Taylor Swift is on top of the world right now. She just got engaged to her American football player boyfriend, Travis Kelce, bought back her masters and completed her Eras Tour—the highest grossing tour of all time. With the release and success of her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, Bloomberg now reports she is worth more than a whopping 2 billion dollars.

Whether due to a lack of misery fueling her creative juices or just a series of poor choices, it remains a mystery why this album is arguably her worst (so far). An album packed with dull instrumentals, uninspired lyrics, and highly questionable themes forces one to question if Swift really is the musical genius she is touted to be.

From a feminist icon wanting to assert her independence and strength to an insecure prima donna happy to tear others down, this album reposits her as a vindictive damsel in distress with a lack of respect for herself or the women around her.

‘The Fate of Ophelia’

The opening track and lead single of the album rewrites the fate of Hamlet’s Ophelia. Except, instead of drowning herself to death, the Ophelia-figure is saved by none other than Travis Kelce.

With sexy Lana-Del-Rey-inspired vocals and a mild funk groove, Swift parallels herself with a maddened and betrayed Ophelia. She is the ultimate damsel in distress, rescued by Kelce. In return, Swift promises him the “sleepless night you’ve been dreaming of,” really leaning into the sexual exchange aspect of olden fairytales. The metaphors are confusingly mixed, with Swift simultaneously “drowning”, “in a tower”, in a “grave” and in “purgatory”. This theme of being dead has become so pervasive in Swift’s work, it makes you wonder if she’s ever been alive.

Despite the uplifting tone of the song, it remains upsetting that one of the most powerful women in the world believes she needs a man to save her from unhappiness and despair, unable to do it herself.

‘Elizabeth Taylor’

Reminiscent of a Reputation b-side, this song is relatively inoffensive, except for the crime of rhyming “taylor” with “forever”. It does however relegate one of the greatest actors of all time to a figure of romantic disaster and physical beauty, with Swift referencing Taylor’s life in terms of her “violet” eyes and being betrayed by the “all the right guys”. Perhaps we could give Swift the benefit of the doubt by looking at the bridge. She highlights how Taylor is perceived “in the papers, on the screen, and in their minds.” But is this really enough? The song hinges on Swift’s fear of becoming another Elizabeth Taylor, never experiencing having her love last “forever”.

I would also like to put forward my suspicion that she only likes drawing the parallel because they’re both called Taylor. If Swift had been named Grace, I believe the song would have been Princess of Monaco instead.

‘Opalite’

The spiritual successor to Swift’s musty 2019 hit ‘Me!’, ‘Opalite’ reminded me of “Love Me Like You” by Little Mix, which is likely not the best sign. The saccharine chorus here is so sugary sweet, the song could be from the Trolls soundtrack.

Swift juxtaposes herself as the “opalite” light, bringing “love” and “shelter”, that pierces Kelce’s “onyx” night with his previous lover. This contrast of black with white emphasises an unfortunate comparison between Swift and Kelce’s previous girlfriend—a black sports journalist and broadcaster, Kayla Nicole. Whilst it is difficult to believe that Swift would actually attempt to contrast herself with Nicole racially, it’s bizarre that nobody on her team noticed the parallel. It almost makes one wonder what is going on in Swift’s subconscious.

‘Father Figure’

Swift interpolates George Michael’s 1987 hit single, ‘Father Figure’, to depict the relationship between a mentor and his protégé in the music industry. With lines like, “I protect the family,” the song’s narrator reminded me of a mafia boss, straight out of The Sopranos or The Godfather. Swift herself has stated that the song was inspired by the patriarch of Succession, Logan Roy.

The metaphors are mixed and clumsy, with the narrator claiming to make “deals with the devil” because his “dick’s bigger”. What exactly does this mean?

The aim of the song was also lost on me, with the perspective shifting from a Scott-Borcheta-figure preying on Swift, to Swift herself mentoring a new pop ingénue. This isn’t helped by the trite key change towards the end, which makes the song sound like the

ending ballad of a musical. I do recommend that you watch the lyric video for the awkward and fish-eyed smooch Swift gives the camera at the end.

‘Eldest Daughter’

This maudlin, woe-is-me ballad opens by pathetically addressing the internet commentary Swift is forced to endure. Her references to the “memes” and “comments” that plague her come off completely out of touch. This is a song so bad, it sounds like something crafted for SNL. If it is an indication of anything, it’s that Swift needs to touch grass.

‘Ruin the Friendship’

Confessional and messy, this is a slow, carpe-diem song about seizing your chances when you get them and a strong reminder of why Swift got so big in the first place. With her voice supported by a pretty guitar riff, it reminded me of her early music, sitting comfortably amongst songs like ‘White Horse’, ‘Fifteen’ or ‘Begin Again’.

The language is simple and descriptive, but neatly distills the essence of her experiences to evoke a vivid picture of smalltown, teenage life contrasted against the distance of fame and death. Swift appears to have put down the thesaurus and closed Urban Dictionary to her advantage.

