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Album Rating: 1.5
Don't ask me to show my work! I'll do it!
Here's the top few, off the top of my head.
“Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you” — Wi$h Li$t
Absolutely just aesthetic segregation disguised as romance. When the country is wrestling with white nationalist nostalgia and demographic panic, this line’s fixation on replication (“the whole block looking like you”) is a quiet endorsement of purity culture and racial segregation.
Boss up, settle down, got a wish list” — Wi$h Li$t
the soft-MAGA ethos in six words: ambition neutered by obedience. “Boss up” was the language of independence; “settle down” is the correction. The fantasy here is not power, but approved power. Stay home, post family photos, call it feminism.
“Pledge allegiance to your hands / Your team, your vibes” — The Fate of Ophelia
Romantic subservience framed in the language of the state. “Pledge allegiance” is an invocation of patriotism, of giving yourself to a flag, a man, a movement. It collapses selfhood into loyalty.
Not to mention - In Hamlet, Ophelia is destroyed by obedience, she is a woman driven mad and drowned after being used, silenced, and discarded by the men around her. Taylor flips that story: her Ophelia is saved by devotion to a man, her tragedy erased and replaced with romantic redemption. That reversal drains the feminist warning from Shakespeare’s tale and repackages submission as salvation.
“You wrap around me like a chain, a crown, a vine / Pulling me into the fire” — The Fate of Ophelia
Every image is about being claimed, encircled, subsumed. This is how patriarchy perpetuates itself in pop: by dressing domination up as intimacy
“Honey, I’m home, we can play house / We can bed down…” — Honey
It’s the trad-wife fantasy in full bloom: the 1950s sitcom wife reborn in Valentino.The dream is safety, containment, and consumer comfort, exactly what the modern right peddles as paradise while burning the world outside.
Across these songs, The Life of a Showgirl takes the architecture of patriarchal conservatism, racial homogeneity, domestic retreat, submission as virtue, power through pleasing, and re-brands it as aspirational pop. It’s not overt propaganda; it’s the aesthetic of surrender made glamorous
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Thanks for posting your analysis, I appreciate the effort. I'll have a think on your claims.
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holy 'dealing with your own projections without realizing it' batman!
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what a glorious distraction.
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This is the dumbest stuff I've seen today and I've checked reddit already
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Taylor swift - would?
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Also, is that a copypasta?
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
Damn right, it’s a copypasta!
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Good lord I thought people were being hyperbolic but this is insane. It feels like the musical analog to one of those movies like Borderlands where dozens of supposed professionals SHOULD have been able to catch that the process or the finished product is horrible but somehow everyone was blinded by…. what? What has to fail for something like this to get released?
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
Letsgofishing you had me going there for a second thinking you actually thought all that lol
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
Oh no, Sowing - That is all original work! I was giving my enthusiastic blessing for it to be transformed into copypasta!
I am very passionate about giving doctoral dissertations on Taylor’s starring role in the decline and collapse of American culture on Sputnikmusic.com. It is my life’s work.
But, seriously. I really do think all this.
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
Oh, haha. Carry on I guess? Seems a bit out there but go with it.
| | | Album Rating: 2.5
To me this was hardly catchy at all, and it definitely sounds like a mega watered down Midnights, which was just barely good to me as it was. This is lame sauce. I really wanted some upbeat bangers, especially calling this life of a showgirl. This sounds lifeless mostly
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
I don’t think it is out there. I don’t think it’s out there at all. I think becoming a billionare and becoming more intertwined with conservative spheres results in exactly the kind of product I am accusing Taylor of releasing.
Mostly a really shitty album. But, also, an offensively shitty album promoting shitty ideas. And worst of all, a culturally important shitty album.
I’m going to put sugar in her private jet’s gas tank.
| | | Album Rating: 1.5 | Sound Off
beyonce managed to do it, but that's not really a fair comparison
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
1/2
@letsgofishing thanks again for sharing your analysis.
I continue to find it quite a stretch.
To recap, I take issue with your claim that this album represents a shift towards more conservative, MAGA-friendly messaging. Looking at your examples, I'm either not convinced that the lyrics you highlight are, in fact, notably conservative, or I grant that they are, but reject the claim that this messaging is new to this album. I'm not here to claim that Taylor is an impeccable feminist. I just don't think this album is anything significantly worse than her past records re feminist messaging.
I'll take your examples in a slightly different order to how you posted them.
