Album Review: Taylor Swift - The Life Of A Showgirl

I find it amusing that Taylor Swift named her new album "The Life Of A Showgirl", because there is an interesting parallel to the movie "Showgirls". Namely, you don't want to look at either one of them, but you also can't look away. At the time, it was a right-of-passage for anyone who had seen "Saved By The Bell" to at least find out about "Showgirls", because the idea of TV's Jesse Spano going full-frontal in one of the worst movies ever made was the sort of fever-dream you would be embarrassed to tell your friends about. And yet it was real.

Taylor Swift now has that same level of cringe rubbernecking to her career, in that she has reached the level of cultural saturation where you wouldn't be blamed for wanting her life to turn out to be as much of a bomb as "Showgirls".  That isn't to be mean and actually wish unhappiness on her, but schadenfreude is a very real thing, and barely being able to turn on a TV without being inundated with her being a billionaire coming off using the money from the biggest tour in history to buy back her recordings, and now walking into a blissful (for now) marriage, is just too much good luck going to one person for the bitter among us to handle.

Taylor asks "what would you get for the girl who has everything?" on "Elizabeth Taylor". As it turns out, the answer to the question is a good idea for the next era of her career. That's what this album turns out to be, as teaming up with Max Martin instead of Jack Antonoff turns out to be the best thing Taylor could have done, because it solves the biggest problem she has had for the last four record cycles; she wasn't fun anymore.

"Folklore" was never supposed to be fun, or a pop record, so that one is understandable. "Midnights" was still a pop album at heart, so the move into drab and dour sounds was an odd juxtaposition of Taylor's desire to be a serious songwriter and her lack of skill in being one. As her lyrics became more profane, her songs became less engaging. There was still a hit here and there like "Anti-Hero", but by and large those records came and went without songs that are going to endure like "Love Story" or "Red" or "Style" or "Blank Space". Hollywood never learned the lesson that movies don't get better with more utterances of "fuck", and Taylor didn't learn albums don't either.

Eight of the twelve songs on this record carry the 'explicit language' warning, which is unnecessary, because there's no forgetting she's a 'grown ass woman' at this point. What bothers me more, though, is that she is suffering from what I call 'Slayer Syndrome'. She used to write songs that were smarter than her age, with allusions to literature or sturdy metaphors. Now, she often writes as if this really is her diary, listing off pop culture references as if we're on the home page of a streaming app that's trying to get you to watch their latest money dump. I did a double-take cringe when I heard her sing "I can make deals with the devil because my dick's bigger." Oh, Taylor, no. Just no. The first rule of 'Big Dick Club' is that if you have to talk about Big Dick Club, you're not really a member.

We want honesty from our music, but there's an irony that when you get too specific about what inspired you, the language makes the song less relatable. We can't put ourselves into the situation when the details are foreign to our lives. And to phrase it like Taylor would; Who the fuck can relate to Taylor Swift anymore?

On "Wi$h Li$t" (Ok, this spelling makes me think about taking back what I said about her being an adult), she sings about telling the world to "leave us the fuck alone" because all she needs is her man. Frankly, the sentiment rings so very hollow when Taylor puts herself in the public eye in the ways she does. If she really wanted us to leave her alone to enjoy her life with her fiance, she wouldn't be writing lines like "his love was the key to open my thighs". That is baiting us, and it feels like it's done as an excuse to later hate on us for reacting exactly how she wanted us to. Look, Taylor likes the attention, and that's fine... as long as she doesn't try to tell us she doesn't. People who don't want attention don't write songs tracing the precise GPS route that took them to Pound Town.

On the closing title track, she sings that she's "addicted to the hustle". It's nice to hear she is self-aware, and that is the single line in the entire album that gives me the most respect for her. Taylor does work hard at being the biggest pop star in the world. She writes and records tirelessly, and she doesn't coast on five-year cycles when she obviously could. Maybe we get too much of her at times, but that's not worse than being the kind of artist who gives you the impression only makes albums because they need to keep their career afloat.

So what of this album, then? "The Life Of A Showgirl" is the most fun Taylor Swift album since "1989", bar none. It's not a full-on return to 'sunny days pop', but there is a spark to these songs that has been missing for a while. Perhaps playing all the eras during her tour reminded Taylor that she became 'Taylor Swift' by making fun music. Perhaps being happy makes all the difference. Regardless of the reason, the result is the same; I kind of like this record. No, not as much as "1989", because her writing these days is a fountain pen torrent of ink getting smeared by my left-handed wishful editing. Still, this is definitely better than "Lover", "Evermore", "Midnights", and "The Tortured Poets Department". The emo in me might still like "Folklore" better, but that doesn't matter much. The point is that Taylor is close enough to being back in my good graces, at least enough that I'll curse the Chiefs being on my screen every Sunday, not her.

To return to my starting metaphor, this album is not "Showgirls". This is not Taylor's musical version of gratuitous nudity for the sake of shocking the audience. This is an attempt at artistic nudity, but it comes in a vehicle that doesn't quite hold up, so it's a nude scene that will far outlive the movie it comes from. Being the best of Taylor in a while still doesn't make it the best of Taylor overall.

Does any of this make sense?