The Life of a Showgirl… Culturally Flopped
When Taylor Swift announced the release of TLOAS in early August, the album title at face value struck me with wonder. Was she going for a burlesque sound? How would a self-described country bumpkin-turned international pop star implement that and make it sound good? The album’s art appeared to portray Swift as a resin-dipped Barbie surrounded by jewels, because diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and this is the life of a showgirl.
First and foremost, fans and haters alike sensed her tone-deafness for the current state of economic and political affairs in the world, paired with the strange timing of her album and her engagement to Travis Kelce. As a self-proclaimed mastermind, fans speculate that Swift and Kelce decided to enmesh her album release, their engagement, and the Kelce brothers’ podcast, New Heights, to garner attention for all of their business endeavors.
Aside from the coincidental timing of it all, many music savants chose to look past the capitalist duo’s rumored business plan and tune in to TLOAS on October 3rd. Boy, did people listen! Did they like it? To put it plainly: No.
Social media users speculate that Swift, for the majority of the album, is “reheating nachos” of the pop girlies who are currently releasing bops left and right. One X user hypothesizes that Swift is trying to create another viral “Apple dance” like Charli xcx had during her 2024 BRAT summer. More on Charli xcx later…
The bottom line from many listeners is that TLOAS is not the cultural zeitgeist of the 2020s. The album’s lack of originality is painfully obvious, and therefore doesn’t truly offer anything new to the current music landscape. Listeners speculate that many of the tracks are inspired by several current and past pop stars and their musical branding, including Sabrina Carpenter’s witty, risqué wordplay. This speculative inspiration is most evident in Swift’s song, “Wood,” which pays homage to Travis Kelce’s… anatomy.
The Life of a Cash-Grabber: Sales Do Not Equal Critical Acclaim
Usually, metrics often speak to an album’s cultural success. How many streams did the album get on Spotify and Apple Music? What was the number of physical and digital copies sold? Who and how many people are talking about it?
In Taylor Swift’s case, her cult fanbase ensures that even before listening to one of her albums, she will take the top spot in the music world every time. When music critics do their jobs and rightfully critique a Swift album, they are met with vicious reprisal from fans, which ultimately scares the same critics back into an opinionless corner. Pitchfork has received hate from Swifties in the past and has seemingly steered clear of any harsh critiques of the pop star… until TLOAS.
So, if music critics and an innumerable number of listeners have been bashing the album so relentlessly, what gives? Well, those same people are still streaming the album, and Swift often beckons her fans to purchase physical vinyls, CDs, and digital copies of her albums before their releases under the guise of “limited edition,” “48 hours only!” scarcity tactics. As of today, Taylor Swift and her team have released nearly 30 different “variants” of TLOAS on vinyl; Akin to Ash from Pokémon, Swifties gotta catch ‘em all. So they open their wallets happily and await their USPS delivery drivers like it’s Christmas morning. Hey, no judgment! Back in the Bieber-fever days, my 10-year-old self shared a similar hobby with current-day Swifties.
To tie up the lacking cultural impact of TLOAS in a neat bow, Defector writer Kelsey McKinney states, “There is very rarely money in trying to make something that matters to you,” so Swift opted for money over artistry.
Swift Infantilizes and Coddles Her Swifties, and It Makes Them Parasocially Obsessed
A large portion of TLOAS hate is rooted in Taylor Swift’s romantic past with actor Joe Alwyn and the albums she wrote while in a relationship with him. The common consensus among dedicated Swifties and casual listeners is that her sister albums, Folklore and Evermore, are together her magnum opus. Since the Swift-Alwyn split, people believe that Swift’s picture-esque lyricism on both albums was attributed to Alwyn’s inspiration and co-writing under his pen name, William Bowery.
Swifties, like many other members of different standoms, hold parasocial connections to their idols. Taylor Swift is more involved in her fan base than many other artists today, and even drops little Easter eggs in her press tours for her very perceptive fans to pick up on. Swift, intentionally or not, nurtures these already existing parasocial connections and makes out like a bandit on the charts and in her wallet. To her defense, it is not a pop star’s job to use their own discretion and tread lightly with their fan bases; an involved artist is a good artist. Even still, there’s something to be said about TLOAS’s reception, positive or negative, and the root of its criticism or praise.
Swifties are divided concerning Swift’s love life. On the one hand, they speculate that Joe Alwyn’s tortured-poet exterior is likely why Taylor wrote good, heartwrenching, painful music, even while still acknowledging that he emotionally hurt their idol. On the other hand, they realize that Swift’s musical integrity and quality have dipped since forming a relationship with Kelce, but it’s all fine and dandy so long as she’s happy. The moral dilemma is something like this: “Do we want Taylor to be happy or do we want good music?”
Unrelatability is Fatal, and Many Swifties Are Out for the Count
Swift has built a persona reflective of a woman unapologetically herself, in love, while still being a childless cat lady who writes about the everyday musings of life and relationships. Now that Swift’s persona has shifted from whimsical to NFL showgirl, fans are feeling that shift drip into her music.
That, paired with flexing a several-hundred-thousand-dollar engagement ring and flying private jets nearly everywhere, fans aren’t seeing what they used to see in their idol.
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In addition to the unrelatability factor, Swift’s rumored diss track about Charli xcx hasn’t helped her image. Charli xcx released her song “Sympathy is a knife” on her 2024 album, BRAT, which is rumored to be about xcx’s insecurities brought about by Taylor Swift. xcx opened for the artist on Swift’s Reputation tour, and years later, was rumored to be in the same social circle as Swift during her alleged relationship with xcx’s fiancé’s bandmate, Matty Healy from The 1975. In Swift’s rumored diss track, “Actually Romantic,” she suggests xcx has an affinity for white powdered substances and thinks it's “romantic” that she lives rent-free in xcx’s head. xcx fans claim that, for a profound lyricist, Swift cannot pick up on the nuance xcx’s “Sympathy is a knife” portrays about women being pitted against each other in a competitive, sexist industry. Now, fans are second-guessing Swift’s feminist beliefs, too.
Even with all of this, it should always come down to the music. They say to separate the art from the artist and judge them solely on talent. The Life of a Showgirl is, at best, sub-par. The album’s “variants” and artistic “inspirations” from other musicians, paired with her personal life and shifting image, are just extra meat to hold onto when critiquing TLOAS. These factors offer fans context for why the album might be subpar.
Taylor Swift is an immensely talented and business-savvy artist who knows how to play the entertainment game. Is The Life of a Showgirl some sophisticated performance art that’s going under all of our noses, or did Swift really think that 28 versions of a vinyl and an overpriced, glorified lyric video at the movie theater was a good idea? Will fans continue down this path and stand on their belief that Swift has become “rotten right to the core,” or will they “come back stronger than a ‘90s trend?” Only time and several more record cycles will tell.
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