“Pledge allegiance to your hands / Your team, your vibes” — The Fate of Ophelia
You claimed that this lyric represents a collapse of selfhood into loyalty. Sure, let me grant that. Thing is, this isn't new. Taylor has expressed such sentiments before, and in even stronger terms. Here's an example from reputation:
“And all at once, you are the one I have been waiting for
King of my heart, body and soul…” - King of my Heart
This is more extreme in a number of ways. ‘Allegiance’ is something that can be mutually enacted between equals, but in this song, she acknowledges a monarch over every part of her self. It's borderline religious - Christians would say this sort of thing about Jesus. By contrast, the lyric from Ophelia represents a movement in a less conservative direction.
Note, I'm not very familiar with Hamlet so I won't comment on your wider analysis of that.
Moving on…
“You wrap around me like a chain, a crown, a vine / Pulling me into the fire” — The Fate of Ophelia
You claim this dresses up domination as intimacy. Again, the King of my Heart lyric does the same. Nothing is more dominating than having a King literally have dominion over every part of your being. But let's look at another example from her past.
“Can I go where you go?
Can we always be this close forever and ever?
And ah, take me out, and take me home
You're my, my, my, my
Lover” - Lover
Note that in each part of this chorus, her lover - a man - is guiding her and taking the initiative. She's the one that follows him. He's the one that takes her out, and brings her home. He’s the dominant one. This isn't anything new.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
2/2
Next:
“Honey, I’m home, we can play house / We can bed down…” — Honey
You claim that this is the trad-wife fantasy in full bloom. But this isn't the first time that Taylor has dwelt on romantic imagery of insular domestic life.
To go back to Lover, this song explicitly draws attention to the home as a centre piece of romantic ideation:
“We could leave the Christmas lights up 'til January
And this is our place, we make the rules…
We could let our friends crash in the living room
This is our place, we make the call”
This song clearly celebrates the home as a place where they, the couple, have control. It's a beautiful domestic bubble where they enjoy life together. Nothing new.
Finally, your analysis of wishlist’s lyrics:
“Boss up, settle down, got a wish list” — Wi$h Li$t
You claim that “Boss up” was the language of independence; “settle down” is the correction. But I don't see any evidence here that “settle down” is being provided as a corrective to the boss up rather than a complement to it. And again, it's not like settling down to a domestic space is new for her.
“Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you”
You claim that this is subtly about segregation. It's admittedly a weird lyric but the duplication of her partner’s likeness is just an expansion of the thought, immediately prior, of wanting kids. Kids look like their parents.
I would also say that Father Figure sits very uncomfortably with your thesis of MAGA-friendly optics given its sarcastic, negative portrayal of a powerful male business man who promises to take care of your problems only to steal the empire for himself.
Overall, I'm not at all convinced. I do appreciate bringing a skeptical lens to powerful people like Taylor - during these times especially - but I think in this case you've ended up with an interpretation that is more paranoid than plausible.
Anyway, I need to not spend any more time on this lol. You're welcome to have the last word.
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
I don't care about the lyrics but this is generally very bad regardless (opener aside)
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
Oh my God, I actually received a rebuttal.
This is incredible. You are my favorite person, Nightbringer.
And you’re right. Taylor’s never been allergic to submission tropes. King of My Heart and Lover both bask in devotional, domestic fantasy. The key difference, though, is context.
When Lover came out, that dream of home and safety read as a kind of refuge, a private escape from the noise. But Showgirl lands in a moment where the right has deliberately rebranded domesticity, purity, and obedience as moral ideals. The same imagery that once signified comfort now feels like compliance.
So no, she didn’t invent the desire for devotion, marriage, or family. But when Wi$h Li$t dreams of sameness on the block, or Ophelia pledges allegiance to her savior, the timing transforms the meaning. It’s not just personal anymore, it’s aesthetic alignment with a movement nostalgic for hierarchy and “traditional womanhood.” That’s what makes it soft-MAGA: the politics aren’t shouted, they’re hummed under the melody. It doesn’t wave the flag; it just sells the wallpaper.
Even Father Figure fits that pattern. Sure, it mocks the patriarch, but it still luxuriates in the spectacle of his power. The critique never actually leaves the penthouse — it just admires the view from inside.
You’re right that none of this is overt. That’s exactly what makes it effective. The most insidious ideology doesn’t arrive with slogans, it arrives with a catchy hook.
If I were being charitable, and I can grant that it may be the best possible reading, Taylor is simply a billionaire who’s lost the ability to relate to her audience or the world in any authentic way. Worst of all, it’s left her with almost nothing to say. What she manages to say is: “Do what you’re supposed to. Get in line.” That will never make good art.
Whatever the case, you’d hope for more from the most powerful artist of her generation. But Taylor is simply of the times, willingly so. She has no intention of challenging them, only of cashing them in.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Glad you've enjoyed the engagement, haha.
As indicated, I'll let your post be the last word.
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