‘Actually Romantic’

This song gave me major secondhand embarrassment. It is widely believed to be a response to Charli XCX’s 2024 hit, ‘Sympathy is a Knife’— a revelatory exploration of the self-hatred and jealousy which emerged from her perceived inferiority to the mega-popular Swift. Here, Swift paints Charli to be romantically obsessed with her. This “diss-track” is unintentionally hilarious, echoing that iconic scene in Mean Girls where Regina George implies Janis Ian is a lesbian and in love with her.

Swift might, rather hypocritically, claim to “mind her business” and not “provoke it” but this song is anything but that. She attempts to make several jabs at Charli, going so far as to liken her to a “toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse”, but this only  highlights how (irrationally) offended Swift is. Trying to sound offhand and cool, Swift only depicts her love life as being pathetic when she croons that “no man has ever loved me like” Charli. The grossest part of the song, in competition with all of Swift’s ugly quips and failing witticisms, might be when she claims that Charli’s attention is “making [her] wet”. Ewww.

Swift is so insistent on being the bigger person that it’s hard not to think she wants to be the better person. The result overall is a pretty unconvincing attempt by Swift to convince us that she isn’t in fact a “Boring Barbie”.

Most of all, this song is incredibly disappointing coming from someone who was singing about not “picking on the weaker man” all the way back in 2010. Are power dynamics only at play when Swift is the victim?

‘Wi$h Li$t’

On this smug and condescending middle track, Swift contrasts the avaricious desires of those around her with her own singular wish to live in domestic bliss with Travis Kelce. The effect is like a toy chihuahua barking at you from a tiny handbag—it’s easy not to be materialistic when you’re a billionaire who can or has already accessed “yacht life” and “Balenci’ shades”. She also contrasts herself with those who desire professional success, such as wishing for “that critical smash Palme D’or,” but again, wasn’t Swift herself crying about not winning grammys only a few years ago? If Swift really only wants Kelce, I suggest she puts her money where her mouth is: donate 1.9 billion of her fortune to charity and go live in Indiana!

‘Wood’

Ew, ew, ew, ew. I have never wished I could erase a song more from my mind before. This track is an ode to Travis Kelce’s “manhood”, or, as Swift is clearly too afraid to put it, his dick. The song straddles an uncomfortable juxtaposition of sexual euphemisms, describing his “hard rock” and “magic wand”, with childish language and imagery. Swift’s attempts to portray desire and sensuality are comical, with her describing herself as being “ah-matised”. In case you were wondering, she does moan the “ah”.

The closest Swift comes to being able to describe anything directly is when she calls herself “cocky” and refers to her “thighs”. A poor attempt to replicate Sabrina Carpenter’s bawdiness, this song makes me feel like a prude and my favourite song last month was ‘Needs’ by Tinashe. A song so tasteless, you can understand why Swift agreed to Cats (2019).

‘CANCELLED!’

First of all, this song is clearly a rip off of Lorde’s ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ from the Hunger Games soundtrack, which is extra ridiculous for how unserious this song is. ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ was my favourite song as a ten year old so I was particularly offended by ‘CANCELLED!’ and had to cleanse myself afterward by listening to the OG. This song is supposedly a defence of Blake Lively and all of Swift’s other persecuted friends, but also feels like a right-wingy criticism of left-wing “cancel culture”.

Swift deserves jail time just for the line “Did you girl boss too close to the sun?” which CANDACE OWENS is taking credit for. And Swift professing to prefer her friends “cloaked in Gucci” feels exclusivist and insensitive to the economically deprived. Overall, 0/10–I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative.

‘Honey’

I have little to say about this except that it’s boring. It describes how, with Kelce, Swift finally gets to receive terms of endearment from a place of love instead of hostility and condescension. However, it is disappointing that she seems so happy to refer to a woman here as “the bitch” when she openly protested against the use of the term in 2016.

The Life of a Showgirl (Feat. Sabrina Carpenter)

A relatively inoffensive final track, this song examines what it means to be a performer, telling the stories of fictional “showgirl(s)” that parallel Swift and Carpenter’s own journeys to success. The highlight of the song is Carpenter, who still clearly has the hunger to be a showgirl. Swift sings like she has to; Carpenter sings like she wants to.

Rather ironically after ‘Honey’, Swift refers to other women as “bitches” and “baby dolls” condescendingly. The outro of the song mimics Swift’s farewell speeches from the Eras Tour, making the whole song sound like a big self-pat on the back. It’s trite and conceited and self-indulgent. It is only fitting that an album so boring and drowsy should end with the word “goodnight”.

On the whole, this album is a disappointment, to say the least. It’s difficult to believe it was written by the same artist as the beautiful and moving 2020 albums, Folklore and Evermore. Apart from ‘Ruin the Friendship’, and maybe ‘Elizabeth Taylor’, I can’t imagine myself bothering to listen to any of these songs again. They’re just going to haunt me on my

Instagram and TikTok feeds for the next few months instead. But, I hope this isn’t the last of this showgirl. I’m choosing to remain hopeful that Swift still has another ‘invisible string’ waiting (deep) inside her somewhere.