Is the Life of a Showgirl good?

Right, I’m just going to say it: the Life of a Showgirl is actually a very interesting album. It’s quite characteristic of her, in that there’s a very personal element. Tied up in that, there’s an engagement with online discourse that sheds further light on her dysfunctional relationship with the virtual realm. Unfortunately, however, it’s just… a bit shit. You don’t need a thinkpiece to know that. Nevertheless, I enjoy listening to the album.

Her engagement with online discourse is quite entertaining as well as pretty interesting. The funniest example is the reference to the redwood tree. If you’re not online enough to get that, good for you. Basically, it seems to be a super niche reference to a tweet.

‘Eldest Daughter’ presents a more complex relationship with the online sphere, drawing a contrast between the cold insincerity of the web and the earnestness of her love for Travis. She sets the scene of the online world: ‘apathy is hot’, and ‘every single hot take is cold as ice’. So, she is drawing a direct contrast between herself and that world when she says she’s ‘not a bad bitch’, rejecting that insincere meme culture. She laments that there are so many ‘traitors’ and ‘smooth operators’ - again, this seems to be a reference to the online world, what with the famous UK show that everyone was talking about on X, and the TikTok sound singing ‘no need to argue, he’s a smooth operator’. Instead of belonging to that world, she promises honesty to her lover, that she is ‘never gonna break that vow’.

And that’s why her vehicle of the “eldest daughter” for the message of openness works. The Eldest Daughter ‘trope’ is common on social media as a proxy for the message of lost innocence due to having to take on early responsibility, leading to the desire to put up defence mechanisms. She uses it to represent the ‘cautious discretion’ she has learned, compounded by the insincere culture. But meeting Travis has reintroduced her to the ‘beautiful, beautiful life’. In the analogy of the ‘Eldest Daughter’, it’s a reminder of when ‘we were young’, before she lost her innocence; in the context of the song, it’s about unlearning the insincerity you see online. It’s a beautiful metaphor for that feeling of meeting someone who forces you to be honest and vulnerable purely through the sincerity of their own emotions towards you.

The other aspect that really draws me to the album is that there’s a really clear sense of ‘self’ in this album. Taylor has always been very willing to write from a personal  point of view, and tell us how she sees the world. See ‘The Best Day’, ‘Dear John’, ‘Out of the Woods’, and almost the entirety of The Tortured Poets Department.

But on this album, we see a very particular vision: Taylor the Great. That’s clearest on ‘Father Figure’. Here, she tells the story of a mentor and protégé turned enemy. She is the protector, after finding them ‘lost in the cold’ in the first verse, she offers haven in the first chorus, saying, ‘just step into my office / I’ll dry your tears with my sleeve / just leave it with me’. Taylor takes them under their wing, and becomes their protector. And the relationship is solidified with the first utterance of ‘I protect the family’. The second verse covers the nature of the mentorship, e.g. showing them ‘the tricks of the trade’, in return for ‘loyalty, my dear protégé’. Then comes the next promise – instead of protecting them, she will now raise them up, so that they’ll ‘know your name in the streets’.

Then comes the shocking betrayal: the mentee has a ‘misguided vision that to fulfil [their] visions they had to get rid of’ Taylor. But she then proceeds to paint not just a picture of mentor/mentee, but rather that of a clear power struggle. She is not just the ‘father figure’, she is the one with her ‘portrait on the mantle’. Moreover, she asserts that ‘this empire belongs to me’. This is the most overt way in which she’s expressed herself as being at the top of the world. It makes sense: the album comes off the back of pretty much the biggest tour of all time (one which had even my Pakistani, middle-aged father saying ‘wow, she’s a very impressive performer’). The pop world is her empire, and God save anyone who tries to usurp her.

It's an evolution from songs like ‘Clara Bow’, where the focus is on the pressure of being the next star, and the music industry always being ready to replace you. Instead, now, if that next star tries to replace her, they will have to put up a fight: this is her dominion, and she is at the top of her game.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel the pressure; but she now embraces it. And that’s why she chooses to end the album with the nuanced ‘Life of a Showgirl’. It starts with the naïve young girl waiting outside Kitty’s dressing room, excited to meet the one who’s ‘living my dream’; but instead, Kitty explains ‘you don’t know the life of a showgirl, and you’re never gonna wanna’. They do not get the ‘magnificent life’, but instead the showbiz ‘leave us for dead’. When the young girl moves on through life, and through her career as a showgirl, she experiences something similar: she is ripped off ‘like false lashes’ and thrown away, despite the ice in her veins, and the bruises from practice. But Taylor states the conclusion very clearly: ‘I’m immortal now, baby dolls’. And thus, the cycle begins again, and Taylor becomes Kitty. And then the song ends with applause actually recorded at the Eras Tour, as she delivers the sign-off. But crucially, she ‘wouldn’t have it any other way’.

This is the most honest self-portrayal of her career she’s offered her fans. She loves the success. She recognises the hard work, and dedication that took her there. She knows it’s only temporary and there will come another. But that doesn’t matter, because she has achieved the greatness she desires, and achieves immortality. So, let the cycle continue. That will not erase her achievements – whether the next star tries to usurp her or not.

What’s so frustrating about this album is that I’ve just written 1,000 words on what I consider some extremely interesting songs (and I could carry on going), but the album still just remains… lacking.

First and foremost, I think she undercuts much of the really interesting themes in the her best songs in the other songs.

Take ‘CANCELLED!’. I appreciate that she actually was cancelled, and that was probably quite a traumatic experience for her. But the cancellation which she faced directly, in reality, belongs to the realm of the online world (hence, Joe Alwyn famously kept her phone away from her). And crucially, she’s not anymore. The point of ‘Eldest Daughter’, as well as ‘Wi$h Li$t’, surely, is that she’s over the cold insincerity and nastiness of the online world because she has other, more important, real things to care about? Except she’s clearly not. Of course, she’s allowed to contain multitudes and contradict herself, but the contradiction here does retroactively minimise the themes of her other songs.

‘Actually Romantic’ poses a similar problem. Sure, if she feels slighted by Charli XCX, she has every right to respond. But elsewhere in the album, she makes the point that she can’t really be usurped, because she’s already achieved greatness and is at the top of her game. So, this response undercuts the confidence she’s displayed elsewhere; it suggests she’s rattled, but wants to hide it. What’s so fascinating in this album is both her honesty / rejection of insincerity, and her unabashed self-confidence. This song undermines that.

But here I am, criticising Taylor Swift for these contradictions when truly, I am the real hypocrite. I stand by my conclusions that there are some very interesting songs on this album if you take the time to listen, but it’s undermined by contradictions created by songs like ‘CANCELLED!’ and ‘Actually romantic’. And if I had more time, I’d sit here, hunched over at my computer, telling you about how the ‘Fate of Ophelia’ is an egregious misunderstanding of Hamlet. I might even be brave enough to touch the hot mess that is ‘Wood’. But the truth is that none of that matters. What matters is that if any of those songs come on, it doesn’t matter where I am: I’m throwing ass.