Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl Is All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go: Review

"Taylor Swift has all the neuroticism of the deeply self-disciplined. Like Michael Jordan, she dominates her peers, charms when she wants to charm, and mostly hides 1 the kind of competitive streak that nice people swerve to avoid. Her greatest gifts are her self- and social awarenesses - knowing which parts of her rare personality almost everyone can relate to."

"But Swift also clearly needs the studio, in a way that few people who reached this level of fame have ever needed anything you can legally acquire. Still only 35-years-old, The Life of a Showgirlis her 12th studio album and the fifth in a five-year-span. Post- engagement, post- record-setting tour, and with no plans to tour again any time soon, The Life of a Showgirl unfolds like a breathless vent to a friend, with alternating spurts of warmth, nostalgia, anxious searching, and teeth-baring sneers."

""That view of Portofino was on my mind when you called me at the Plaza Athénée," she begins, "Ooh-ooh, oftentimes it doesn't feel so glamorous to be me." These are not the troubles of underpaid dancers sprinting backstage to their next quick change, but that's showbiz, baby. The dramatic keys and grooving bass line (courtesy of ageless hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback) drape the earworm in old-school, pre-TikTok glam."

Taylor Swift combines neurotic self-discipline and intense competitiveness with acute self- and social awareness, making relatable choices in song. The Life of a Showgirl is her 12th studio album at 35 and the fifth release in five years, arriving after engagement and a record-setting tour. The record relies on studio craft and unfolds like a breathless vent, alternating warmth, nostalgia, anxious searching, and teeth-baring sneers. A backup-dancer aesthetic frames songs that center superstar life, from earnest love on "Elizabeth Taylor" to dramatic keys and grooving bass by Max Martin and Shellback. Several tracks reference her fiancé Travis Kelce, with callbacks to earlier eras and some uneven experiments.

Read at Consequence