What can we expect from Taylor Swift's new album, The Life of a Showgirl?
If listening to meatheads blabber for two hours while the world's biggest star benevolently gives their viewership numbers an artificial bump isn't your idea of a good time, just know that Taylor gave us vital details around the new album. Here's our premature evaluation.
The return of Taylor Swift, pure pop paragon
Let's face it, The Life of a Showgirl is already on track to be Taylor Swift's third-best album thanks to two words: Max Martin. The Swedish pop supremo and his producing partner Shellback – who were responsible for the best bits on Swift's best albums, Reputation and 1989 (yes, in that order) – are the credited producers on every track on the new album, confirming what everyone suspected after Swift this week shared a Spotify playlist highlighting their biggest hits for her, from 22 to Wildest Dreams. On her boyfriend's podcast, Swift said she recorded the album in Sweden during the European leg of her Eras tour and promised 'bangers'.
It proves that Taylor reads her own reviews. After the Matty Healy-yearning fizzer that was The Tortured Poets Department, the critical consensus was that her once-fruitful relationship with producer Jack Antonoff had run its course, stalled at mid-tempo moodiness, and that she needed a refresh.
Returning to the glory of yore might seem a reductive move, but let's not forget that Max Martin doesn't sleep: his recent work on Ariana Grande's Eternal Sunshine and The Weeknd's Hurry Up Tomorrow – including the pre-album smash Dancing in the Flames – show he's still got the Swede-est touch.
Doing it with a broken heart?
The highlight of Taylor's Tortured Poets era – beyond proving she has great taste in men – was I Can Do it with a Broken Heart, the album's second single and longest-charting hit. Its success surely inspired Taylor's latest pop pivot. She added the song to her Eras tours last year, complete with a showgirl aesthetic: feathers, canes and Old Hollywood glamour, which led me to assume that Taylor loved Margot Robbie's Babylon.
The Life of a Showgirl 's album cover – showing a sexy Swift near-drowning in a bathtub – seems to point to that song's ideas: the lonely grind behind the glamorous pop life. As do the album's typically evocative track titles, including The Fate of Ophelia, Elizabeth Taylor and Cancelled!. Bubblegum pop with a sour centre: it's the best flavour.
But is it a head fake? On the podcast, Swift said the album was inspired by the 'infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in my life' during her Eras tour and Kelce courtship, and said 'that effervescence has come through on this record'. OK, so why are you drowning in a bathtub on the cover, surrounded by the font from Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette then?
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George Michael's former partner believes the late singer would have been proud of Taylor Swift's upcoming tribute. The Bad Blood hitmaker announced her long-awaited new album, The Life of a Showgirl, earlier this week and among the tracks is a song called Father Figure, which will feature the melody from George's 1987 track of the same name. Kenny Goss - who was in a relationship with George from 1996 to 2009 - told TMZ the Careless Whisper singer would have totally approved of Taylor's song and while he never met the 35-year-old pop star before his death in 2016, the art dealer is pretty sure his former partner would have been a fan and appreciated someone of her standing taking an interest in his work. Kenny himself is a big fan of Taylor's music and though he had no idea she planned to interpolate Father Figure on her new album, it was a welcome surprise. Taylor announced The Life of a Showgirl earlier this week and has explained the prominent use of the colour orange in the artwork and promotional teasers for the record. During an appearance on the New Heights podcast with her boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce, she said: "I've just always liked it ... It feels like energetically how my life has felt - and this album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during [The Eras Tour], which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant." The Karma singer also talked about the album's artwork, which shows her wearing a jewelled costume under the water in a bath and confessed the picture represents her at the end of a concert night because she always ends with a soak in the tub. She explained: "This represents the end of my night ... My show days are the same every single day, I just have a different city. And my day ends with me in a bathtub - not usually in a bedazzled dress ... [The album represents] the life beyond the show ... I would say it's everything that was going on behind the curtain." The Life of a Showgirl will be released on 3 October.
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Taylor Swift explains The Life of a Showgirl's orange theme
Taylor Swift has explained the orange theme for her upcoming album The Life of a Showgirl. The singer is returning with her latest record - which is due for release on October 3 - and she opened up about her use of the colour orange in the artwork and the promotional teasers explaining the hue represents how she was feeling while making the record during The Eras Tour which was "exuberant and electric and vibrant". During an appearance on the New Heights podcast with her boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce, Taylor was asked about the significance of the colour orange and she replied: "I've just always liked it ... It feels like energetically how my life has felt - and this album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during [The Eras Tour], which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant." Taylor went on to talk about reuniting with producers Max Martin and Shellback for her 12th studio LP after previously working with the pair on her albums Red, 1989, and Reputation. She said: "One of the things about this record is, like, it's a record I made with my mentor Max Martin and Shellback. The three of us have made some of my favorite songs that I have ever done before. "They were my main collaborators on my Red album. We did We Are Never Getting Back Together, I Knew You Were Trouble, 22, Shake It Off, Blank Space, Style, Wildest Dreams, Ready for It, Delicate." She added of the paid: "They're just geniuses". Taylor also talked about the album's artwork, which shows her wearing a jewelled costume under the water in a bath and confessed the picture represents her at the end of a concert night because she always ends with a soak in the tub. She explained: "This represents the end of my night ... My show days are the same every single day, I just have a different city. And my day ends with me in a bathtub - not usually in a bedazzled dress ... [The album represents] the life beyond the show ... I would say it's everything that was going on behind the curtain."
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I've thought about Taylor Swift every day for almost 20 years. I still have no idea who she really is
There is something extremely humbling about the fact that the longest, most complicated relationship I have ever had is with someone who has no idea I was even born. Taylor Swift (born on December 13, 1989, to Andrea and Scott Swift) has been in my ears and my thoughts every one of the 6860 days since eight-year-old me first heard Teardrops On My Guitar 's wistful opening chords on the car radio. Her deepest and darkest desires and distresses have been my own for almost 20 years, with her diarised lyrics holding me through every heartbreak and happiness. I feel like I know her better than the back of my own hand. I know that, despite her decades of music, documentaries, interviews and more, I don't know her at all. I admire her. I don't understand her. I don't know if I can believe everything she tells me, but I want, no, I need her to tell me more. Swift did tell me more this week, but it only made me more conflicted. She has spent two decades building a billion-dollar empire on authenticity, but her New Heights podcast sit-down with her NFL tight end boyfriend proves we're being fed contradictions. And that's exactly by the marketing mastermind's own design: cleverly and constantly creating a deeper investment from her fans, a deeper desire to crack the enigma who has given us all the clues is, after all, to her bank account's benefit. At the time of writing, more than 13 million people have watched Swift's charity appearance on Travis Kelce's podcast, which he hosts with Jason Kelce. At one point during the two-hour-long episode's live premiere, more than 1.3 million people were hanging on her every word. I was one of them, and, like always, when she teared up speaking about buying back the master recordings of her first six albums after a lengthy and emotional war (notably involving a battle with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West), I teared up with her. But then I started thinking. Loading 'Since I was a teenager, I've been actively saving up money to buy my music back,' Swift, whom Forbes estimates has a net worth of US$1.6 billion ($2.4 billion), told her trophy boyfriend, his brother, and the world. (I have contributed at least $10,000 to this fund over the years). 'For me, this is not, 'Oh, I want to own this asset because of its returns, because of the dividends that I will receive over the years,'' she explained. 'I want it because these [are] my handwritten diary entries from my whole life. These are the songs I wrote about every phase of my life. This is my photography, my music videos, most of which I funded. My artwork, everything that I've ever done, is in this catalogue.'
