Why Does Taylor Swift Think She's Cursed?

"The tour ended last December, but, rather than ceding the spotlight, Swift doubled down on her mega-celebrity, first with a wildly publicized engagement to Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, and then by releasing "The Life of a Showgirl," her twelfth studio album, and her second in less than eighteen months. It's a cocky, temperamental record about power and insecurity."

""What could you possibly get for the girl who has everything and nothing all at once?" she sings on "Elizabeth Taylor," one of the album's best and heaviest tracks. That paradox is central to Swift's gestalt. She is equal parts formidable ("I'll be your father figure / I drink that brown liquor / I can make deals with the devil because my dick's bigger," she boasts on "Father Figure") and bruised."

"Swift has been slow to abandon the underdog mentality she developed as an upstart. What she does for a living is surely gruelling, but relentlessly pointing out how fame is poisonous and burdensome isn't exactly revelatory. (A lot of jobs are hard; very few make a person unspeakably rich.) On "The Life of a Showgirl," Swift is occasionally tender-"Honey" is arch, delicate, lovely-but more often she is vengeful, eschewing vulnerability in favor of bombast."

Taylor Swift mounted a record-breaking Eras Tour in 2023—149 dates in 51 cities and over $2 billion in ticket sales—and became omnipresent in cultural consciousness. After the tour ended, she sustained visibility through a publicized engagement to Travis Kelce and by releasing The Life of a Showgirl, her twelfth studio album and second within eighteen months. The album is cocky and temperamental, centering on power and insecurity. Songs alternate between bombast and tenderness: "Elizabeth Taylor" poses the paradox of having everything and nothing, "Father Figure" boasts bravado, and "Eldest Daughter" expresses bruised melancholy. The lyric "terminal uniqueness" invokes recovery-program language about toxic exceptionalism. Swift retains an underdog mentality despite immense success, and repeatedly frames fame as poisonous and burdensome. The record occasionally yields delicate moments like "Honey" but often favors vengeful posturing over vulnerability.

Read at The New Yorker