Review Summary: Mask off moment
I have
never understood the mania surrounding Taylor Swift. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame last week, and she became the youngest woman ever to do so. A lot of people have sounded off online about what an accomplishment it is, and I have to concur, if for fundamentally different reasons. I don't marvel at the feat because of her age, but because I think it's baffling that anyone would earnestly venture to canonize a catalog filled almost exclusively with insular, indignant and emotionally immature teen pop. That is what her music is and always has been. It could be overlooked that her eponymous debut album was filled with adolescent diary musings loosely adapted to record, because Swift herself was still in high school at the time. But two decades later, her music hasn't really changed at all. It's still chronically inward-facing and operates in only one gear: victimhood. She's always been slighted by a friend or romantic partner, and it rarely if ever occurs to her that she could also share some blame for the demise of that connection.
Suffice to say, this flavor of pop music is not something that I find enjoyable, but Swift's millennial fandom will stay hitched because they were in the target demographic when her career began. The real key is keeping her brand as derivative and accessible as possible to ensure that a new wave of young Swifties will always cycle in to be treated to the same rote songwriting. Swift will never change this formula, because this is the only crowd she can realistically appeal to. Think about this next time you're at any big box retailer, and you notice that the book section is cluttered with unlicensed fluff-piece fodder about Swift's music, her career or her relationship with Travis Kelce.
All of it is aimed at children and stylized like a bedtime storybook you'd read to a toddler. Why a preschooler would care about a pop singer's romantic life is beyond me. Another thing you'll likely take note of is the fact that few, if any, other entertainers across all mediums receive any bit of this kind of adulation, let alone to the extent that Swift does.
That bleeds perfectly into the other alarming component at play: Taylor Swift embodies the absolute worst of what is known as 'rainbow capitalism'. When
Lover and a supporting documentary film were released in the waning months of the pre-COVID era, Swift acknowledged her acute awareness of the platform and influence she wields, and that she wanted to use it to advance cultural and political ends she deemed important. She succinctly avowed that "I
need to be on the right side of history," and looking back years later, it's almost like looking at a different person. But the truth is, Swift has
always been a chameleon, defined by, and behaving according to, whoever she's dating at the moment. When she briefly dated Conor Kennedy, who was under the age of 18 mind you, she pursued an Americana aesthetic familiar with the famous family. When she was with filmmaker Joe Alwyn, a period that intersects with her sudden interest in politics we spoke of earlier, she posited herself as a fairly progressive individual, and dressed and wrote lyrics in a way that, in retrospect, could draw legitimate accusations of queer baiting. And ever since she hooked up with Kelce, she's gone deafeningly silent on social issues, repeatedly been spotted cozying up to MAGA acolytes, and reached a whole new plane of wealth and power that is objectively unethical. At this point, though, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, because she has more money than is physically possible to know what to do with. She will
never know struggle again, not that she ever did in the first place. Even when she screws up, she'll never have to pay a meaningful price for it.
That brings us to
The Life of a Showgirl, the
tenth full-length album's worth of material Swift has put out in merely a six-year window, counting the quarter-assed 'Taylor's Versions' but
not factoring in the deluxe editions, anthologies, 'vault' tracks and the litany of laughably cheap 'voice memos' that serve only to justify the offensive onslaught of CD and vinyl variants released since the Eras Tour concluded. Most artists are lucky to make ten albums in an entire career, but Swift has been able to churn out the bulk of her discography in this decidedly short amount of time. The greed is bare-knuckled and bare-faced at this point. It probably goes without saying, but 'quantity over quality' often correlates with a decline in the latter, and Swift's newest offerings are easily the worst in a career already loaded with problematic writing and inane stinkers. Musically,
Showgirl apes the synthpop inspirations of
1989, with that album's pair of producers Max Martin and Shellback returning to the grid after years of Swift running things into the ground with Jack Antonoff. That album at least had some fun moments, like the catchy if venomous "Blank Space," one of the few songs that could be genuinely argued as Swift's career record or that transcended Swift's rabid fanbase and etched itself into the broader cultural zeitgeist. This album lacks any of that project's already scant amount of playfulness or charm. Lead single "The Fate of Ophelia" boasts of some glassy guitars on its refrain, but Swift's breathy and vacant vocals sag under the louder mix and production.
