Album Review (& Recommendations): Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl

Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl, released October 3, 2025, marks an aggressive

tonal pivot from her last two albums of gray-scale confessionalism in The Tortured Poets Department, and the dreamy, nocturnal solitude of Midnights. Where those albums lingered in melancholy and self-analysis, Showgirl explodes in technicolor. It’s theatrical, knowingly campy, and full of unrestrained joy. The result is a glittering, uneven, but compelling exploration of fame, femininity, and life outside of performing.

“The Fate of Ophelia” / Track 1

 Opening the record, “The Fate of Ophelia” uses Shakespeare’s doomed heroine as a parallel for Swift's perceived fate had she not found the love of her life. It’s lush and cinematic with piano lines swelling into layered drums and soaring synths. The song debuted alongside a visually extravagant music video that premiered exclusively in cinemas during the album’s release party, setting the tone for Showgirl’s larger-than-life rollout. As a comeback from her last eras of heartbreak and loneliness, it’s Swift mythologizing herself in real time: the drowned girl who “changed the prophecy” and has learned to swim again.

“Elizabeth Taylor” / Track 2

Here, Swift finds kinship with one of Hollywood’s ultimate showgirls. “Elizabeth Taylor” serves as both homage and mirror, positioning the old Hollywood icon as a kind of spiritual connection—both women endlessly reinvented by the public eye, yet always the author of her own story. The orchestral swell and string flourishes evoke that of vintage film scores, while Swift’s lyrics fold their lives together as, again, two women scrutinized for their beauty, their love lives, and their audacity to exist unapologetically within the public eye.

“Elizabeth Taylor” ultimately captures Swift’s fascination with reinvention; the idea that glamor and heartbreak can coexist. It’s all satin strings and dramatic crescendos, echoing the icon whose name the track bears. Swift treats fame as both costume and cage—something she alternately resents and adores. There’s wistfulness beneath the shimmer, but also endurance like a wink to the audience that she knows exactly what she’s doing. It’s like a blend of the Midnights tracks “Mastermind” and "Bejeweled." 

“Opalite” / Track 3

At the album’s cinematic release party, Taylor Swift explained that opalite is not a naturally occurring gemstone, but something manmade. That small fact becomes the emotional heart of the song. Over shimmering synths and soft, layered vocals, Swift explores the idea that happiness is often something we must create for ourselves rather than discover by chance. It’s about learning to create light from what was never meant to shine, a reflection of how she has had to carve her own version of peace and fulfillment.

“Opalite,” shimmering with its airy pop production, offers a reflective moment of joy, resilience, and hopefulness. It’s an escapist fantasy about fleeting intimacy, as shown by its intentionally surface-level emotional reach. Still, it captures the album’s sense of curated vulnerability and what's going on behind the curtain of someone else's life.

“Father Figure” / Track 4

“Father Figure” stands out not just for its emotional edge and velvety bass line, but for its cultural resonance. By sampling and referencing George Michael’s 1987 classic, Swift honors one of pop’s most enduring figures; an artist who, like her, faced relentless media scrutiny and constant narrative reshaping. The song transforms Michael’s sensuality into something slightly more twisted: a meditation on misplaced trust and the blurred lines between mentorship and manipulation. It’s both a tribute and a cold realization, a reminder that fame often distorts the relationships that shape an artist most deeply.

“Eldest Daughter” / Track 5

Swift’s tradition of placing her most emotionally raw songs at track five doesn't quite continue here, as “Eldest Daughter” feels both confused and emotionally restrained. Opening with internet culture criticism, landing on anecdotes about broken arms and wolves, and falling flat in the aspect of childhood dynamics. The track, at times, reflects on responsibility, identity, and the loneliness of always being the strong one, but there’s polish where older track fives bled. It could be labeled as “purposeful cringe” with the use of meme-like lines such as “this isn't savage” as a call back to internet culture but the foundation for that concept isn’t established strongly enough to properly land. Overall, “Eldest Daughter” lands as a scattered track that gestures toward vulnerability without fully collapsing into it.

“Ruin the Friendship” / Track 6

Emotionally, this might be Showgirl’s quiet triumph. Believed to reference her late friend Jeff Lang, “Ruin the Friendship” aches with tenderness and hesitation and speaks to the fear of saying too much and losing what matters most. Yet in the context of Swift’s recent engagement, the song takes on new meaning. It feels like retrospective courage: a reflection on the risks that love demands, even when it’s uncomfortable. There’s a wistful maturity here—the understanding that deep connection always begins with the possibility of loss. Altogether, it's a catchy song littered with delicate piano progression and muted electric guitar tones that traverses through Swift's life in high school to the loss of a friend and her regret of not taking more risks. Many fans argue it should’ve been chosen as the album's track five, as it captures the kind of emotional risk “Eldest Daughter” only barely attempts.

“Actually Romantic” / Track 7

Here, the track opens with a pulsing electronic beat and soft, syncopated claps that build into a danceable groove reminiscent of 1989’s sleek pop textures. Her vocals are warm and slightly breathy, double-tracked in the choruses to give the illusion of a duet with herself. Musically, “Actually Romantic” feels like a bridge between eras: it possesses the pop precision of 1989, the emotional complexity of Midnights, and the coy self-awareness of The Life of a Showgirl as a whole. “Actually Romantic” is one of the most clever and self-aware songs on The Life of a Showgirl. At the album’s release party, Swift revealed that the title is a tongue-in-cheek nod to her critics, a way of reframing hate as a strange form of devotion. The song plays with the idea that putting so much energy into disliking someone starts to look a lot like obsession. In Swift’s words, that intensity is, in its own twisted way, actually romantic.

“The Life of a Showgirl (feat. Sabrina Carpenter)” / Track 12

The title track, featuring Sabrina Carpenter, closes the album with attempted theatrical flair. It’s a curtain call about exhaustion, resilience, and the paradox of performance, all sequins and spotlights, but slightly hollow underneath. As finales go, it’s more conceptually satisfying than emotionally moving, a bow that feels practiced rather than spontaneous. The opening verse comes off as uninspired with rhymes like “kitty” and “witty” and is followed by half-attempted narrative as Swift transforms from hopeful showgirl being told off from wanting that life, to the showgirl who is dissuading new hopefuls. The track itself is supposed to be an exploration of the uninviting life behind the glamour of being a showgirl, but even with the addition of Carpenter's buttery vocals, this track doesn't quite deliver on its message. Instead, it's an understated end to an album that thrives on spectacle (and maybe that’s the point).

All in all, compared to Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department, The Life of a Showgirl feels like a rebirth in glitter. It’s louder and brighter, yet still haunted by the costs of spectacle. Swift has always been a master of self-reinvention, but here she fully embraces her contradictions: sincerity wrapped in irony, pain disguised as performance. It’s not her rawest album, but it may be one of her most joyous and proof that sometimes the truest confessions happen out from under the stage lights.

Rating: 3.5/5 – Fun, Theatrical, and Bitter-sweet

If you liked this album, try these:

• Dance Fever by Florence + the Machine

• Midnights by Taylor Swift 

• Aladdin Sane & Let’s Dance by David Bowie

• Something to Give Each Other by Troye Sivan

• Electric Heart by Marina and The Diamonds