves and hates celebrity. She wants what really matters, but at the same time, she just can’t bring herself to suppress her ambition. “What could you possibly get for the girl who has everything and nothing all at once? / Babe, I would trade the Cartier for someone to trust (just kidding),” she sings on “Elizabeth Taylor.” The closing track, “The Life of a Showgirl,” ends with a victory lap: all the “bitches / Who wish I’d hurry up and die / But, I’m immortal now, baby dolls / I couldn’t if I tried.”

The album meditates on balancing a normal human life with a superhuman legacy and persona. Swift asserts her right and desire to have both fame and family, immortality through her art and her future children.

Despite her maturity, she isn’t above being catty. “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave,” she sings on “Actually Romantic,” allegedly about brat -singer Charli XCX: “And I know you think it comes off vicious / But it’s precious, adorable / Like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse.” I, for one, love the snark. Is this simply a personal feud, or a battle of celebrity archetypes (and their fans)? Brat vs Boring Barbie? Charli co-opted the word “brat” last summer to mean someone who is confident, free-spirited, rebellious, cool, sexy. Swift isn’t “brat.” She’s too earnest. But that’s her strength.

The most surprising song is “Ruin the Friendship,” which tells the story of a crush in high school and Swift’s regrets when this friend passed away. “When I left school I lost track of you / Abigail called me with the bad news / Goodbye, and we’ll never know why / … I whispered at the grave / ‘Should have kissed you anyway.’” It’s Swift at her best – merging tragedy with a beat and transforming a specific and personal memory into a lesson on love and -mortality.

The Life of a Showgirl balances glitter with grit. It’s not a flawless record. “Wood” is awkward, “Eldest Daughter” is opaque and unengaging; darker cuts such as “Father Figure” and “CANCELLED!” will divide listeners. The songwriting doesn’t reach the poetic heights of folklore, evermore or The Tortured Poets Department.

But such tracks as the cinematic “The Fate of Ophelia” and the joyous “Opalite” alongside “Ruin the Friendship” prove that pop precision and personal storytelling can coexist. It’s an album that has enough to please both fans and casual listeners. And it’s better than 1989.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.