‘The Life of a Showgirl’ Has Plenty of Sparkle, Not a Ton of Spark

This is not the Max Martin magnum opus of Swedish-synth bangers that Taylor Swift teased.

By Lauren Tousignant | October 3, 2025 | 9:52am

Photo: Youtube/Courtesy TAS Rights Management Entertainment Music

‘The Life of a Showgirl’ Has Plenty of Sparkle, Not a Ton of Spark

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.

Most Popular

Which is why it took me a few listens to level my sky-high expectations with what I was hearing. The Life of a Showgirl is a fine album. It is not the Max Martin magnum opus of Swedish-synth bangers that Taylor teased.

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”). But on TLOAS, Swift makes the magnificent…seem mundane.

“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” she said on New Heights. And the inner life of this showgirl—in the middle of the most successful tour in history—was apparently ruminating on a high school crush who died years ago, bitchy former friends, and…her new lover’s big dick. (Surely she thought about lots of different things during this two-year endeavor, but for her to say these 12 songs fit “together like a perfect puzzle” is curious at best.)

That’s all fine, it’s just that I expected to get punched in the gut and slapped in the face by a Max Martin and Shellback-produced album written by a once-in-a-generation talent while she embarked on a once-in-20-million-lifetimes experience. These are the producers who gave us “Blank Space,” “King of My Heart,” “22,” “Style,” and “Don’t Blame Me”; I hoped these new songs would make me rip my clothes off and run through the streets screaming something akin to “Cause darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.” The marketing here was also as mismatched as Midnights, except her 10th studio album was a welcome surprise from the 70s-soft rock imagery.

That said, I’m not a hater!! There is a lot I like. “Opalite” was an immediate standout, featuring the album’s catchiest and brightest (and Travis’ favorite) chorus, “It’s alright, you were dancing through the lightning strikes,” and tells a classic Taylor Swift tale of finding love after coming out of the dark. “Father Figure” is a reputation-esque, mob-boss bop (with a key change!) that I think is low-key an Olivia Rodrigo diss track. (Especially because Swift “interpolates” George Michael’s “Father Figure,” and Rodrigo got in trouble for “interpolating” two of Swift’s songs without credit on her 2021 album, Sour.) But she also might just be flexing about being a kingmaker, which she does in one of the more head-turning lyrics in her entire discography: “I can make deals with the devil because my dick’s bigger.” OK, Taylor!

She takes this one step further on “Wood,” a hyper-horny and corny song about scoring a new partner who has a massive penis, set to a Jackon Five guitar riff: “Redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see, his love was the key to open my thighs.” She also name-drops New Heights. That’s right, the artist who wrote “Champagne Problems” is now singing about an NFL bro podcast.

“The Life of a Showgirl” is the album’s strongest song, with the best bridge and the sharpest hooks. But rather than being simply the closer, this is exactly how I envisioned the entire album: tales of blood and sweat and tears and triumph. (Congrats to Sabrina Carpenter; unlike Swift’s past featured artists, who only did backing vocals, she gets to sing an entire verse and half the bridge!) Swift said on her New Heights appearance that Martin loved folklore and wanted to keep the storytelling element of that album, and this title track is a divine amalgamation of his direction and her lyrical talent, serving up the kind of pop fable masterpiece she promised. We also get some of that storytelling in the first three tracks (“The Fate of Ophelia,” “Elizabeth Taylor,” and “Father Figure”), but that’s it until the end.

If you hate when Swift gets petty, you’ll hate the Charli XCX diss track, “Actually Romantic.” But as a fellow Sagittarius with a few beloved grudges of my own, I’ll be working, “You think I’m tacky, baby, stop talking dirty to me,” into my regular Swift rotation. But still, it’s no “Bad Blood.” (Nothing on this album comes close to the pop perfection of 1989.) “CANCELLED!” is another track that sounds like it could be on a previous Taylor record (this time, reputation).

“Eldest Daughter,” which is about falling in love Kelce, gets the famous track five billing, but to say it’s in the same category as her other, more vulnerable track fives—”You’re On Your Own Kid,” “My Tears Ricochet,” “The Archer,” “All Too Well”—is an insult to the lasting impact of those songs.

I’m really not sure what half of this album has to do with being a showgirl. And while I wouldn’t call it “exuberant and electric and vibrant,” The Life of a Showgirl is a solid, sparkly effort, even if it doesn’t have a sequin that slices through your heart or a spark that lights your every cell ablaze. But maybe the point here is that, even if you’re a one-in-a-trillion success story, every showgirl is still just a woman—romanticizing her past, fantasizing about owning her haters, and hoping to find a really big, uh, love to come home to after the curtains have fallen and the moment’s passed.

Like what you just read? You’ve got great taste. Subscribe to Jezebel, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to a bunch of subscriber benefits, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that) ad-free. Plus, you’ll be supporting independent journalism—which, can you even imagine not supporting independent journalism in times like these? Yikes.