Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl Review

The Life of a Showgirl exposes a pop icon with nothing left to say.

Taylor Swift’s twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, was meant to mark a triumphant return to pop. Recorded in Sweden with Max Martin and Shellback, fans were hopeful for a return to the sounds of 1989 or Reputation. What they got instead is a hollow spectacle. The Life of a Showgirl feels like the work of a pop star so cocooned by her own success that she no longer has any baring on reality.

Swift’s latest is a strangely joyless record, a love letter drained of heart. Despite the title’s promise of sequins, excess and theatrical flourish, much of it plays out like a tired monologue. The album’s central theme of a weary, misunderstood performer, might once have resonated but at this stage of Swift’s career, it doesn’t hold any significant truth. Swift continues to position herself as both the victor and the victim, a billionaire still finding new ways to feel wronged.

The album begins with ‘The Fate of Ophelia,’ a sparkly, mid-tempo number that attempts to summon a Shakespearean tragedy through polished pop production. Its premise has potential: a showgirl saved from her own madness by love. But instead of something theatrical or daring, it lands flat. The production is pleasant and the melody serviceable, yet it feels painfully familiar. The lyrical nods to Ophelia’s demise might be clever in concept, but the emotional core never arrives.

‘Elizabeth Taylor’ follows and briefly lifts the record from its stupor. It’s the standout track, a genuinely catchy, well-produced pop song that leans into the glamour of its namesake. The metaphor of violet eyes, born from blue irises reddened by tears, is one of the album’s few truly elegant ideas. Swift’s comparison to Elizabeth Taylor, another woman scrutinised for her fame and romances, fits neatly within her world. It’s confident, melodramatic and almost works as a self-contained moment. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the only times the showgirl persona feels fully realised.

After that, the album’s sequins start to lose their shine. ‘Opalite’ is all chiming bells and stadium-safe sentimentality, a song that could soundtrack the closing scene of a mid-tier Christmas movie that went straight to DVD. Its metaphors are textbook Swift, jewels, skies and trite imagery that sounds poetic but says nothing. ‘Father Figure’ borrows from George Michael’s classic of the same name, taking aim at Scott Borchetta, the Big Machine executive who once owned Swift’s masters. There’s a flash of bite in lines like “Mistake my kindness for weakness and find your card cancelled,” but even that spark gets buried under self-congratulation. 

‘Actually Romantic’ might be the album’s most baffling and unpleasant moment. The song opens with a guitar riff that borders on plagiarism of ‘Where Is My Mind’ by the Pixies, before descending into what feels like a sneering, defensive response to Charli XCX’s Brat track ‘Sympathy is a Knife.’ Swift’s take completely misreads the original’s tone. Charli’s song wasn’t a personal attack, but a complex reflection on the ways fame pits women against each other, how insecurity festers in an industry that rewards comparison, and how difficult it can be to navigate that tension without feeling like a “bad feminist.” Swift seems to have taken it literally, recasting herself as the target of obsession rather than the product of an environment that feeds on competition. The lyric “like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse” is particularly cruel, reducing Charli to a caricature and twisting vulnerability into mockery. It feels petty, vindictive and wildly tone-deaf. Rather than rising above perceived shade, Swift uses her platform to ridicule an artist far less powerful than her. What Charli wrote with self-awareness and nuance, Swift answers with smug superiority. There’s no curiosity to understand Charli’s point of view, Swift could have responded with more grace and extended the dialogue of the topics explored in ’Sympathy Is a Knife’. Maybe we could have got another collab à la ‘Girl, so confusing’ instead we got a compassionless dig. 

By this point, The Life of a Showgirl has completely lost its thread. ‘Wi$h Li$t’ and ‘Wood’ descend into vapid territory, full of awkward sexual metaphors and corporate polish. The latter’s “His love was the key that opened my thighs” might be one of the most uncomfortable lyrics of her career and this song also has the lyrics, “The curse on me was broken by your magic wand.” ‘CANCELLED!’ toys with self-awareness, flirting with the idea of the misunderstood woman torn apart by public perception. But Swift’s take on cancel culture is so self-pitying it borders on satire. “Did you girlboss too close to the sun?” Is just cringe. By the time the penultimate track ‘Honey’ arrives, the album’s energy for the most part is gone. The closing track, ‘The Life of a Showgirl,’ tries to tie the album together but ends up feeling like another weary reflection on fame. The only thing that gives it any pulse is Sabrina Carpenter, her voice brings a warmth and dynamism, breathing life into lyrics that would otherwise fall flat. Carpenter’s playful inflection highlight just how static Taylor’s delivery has become.

Swift could have made this record a cinematic pop reinvention, something closer to glitz and glam of Moulin Rouge! or Chicago. Instead, it’s all surface, an empty spectacle. There are flashes of the songwriter who once captured the awkward intensity of young love, but they’re buried under layers of self-righteousness. This album is the equivalent of fast food, no nutritional value. The nuggets taste good, but the rest of it is flavourless and once you’ve finished eating, you feel sick and instantly regret your decision. Ten years later, that same food is sat in a museum in Iceland untouched by mould and decay because it was so sterile to begin with. The track ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ is a highlight but is overshadowed by the hollowness of rest of the songs on the album. The Life of a Showgirl is a strange, uninspired pop product that tries to cloak itself in themes of obnoxious new love, whispers of Shakespearean tragedy and the tribulations of fame. The irony is that in lifting the curtain and reaching for depth, showing the full face of the performer beneath the spotlight, Swift only reveals how little there is left to see.