I mean… always, right? 

Pretty sure no one needs a reminder of what’s happening tonight at midnight – Taylor Swift has been hiding for a few weeks now because she’s about to be all up in our faces. The Life of a Showgirl is hours away from release and everyone’s trying to cash in. I just read an article about how Uber has a deal or something to celebrate Taylor’s new music. And we’re joining the party too. 

 

The Fug Girls aka Drinks With Broads (on Substack) and I are doing a LIVE on Substack tomorrow at 6pm ET. Please join us at The Squawk or Drinks With Broads! 

And of course for days now Spotify’s been all over it with posters and billboards and lyric reveals. The most hardcore of Swifties have been looking for Easter eggs, something something about the capital letters and the way they’re set in iTunes on her previous albums spelling out clues to the new songs…? 

 

Here's the thing though: while her obsessive fans are a key to her success, Taylor Swift could not have become as big as she is now just from the Easter egg hunters. She is monoculture because her influence reaches beyond them. So the album will be big, it’s just a matter of how big. And also how much gossip. After all, what would a new set of Taylor songs be without the drama? The drama tracks for Taylor but it also tracks for the theme. Every showgirl brings the drama – this is the contract you sign when you commit to a life onstage. And on that album, Taylor is both playing herself and stepping into the role of showgirls before her: Ophelia, Elizabeth Taylor, Tania Coleridge, who played the model in the video for George Michael’s “Father Figure”. 

As I wrote back in August when The Life of a Showgirl was announced, it was obvious not just from the shared song title but also the styling in one of the album photos. 

 

The black bob with the blunt bang was Tania’s look in that video. And Billboard confirmed this week that Taylor’s “Father Figure” interpolates George’s classic off his debut solo album, Faith, the album that, really, made him a showgirl. I love this song, I’m excited to see how Taylor borrows from it. 

Back to the drama, though, right now, at least in my feed, the drama involves Charli XCX. There’s some chatter on socials about whether or not the song “Actually Romantic” is about Charli, a response from Taylor to Charli’s “Sympathy is a Knife”, which is widely speculated to be about Taylor. Charli’s singing about feeling insecure around a girl who she’ll never be. A girl who might show up backstage at her boyfriend’s show. The boyfriend, now husband, is George Daniel, the drummer for The1975. You see where this is going. 

 

Here's the first lyric, supposedly, from Taylor’s “Actually Romantic”: 

LOL, new pop girly beef on the horizon? 

 

At the time of this post, Taylor hasn’t updated her socials in three days. Her last post was a corny video of her playing a director directing herself, the showgirl. 

My biggest takeaway from this was the jeans. She’s wearing crossover jeans – her pair is the Agolde Vana, looks like the darker wash. I actually prefer them in the lighter wash here. 

If we’re talking about crossover jeans, though, the brand that is most known for the crossover is R13, also known to be very expensive for jeans. I have a pair of drop-crotch R13s that I bought years ago and love, and they’ve held up well. It’s a pair that’s pretty standard in their collection, they issue it year after year. And currently on sale at Farfetch but still pricey. 

 

Darkpark has a crossover pair on sale at SSense, also quite expensive.

There’s a much more affordable option at Zara and I like the hang on these, I tried them on. 

But for me, lately, as I’ve said, no one is doing it like Gap – I’m obsessed with their denim right now. And a lot of people are talking about the sudden, like, elevation in style and quality they’ve shown over the last year. I just pulled two pairs of crossover Gap jeans last week to wear on our show and they are SO good. The High Rise UltraSoft Crossover Horseshoe Jeans are indeed very soft. And they fall perfectly around my shoes. And also the High Rise UltraSoft Crossover Barrel Jeans in brown because I really like the colour and the 80s style cut of the pants around the waist. 

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Photo credits: PA Images/ INSTARimages

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