Taylor Swift: "Father Figure"

"For the past few years, it's felt like Taylor Swift's goal has been expansion at any cost. For longtime fans, the price of Swift becoming the world's biggest pop star is clear: On The Life of a Showgirl, her 12th album, the pinpoint specificity that defined her best work has all but evaporated, replaced by flaccid podcast-related sexual innuendo and clunker words like "legitly.""

""Father Figure" throws the shift into stark relief. Picking up on ideas of fame, power, and respectability that she explored to great effect on 's "The Last Great American Dynasty" and The Tortured Poets Department's "Clara Bow"-a thread that leads all the way back to "The Lucky One," from Red-"Father Figure" is a rare flash of reality amid Showgirl 's cartoony odes to tradwifery and Gucci-clad bad girls."

"It is, arguably, Swift's most straightforward appraisal of her own power: Casting herself as a steely mafioso, she sings about the financial benefit of being even a minor player in the Swiftiverse and casually bemoans the fact that, no matter how much money you might make for someone, you can never guarantee their fealty. "Father Figure" works because-unlike so many of Swift's songs about broken friendships or business partnerships-any bitterness is hidden many layers deep,"

Taylor Swift has pursued expansion, and On The Life of a Showgirl, her twelfth album, trades the pinpoint specificity of earlier work for broad, often clumsy pop gestures. The album resorts to podcast-related sexual innuendo and awkward colloquialisms like "legitly," diluting emotional precision. "Father Figure" contrasts with the rest, revisiting themes of fame, power, and respectability connected to earlier songs such as "The Last Great American Dynasty" and "Clara Bow." The song frames Swift as a mafioso-like figure commenting on financial leverage and unreliable loyalty, pairing biting humor with chilly, synth-tinged production that evokes Beach House and Carly Rae Jepsen. Fan focus on Easter eggs overlooks the song's musical and lyrical craft.

Read at Pitchfork