It’s a big week for Swiftie nation. After a year-and-a-half hiatus—the longest gap between Taylor Swift albums since the nearly two-year jump between 2017’s reputation and 2019’s Lover—her latest release, The Life of a Showgirl, is set to drop on Friday, Oct. 3.
Swift has long been a genre-hopping force in the music industry, moving from country to pop to folk and points in-between in the two decades since her career began. Now, her 12-track 12th studio album promises to be a pop extravaganza that mirrors the emotions she was experiencing during the nearly two-year run of her record-shattering Eras Tour.
“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” Swift said during an appearance on the Aug. 13 episode of New Heights, a podcast hosted by her fiancé, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and his brother, retired NFL great Jason Kelce. “It just comes from, like, the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life.”
Swift collaborated on The Life of a Showgirl with legendary Swedish production duo Max Martin and Shellback, a move that suggests the album will mark a return to the contagious melodies and upbeat styling of the pair’s previous pop hits from Red, 1989, and reputation. “We’ve never actually made an album before where it’s just the three of us. There’s no other collaborators. It’s just the three of us making a focused album,” Swift said of Martin and Shellback on New Heights. “When I was on tour in Stockholm, I had Max Martin come out to the show, and I was talking to him, and I was like, ‘I just feel like we could knock it out of the park if we went back in.’ I essentially said to him, ‘I want to be as proud of it as an album as I am of the Eras Tour, and for the same reasons. And he was like, ‘Do you understand what kind of pressure that is?’”
Let’s take a look back at how Swift’s most important collaborators have influenced her sound over the years.
Read more: What Taylor Swift’s Relationship With Max Martin Means for The Life of a Showgirl
Nathan Chapman
Key quote: “All of the iconic artists in Nashville tell the best stories. Willie Nelson, Reba McIntire, Dolly Parton—so many others I could name—they all have that in common. That’s one of the reasons why Taylor has done so well and why she calls Nashville home: She’s a great storyteller.” – Chapman, 2013, in an interview with MusicRadar
Role: Producer
Albums worked on: Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989
Biggest singles: “Teardrops on My Guitar,” “Our Song,” “Love Story,” “You Belong With Me,” “Mean,” “Back to December”
Genre: Country-pop
What to know: After producing 14-year-old Swift’s first demos, Chapman was a producer on Swift’s first five albums and helped craft the signature early sound that launched her meteoric rise to stardom. Beginning with her 2006 self-titled debut and continuing through Fearless and Speak Now, Chapman blended traditional country instrumentals like fiddle and acoustic guitar with catchy pop melodies and hooks to propel Swift to significant commercial and critical success, including a Grammy for Album of the Year for Fearless. His role was scaled back as Swift started to make the transition to full-on pop and brought in new producers on Red, culminating in a final credit for “This Love” on 1989.
Max Martin and Shellback
Key quote: “Max and I had a conversation nine months later at the [2016] Grammys, when we had literally just won [Album of the Year] for 1989. He kind of laughed, he pointed to all the other producers on the album, and he’s like, ‘If she had, like, three more hours in the day, she would just figure out what we do and she would do it. And she wouldn’t need any of us.’” – 1989 producer Ryan Tedder on Max Martin’s praise for Swift, 2024, in an interview with Grammys.com
Role: Producers/Songwriters
Albums worked on:
Martin: Red, 1989, reputation, The Life of a Showgirl
Shellback: Red, 1989, reputation, Red (Taylor’s Version), 1989 (Taylor’s Version), The Life of a Showgirl
Biggest singles: “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space,” “Bad Blood (feat. Kendrick Lamar),” “…Ready For It?”
Genre: Pop
What to know: Martin and Shellback first joined forces with Swift on Red, fueling her pivot from country music chart-topper to pop superstar. The pair’s influence generally seems to result in a style of hit that Swift has referred to as a glitter gel pen song, one of three metaphorical groupings of music that make up her discography. According to Swift, she writes with a figurative glitter gel pen in hand when the track is “frivolous, carefree, bouncy, syncopated perfectly to the beat.”
“Glitter gel pen lyrics don’t care if you don’t take them seriously because they don’t take themselves seriously,” she said while accepting the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade honor at the 2022 Nashville Songwriter Awards. “Glitter gel pen lyrics are the drunk girl at the party who tells you that you look like an angel in the bathroom. It’s what we need every once in a while in these fraught times in which we live.”
Jack Antonoff
Key quote: “She’s the first person who recognized me as a producer. A lot of people are afraid to sign off on something that isn’t done by a proven person. I had written lots of songs and produced them, but they would always sort of go somewhere else. So the label or whoever could say, oh, we had this person produce it. And, you know, I put my heart and soul into that song and she said, ‘I love it.’” – Antonoff on how Swift helped launch his producing career with 1989‘s “Out of the Woods,” 2023, in conversation on TIME‘s Person of the Week podcast
Role: Producer/Songwriter
Albums worked on: 1989, reputation, Lover, folklore, evermore, Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version), Midnights, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), 1989 (Taylor’s Version), THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
Biggest singles: “Out of the Woods,” “Look What You Made Me Do,” “Cruel Summer,” “Anti-Hero,” “Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault),” “Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)”
Genre: Pop
What to know: A partnership that began with cowriting and coproducing the song “Sweeter Than Fiction” for the 2013 film One Chance has blossomed into one of the most important creative relationships in both artists’ lives. Since working with Swift on the Golden Globes-nominated soundtrack single, Antonoff has been a producer on every Swift album from 1989 on, notably instilling a distinctly ’80s-inspired sound in many of her iconic pop hits. When Antonoff is involved, expect heavy synths, rock-influenced rhythms, experimental vocals, and intimate lyrics with high-energy choruses.
Aaron Dessner
Key quote: “Taylor is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. The poetic and literary bent of her lyricism, where songs often have elaborately woven narratives and hidden meanings that connect to her earlier or future work, what her fans call ‘easter eggs,’ helps to create an entire artistic world that we all get to inhabit and obsess over as her fans.” – Dessner, 2023, in an interview with People
Role: Producer/Songwriter
Albums worked on: folklore, evermore, Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Midnights, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
Biggest singles: “cardigan,” “willow”
Genre: Indie-folk
What to know: When folklore debuted in July 2020, it ushered in yet another new musical era for Swift—one that was characterized by a stripped-down, indie-folk sound and represented a marked departure from her previous country and pop efforts. It also heralded the arrival of producer Aaron Dessner, a founding member of indie rock band The National, on the Swift scene. Dessner’s collaborations with Swift have been praised for their minimalist instrumentation, introspective storytelling, and atmospheric tone.
Christopher Rowe
Role: Producer
Albums worked on: Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), 1989 (Taylor’s Version)
Genre: Country, pop
What to know: Having previously worked as an engineer and sound mixer on Swift’s concert films, Rowe was brought on as a producer for her “Taylor’s Version” rerecording project with the apparent goal of replicating the sound of Swift’s masters as faithfully as possible while adding her updated vocals and some new instrumental elements. He was heavily involved with all four of Swift’s rerecorded albums, recreating songs from Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and 1989 that were originally developed by Chapman, Martin, and other producers.
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