Taylor Swift’s new album is disappointing

If you manage to make it through the thick and stifling forest of marketing deployed by Taylor Swift and defended by her praetorian guard of fans, there’s the music. And the music is offered in The Life of a Showgirl, her 12th album, released early Friday morning under a shroud of secrecy worthy of consideration. Swift kept everyone at bay, with barely a few leaks whose authenticity were unconfirmed: no one outside her circle had heard the album, and no advance songs had been released. We only had what little information the artist contributed in the podcast with her now fiancé, Travis Kelce, “the gym teacher” as she herself defined him. She announced a return to cheerful and catchy pop and only 12 tracks, and this last fact was underlined because of her propensity for long albums: her previous one, The Tortured Poets Department (2024), totals 31 tracks.

However, her promise of a return to the sparkling pop of 1989 or Red — something that could be sensed, since the producers were the Swedes Max Martin and Shellback, masters of the commercial choruses of the 2000s and with whom she worked on those earlier albums — is disappointing. We had already given up on the depth that she displayed in the albums produced by Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner (of The National), basically the last four, with special mention of the stark Folklore (2020), perhaps her peak.

So what does The Life of a Showgirl offer us then? A hesitant, conservative proposal, sometimes following in the wake of her pupils (Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter), rarely brilliant, and sometimes, especially in the final part, downright forgettable. If we add the fact that Swift barely writes lyrically from the perspective of the aggrieved and vengeful ex-girlfriend that we’ve enjoyed so much in the past, what we’re left with is a transitional album made hastily while she was more focused on getting through the exhausting and successful The Eras Tour than on making substantial music.

The album starts off well, with The Fate of Ophelia, a song driven by synthesizers and an original structure, but weighed down by plaintive lyrics undoubtedly dedicated to her fiancé, Travis Kelce: “Late one night, you dug me out of my grave and Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia.” Overall, however, the album is too harmless for a star like her, and the songs move between soft pop (at their best moment) and the ultra-processed songs of the 2000s, which are part of Max Martin’s specialty and which sometimes sound like outtakes from a not-so-good Katy Perry album.

There are few songs where she unleashes her blistering style. She does so in Actually Romantic, a very Olivia Rodrigo track, where she responds to Charli XCX’s attack in Sympathy Is a Knife: “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave.” Take that: this is the offended Taylor we’ve come to expect. She also pulls the dagger in Father Figure, with a melodic reference to George Michael’s song of the same name (which appears in the credits), and likely dedicated to Scott Borchetta, the former head of the record label who sold her music to the highest bidder. “You made a deal with this devil, Turns out my dick’s bigger,” she snaps, after the artist recovered her entire catalog this year after years of struggle.

Wood is a good song, but it’s too similar to I Want You Back by the Jackson 5, and of course, comparisons aren’t possible. In Wi$h Li$t, she quotes a Spanish soccer team: “They want a contract with Real Madrid.” The song, however, won’t go down in music history.

The final section offers a discouraging result: Cancelled!, Honey and The Life of Showgirl (a duet with Sabrina Carpenter, although she’s barely audible) sound like songs we’ve heard too many times before. Elizabeth Taylor, the roller-coaster story of a Hollywood star (hence the title), is among the album’s best, a track with a melodramatic beginning and a powerful chorus. Opalite can be interpreted as an attempt to record her Espresso (Sabrina Carpenter again), but it lacks the spark of that one. The album’s ballad, Eldest Daughter, goes by without the listener noticing, and Ruin The Friendship makes you want to play any Suzanne Vega album.

Taylor Swift is still going to be the biggest pop star of the moment (along with Bad Bunny) despite this album, and perhaps because of the positioning she’s already achieved, it matters little that her 12th album is so unexciting.

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