Day 33: Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl
Album cover courtesy of Republic Records
I haven’t actually listened to Taylor Swift that much. I think I listened to Folklore and/or Evermore years ago, I listened to The Tortured Poets Department last year, and I’ve listened to some of her songs here and there. Safe to say, I’m not exactly a Swiftie.
Despite this, I’ve found myself being a bit of a Taylor Swift defender. I’ve built a strong nose for inauthentic social media activity and I saw some of the online posting around her as questionable. Then I found out that the man who famously owned her masters is part-owner of a PR company that specialises in a very specific type of ethically questionable social media campaign. Mystery solved!
Whenever a man runs an online hate campaign against a woman who has wronged him, I usually start to like that woman out of pure spite. Seldom if ever has instinct steered me wrong. So I thought maybe it’s time I give Taylor Swift’s music a proper chance and review her newest release, The Life of a Showgirl.
The album opens with “Life of Ophelia”, which seems to say that she was locked in an ivory tower ready to go insane or kill herself before she met her fiancé. That’s pretty much the gist of the album, which isn’t really that big of a surprise, given the title of the record.
I try not to read other people’s reviews before reviewing something, but I saw a few “Taylor Swift continues her poor-little-rich-girl pity party”-type headlines about the album. Frankly, why wouldn’t she write about that? Maybe it’s my recluse nature, but being Taylor Swift seems like a sad existence. Imagine having millions of people who watch your every move like it’s their full-time job, commentating on it online like it’s a sport. Genuinely, no amount of money could make me give up privacy and a normal life to the extent that she has. Why wouldn’t she be sad about it? I know I would be.
I wonder what the people who think she wallows too much for a rich person want her to write about. Presumably she can’t say anything about her day-to-day existence as a billionaire, or talk about her unique experiences as one of the most famous people on earth. The topics she’s left with seem to be her relationships and her mental health, as she hasn’t really found a way to explore much else, nor is she really allowed to.
Despite what some critics might think, I think the best parts of the album are the songs about the effects of her obscene amounts of fame, like “Elizabeth Taylor” and “CANCELLED!”. She’s famous at an almost unprecedented level and her fanbase is devoted to the point of being obsessive. The loss of privacy and the effects of being so followed and worshiped are areas where she doesn’t have many peers, I think it’s interesting to hear her perspective.
For the most ardent Swifties, there’s also ample gossipy info about her personal life and her fiancé Travis Kelce, and there’s even her first foray into singing about dicks and cocks without being too coy about it. It’s fun to hear her songs about love and marriage. I see her more as a break-up record maker, so it’s nice to hear her songs about being joyfully in love and just wanting to be left alone to enjoy her relationship.
I think what’s made Taylor so famous, and in turn what has made her fandom so parasocial, is that she writes songs that sound like they’re lifted directly from her diary. Maybe I just wish she did something different. She has pigeonholed herself. Doing something more experimental and less personal might give her the distance from her fanbase that she desperately needs.
It’s a decent pop album. I don’t mind it. It’s mostly interesting as a peek into her head and into her experiences as the Biggest Artist on Earth. I doubt I’ll listen to it much after this. It’s a 6.5/10.