"There was a moment on the Eras Tour, after Taylor Swift performed "Cruel Summer," where she stopped and took in the roaring crowd. Of all the freeze-frame moments from the three-and-a-half-hour spectacle, it's this image that's stuck with me: alone on her massive stage, arms by her side, bedazzled in thousands of crystals-she looked proud, grateful, powerful, and in awe. It was the look of someone basking in an extraordinary moment that only a few humans in all of history will come even close to experiencing."
"When Taylor announced her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on Travis Kelce's podcast, New Heights, in August, she said her goal was "to be as proud of an album as I am of the Eras Tour." That's a lot to live up to-even for someone like Swift, whose career became what it is due in no small part to her seemingly compulsive obsession with constantly challenging and outdoing herself."
"Taylor has a knack for making the mundane seem magnificent-a forgotten scarf becomes lore for a decade-defining heartbreak ("All Too Well); a nondescript local pub becomes the stage for a fuck-you ballad ("The Black Dog"); the parking lot behind a mall becomes metaphor for being a teen girl trapped in unrequited love ("August"). And she can cram a Jane Austen-sized romantic drama into a single lyric: "Made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter" ("Mine") and, "Please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh I can recognize anywhere" ("New Year's Day")."
Taylor Swift paused during the Eras Tour, standing alone on a massive stage, bedazzled and visibly proud, grateful, and awed by the crowd. She announced The Life of a Showgirl and set a goal to be as proud of the album as of the Eras Tour. The new album meets high expectations in many ways but does not deliver the teased Max Martin–driven Swedish-synth magnum opus. Swift's songwriting often elevates mundane moments into grand narratives, yet on this album she sometimes renders spectacle as ordinary while reflecting the tour-era inner life with quieter introspection.
Read at Jezebel
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