The Showgirl is Horny and Tyrannical

Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, is the dominant story today in pop culture so, like, if anyone wants to bury whatever controversy, now would be the time. Makes you wonder why the people who leaked the Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban divorce were in such a hurry – if they had waited four days it would not have landed the way it did. 

Taylor of course is on the opposite end of the mood spectrum. She is in love, she is engaged, and in the words of another Taylor, as in Teyana, Swift is getting her back blown out. This is one of the biggest takeaways from the album, kicking off with “The Fate of Ophelia”, a song about how Travis Kelce pretty much saved her from her melancholy and showed her what good loving could be. In more ways than one, LOL. 

We’ll get back to the loving, or the lusting, in a minute but let’s start with Travis and how he inspired not just the music but the willingness to talk about his presence in the music. After all, it’s not like Taylor has never written about her romances, both when her heart is full and when her heart has been broken. But then afterwards, when she’s promoting the songs, when she’s explaining what the songs are about, she has never been this forthcoming. Even during her time with Joe Alwyn, when it was good, you could sense that there was a boundary she wouldn’t – or couldn’t – cross. And that simply doesn’t exist in this relationship with Travis. She has been doing interviews all day in the UK and everyone is free to ask about him: how did he propose, when are you getting married, what is he like, what do you love about him, etc etc etc. This is what I’ve been saying ever since they started dating just over two years ago – that she’s finally found someone with whom there needn’t be any restraints, and that also applies to her performance of personality and its creative expression. By that I mean that she’s free to be cringe. 

And there is a lot of cringe in some of the lyrics on this album. At times it’s unintentional, the “chihuahua” reference in “Actually Romantic” is painful (one of the weakest tracks) and at other times it’s hilarious and adorable, like on “Wood”. This is Taylor at her horniest and goofiest, and it works. She’s singing here about superstitions, pumped up by sexual innuendo. So basically a song dedicated to how love can dispel bad luck… and the power of a good, hard dick. It’s funny and it’s fun, she is happy and she is horny, and the best part is that she doesn’t have to dial it back out of an obligation to be cool or chill. Which takes me back to the lyrics of “Delicate” from back in the reputation era. 

“Is it cool that I said all that?
Is it chill that you're in my head?
'Cause I know that it's delicate (delicate)”

And even “Out of the Woods” on 1989. 

We’ve gone from a Taylor in love but anxious about whether or not she’s cool and chill enough to keep his interest and wondering if their romance will make it out of the woods to a song about how taking in the good wood is releasing her from her previous insecurities – and allowing her to be as silly and stupid as she wants with her puns and double entendres. It’s hard not to smile along on the ride with her, haha. 

That said, as she told Greg James on BBC Radio One this morning, the album “has teeth”. And as much as I enjoy Taylor with her heart and thighs open, I really enjoy her when she’s vengeful and despotic. 

“Father Figure” is undoubtedly a song about Scott Borchetta, with a signature Taylor Swift turn in the final act when she declares that she’s the one with the big dick, the real father figure godfather who can disappear a man in the river. When she sings at the end in the full final chorus that…

“This empire belongs to me”

…it’s basically a “who’s your mama now?” mic drop. Taylor Swift is the matriarch, Mother, if you will, the restored protector of the family which, of course, you could read as her masters. I f-cked with this track the moment I heard it and it roars even more ferociously now that she has bought back her music. 

“Father Figure” is Taylor at her most righteous as a ruler. “CANCELLED!”, however, is Taylor at her most vicious. This song, to me, is the sister song to “Look What You Made Me Do”. Sonically there are similarities, I played them back to back and there’s a shared DNA in the sound. But if “LWYMD” was about becoming what she’s been accused of, “CANCELLED!” is her encouraging her problematic friends to follow the trail she blazed in front of them. This is a song about defiant solidarity: when you try to cancel my friends, it just makes me friend them harder. 

The gossip, then, is who she’s shielding. Brittany Mahomes fits the timeline, since Taylor says she wrote the songs last summer, before the It Ends With Us drama. But she also said on BBC Radio One this morning that everything on the album still applies to her circumstances today. And she’s smart enough to know that people would be combing through the lyrics of Showgirl looking for references to another friend who’s been embroiled in a much more high-profile controversy: Blake Lively, obviously. 

Several lyrics in “CANCELLED!” point to Blake directly. “Cloaked in Gucci” for example could refer to Blake’s prior partnership with the brand; “poison thorny flowers” connects to Lily Bloom in It Ends With Us and all that criticism about Blake’s floral wardrobe during promotion; and “like my whiskey sour” is easy, Blake’s alcohol brand Betty Booze has a drink called Sparkling Bourbon Apple Ginger Sour Cherry. 

Even if Blake’s not the inspiration here, the people looking for a Blake diss track on The Life of a Showgirl have been disappointed today. There is not even a whisper of a shot taken at Blake on this album. And my read of “CANCELLED!” is that this song is indeed for Blake, oblique enough so that Taylor doesn’t have to be dragged into court, but finally an answer to all the speculation, and also strong enough as a standalone without the gossip. Strong enough to make it, today, my favourite of all of Taylor’s revenge songs in her catalogue. Way better than “Look What You Made Me Do” – and maybe because she’s much more effective when she’s deploying her venom on behalf of someone else and not for herself. 

That said… sorry… but there are some flops on this album. There are at least four that sound to me like they were forced in to make the album longer. Still, I prefer it by a mile over Tortured Poets and the final track, the title track, “The Life of a Showgirl” is, in my opinion, exhilarating. 

This is the one with Sabrina Carpenter and I texted Kathleen last night that on the first listen, for me it’s actually the most interesting songwriting on the album. Like “Florida!!!” on Tortured Poets, with Florence Welch, when Taylor allows another woman to actually join her up front, it’s puts her in the artistic space to elevate her game. “The Life of a Showgirl” turns into a Broadway song midway through before going back to pop – it’s on theme and refreshingly ambitious, I was thrilled to hear it. Because I hope it portends a more challenging arc for her going forward as the last song on the album.

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