A Swiftie’s Honest Review Of The Life Of A Showgirl
That's showbiz, baby
By Natalie McGowan | 4th October 2025I love Taylor Swift. I feel I need to get that out of the way upfront.
She has been a constant in the soundtrack to my life since I heard her debut album for the first time. My tiny five-year-old mind was blown. Speak Now was one of my first-ever concerts and I begged my dad to take me, managing to turn him into a fellow Swiftie along the way. ‘Twas a core memory for us both. Fearless was my first CD and at seven years old, I would sit in my room with the album’s booklet, learning lyrics and finding the randomly capitalised letters, highlighting them to decipher the hidden messages she’d sprinkled throughout the booklet. OGs will remember what I’m talking about. Back in the good ol’ days when the easter eggs were fun and obvious.
So yes, cards on the table: I am a lifelong, slightly neurotic Taylor Swift fan. Which is why writing this review is a little painful.
When she announced her 12th studio album, The Life Of A Showgirl, obviously I was stoked and watched the entire New Heights podcast episode in all its glorious two hours and three minutes. It was so sweet! So normal! I loved it, and loved it even more when she started speaking about the new album, revealing she was straying from her usual collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner and she was reconnecting with Max Martin and Shellback to produce it, who are responsible for some of her most iconic songs: 22, Style, Blank Space, Shake It Off, I Knew You Were Trouble… the list goes on. She wrote it in-between Eras Tour dates, flying to Sweden in her downtime to write and record the album’s 12 songs. Thinking about her life makes me want to take a nap on her behalf.
So, when the album dropped yesterday, I obviously immediately listened to it front-to-back. And it pains me to say… I felt nothing.
Nothing immediately stood out to me. On first listen, the songs were all okay. They’re easy to listen to. They’re easy to digest. But they lacked the spark I was craving. That addictive quality where you can’t stop singing a chorus or replaying a bridge or obsessing over a particularly well-written lyric. For an artist whose discography is filled with undeniable hooks and sharp, devastatingly good lyricism, The Life Of A Showgirl missed the mark.
Production-wise, it was sound, but often felt generic — almost like something an AI could have churned out. There’s nothing inherently bad about it, it’s just missing that sense of innovation we’ve come to expect from her. Sonically, it leans heavily on familiar territory. For instance, the opening of Wood immediately reminded me of a Jackson 5 track, Eldest Daughter has a very similar cadence to Swift’s own White Horse, and CANCELLED! is reminiscent of Lorde’s Yellow Flicker Beat, amongst many other references. Knowing Taylor, these nods are probably intentional, but they don’t feel clearly connected to the album’s overall themes, leaving the flow of the album feeling a bit confused.
But my biggest issue lies with the writing. Taylor has always been revered for her ability to write complex and beautiful lyrics, turning a simple sentiment into a genius line. But here, she leans on internet slang and Gen Z-isms in a way that feels… awkward. Phrases like “girlbossing too close to the sun,” “I’m not a bad bitch and this isn’t savage,” “it’s actually wild,” “we looked fire,” and “fucking lit” sound jarring coming from her — especially since she’s never been someone visibly immersed in online culture. Instead of feeling fresh or tongue-in-cheek, the references are odd and, dare I say, cringeworthy. Almost like a parody of Taylor Swift.
There are also multiple instances where she seems to be borrowing from the playbook of fellow pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter, especially on songs like Wood and Actually Romantic. The blatant, raunchy lyrics and sexual innuendos work well for Carpenter, who has built her whole brand around that playfulness. With Taylor, however, it doesn’t quite land. Sure, it’s fun to hear about Travis Kelce’s “magic wand”, but it feels incredibly far removed from the woman who wrote the lyrical masterpiece that is All Too Well. I can get around a slightly horny pop song, no problem, but these one’s just don’t do much for me, unfortunately.
That’s not to say she should only stick to writing about life’s most tragic moments – some of her most loved up songs are my favourites. But these feel shallow compared to her usual depth. Especially coming straight off The Tortured Poets Department, which was packed with some of her best songwriting, The Life Of A Showgirl’s writing to me feels a bit “meh.”
As for the visuals: I have serious beef with the album cover. Yes, I understand it’s a nod to Ophelia and fits the “showgirl” concept, but the font actually drives me crazy to look at. It feels lazy and distractingly bad.
The image itself is attention-grabbing and different for Swift, and I think with different design elements it could have looked a lot sleeker. But as we’ve slowly seen the rest of the images from that shoot, there are so many other ones that I would have loved to see on the cover.
The shoot is one of her best to date — it’s edgy, glamorous, cool, and theatrical. It perfectly encapsulates the showgirl aesthetic. She has never looked better. I honestly love it. But when paired with the sound of the album, the tone of the songs and the aesthetic of the shoot don’t quite match up, in my opinion. I was expecting a darker, moodier, more dramatic sound. To me, it feels misaligned.
That said, it’s not all disappointing. My top three songs are The Fate of Ophelia, Father Figure, and Opalite. All catchy. All clever and well-written. While they still fall short of her very best work, they’re the closest this album comes to showcasing her full potential and serve as a reminder of why she’s in a league of her own. The rest of the album is a mixed bag: some songs I enjoy, others less so, and I’ll likely need a few more listens to fully digest it all. But at this stage, much of it tends to blur together.
Here’s the thing: Taylor Swift has set the bar impossibly high for herself. Over the span of 20 years, she has given us timeless, groundbreaking albums that have defined an entire generation like 1989, Red, Folklore, Reputation, and Fearless, all of which pushed boundaries in different ways and continue to stay relevant, years later. By comparison, The Life of a Showgirl feels forgettable.
Maybe I’ll come around in a year or two (as I eventually did with Reputation, which is now one of my favourites). Maybe the songs just need to simmer in my brain and I’ll learn to love them. In fact, I’m sure that’s probably exactly what’s going to happen. But right now, it’s hard to deny the album is a tad bit disappointing for this lifelong Swiftie.
I guess that’s showbiz, baby, you can’t win ‘em all!
Header: @taylorswift