Showgirl is, at best, competently constructed, but so unmemorable. If you're not parsing the lyrics for Easter eggs as Swift has conditioned her listeners to do, it will probably help keep you docile as you attempt to buy actual eggs without breaking the bank. If you
are attentive in any way, there's a chance you will be unsettled, if not mortified, by not only the tone-deaf and phoned-in bemoaning about how hard it is to be a multi-billionaire, but also the borderline racist subtexts found in some of these songs. "Opalite," which otherwise consists of a decently crafted composition and some cool imagery, has been accused of taking aim at Kelce's ex-girlfriend Kayla Nicole. "Sleepless through the onyx night but now the sky is opalite," Swift croons. When you remember that Nicole is African-American and Swift is whiter than Casper's taint, you can't help but consider the potential racial undertones embedded in these words. "Wi$h Li$t" sets off similar red flags, as Swift romanticizes the kind of life she wants with Kelce as she muses: "I just want you, have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you." Argue these passages as anecdotal if you want, but I ascertain an insensitivity too striking to be absent-minded. Swift historically has been relatively proactive in curating her public image. Anything that could be interpreted as problematic wouldn't normally pass through without a once-over. But then you recall "I Hate It Here" from
The Tortured Poets Department, which I intuit as a dog-whistle in the opposite direction. When Swift said she wanted to live in "the 1830s but without all the racists," you can reasonably assert that lyric as being intended for fans to use as some type of proof that the progressive firebrand she once postured as is still there.
When Swift isn't lending credence to the allegations that she's gone full MAGA, she's gushing at Kelce's junk in a manner that tries way too hard to be sensual but just scans as tryhard and calculated instead. This type of content is also well outsider her limited strengths as a vocalist. Swift's tone is too plain and conversational to sell what is clearly meant to be a seductive and cinematic event. And that's without mentioning the lyrics that make me want to get trampled by a sea of turtles. "Wood" has to be the biggest clunker in this regard, as Swift chuffs: "Forgive me, it sounds cocky/He ah-matized me and opened my eyes/Redwood tree, it ain't hard to see /His love was thе key that opened my thighs." Swift is often pretty uncanny at convincing listeners to dissect what her lyrics mean, but I have no earthly desire to figure out what the Kentucky Fried F*ck "ah-matized" means, so I'm going to cut my losses and run.
This is who the real Taylor Swift is. There isn't as much naked revenge and score-settling as we've seen in past albums, but we're still treated to all of her other worst attributes, like her delusion that someone as wealthy as her could say their life is "unglamorous" in any way. Swift actively no longer cares about quality songwriting or how she will be perceived, because as mentioned, she doesn't need to. There are no stakes anymore. She doesn't care about exploring any kinds of soundscapes beyond the mainstream. And she definitely doesn't give a sh*t about any of that hubris about the "right side of history." She'll blatantly mock a sexual assault survivor (see Baldoni/Lively) but won't say a damn word when the Trump administration uses her music to spread propaganda and normalize their hideous policies and agenda. And for someone so litigious about protecting her work, someone that's gone after small business owners trying to make a living selling Swift-inspired goods on Etsy, that's
really f*cking telling. I think it's actually kind of fitting that this album is entitled
The Life of a Showgirl, and that the aesthetics and themes reference entertainment and show business, because people in that industry wear all kinds of different hats, colors, masks, if you will. And the Taylor Swift mask has been completely ripped off and done away with. This is who she is: a shamelessly uber-greedy and marginally-talented-at-best musician who objectively does not deserve the success she has attained. I'm patiently waiting, in vain perhaps, for the Overton window in our culture to shift, so we can leave this type of "entertainment" behind.
