Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl: All That Glitters Isn’t Gold

Photo courtesy: Britannica

We all know her– the once small-town Nashville country starlet, turned illustrious and ambitious singer-songwriter: Taylor Swift. Over the past two decades, Swift has shaped and reshaped her narrative, and what emerged from the drafts? The billion-dollar global pop sensation we can’t stop hearing about today.

Swift has proven time and time again that an inspired transformation of character can be done both naturally and iconically. From her pastel Lover to her visceral folklore albums, she has pioneered seamless methods in expressing her evolving identity across albums and eras. 

At exactly midnight on October 3rd, we saw Swift’s most recent creative metamorphosis, as she released her highly anticipated 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. In a very showgirl fashion, during the European leg of her wildly successful Era’s Tour, Swift reportedly flew to and from Sweden to develop her album with former collaborators Max Martin and Shellback. 

The album concept surrounds Taylor’s tumultuous-at-times-rewarding-at-times relationship with stardom, while interweaving cheeky allusions to her bond with Travis Kelce, her soon-to-be husband. “It just comes from the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in my life. And so that effervescence has come through on this record,” Swift exclaimed. 

Yet, behind the glitzy facade, the 14-time Grammy winner gives us a glimpse into what goes on backstage, and the unseen, yet ever-present toll that show business takes on celebrities. 

Swift’s acknowledgment that, “[being publicly sincere] is not really what our culture rewards” lays the foundation beneath the theatrical surface of The Life of a Showgirl. Deeply evocative of her personal experiences, the album unveils the underlying adversities that female performers face in a culture where retaining an unblemished public image is praised and imperfection is stigmatized. 

With impossibly high standards propelled by the media’s infatuation with flawlessness, Swift emphasizes the strife that comes with being a showgirl: the spotlight’s always shining onstage, while makeup goes runny behind the curtains.

Unsurprisingly, in the process of abandoning the mold that society has forced most artists into, she has welcomed a fresh stream of both commendation and backlash. 

Despite those appreciative of Swift’s refreshingly honest approach to her music, others have noticed the unmistakable regression of the quality of her lyrics and the awkward innuendo scattered across her songs. 

As an artist once hailed a ‘lyrical genius’, critics and even die-hard Swifties have been forced to recognize the 35-year-old’s flimsy, borderline embarrassing stab at sprinkling subtle Gen-Z terminology throughout her songs. From lines such as, “Did you girl-boss too close to the sun,” to “Every joke’s just trolling and memes,” The Life of a Showgirl certainly tests some interesting linguistic choices. 

Regardless of the contentions surrounding her newest album, with Taylor perched atop the throne of her untrumpable music empire, and the cultish, aggressively loyal throng of supporters she’s amassed, there’s no doubt she knows exactly what she’s doing. 

Ultimately, if Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl tells us anything, it’s that blindly chasing the ideals of strangers places a cap on authenticity, and that, in the end, it’s the person beneath the sequins and rhinestones that shines most, with or without the spotlight.