Taylor Swift’s 12th album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” shows she’s still at the top of the cultural mainstream. The album, released Friday, features upbeat pop tracks and a return to the fold of Swedish producers Max Martin and Shellback.
The album’s themes explore fame, perception, love and Travis Kelce’s podcast with witty lyrics and catchy hooks. Swift’s dense vocabulary shines, though sometimes it feels a bit too much.
Overall, the album captures the glitz and glamour of her “Eras Tour” with humor and humanity.
The New York Times called the album the singer’s “Eras Tour victory lap.”
“The star’s power and reach has grown with each of her releases,” wrote Ben Sisario. “Now she’s following her record-breaking live show with her 12th original studio LP.”
Rolling Stone gave the album five out of five stars, saying, “Swift hits all her marks- from new, exciting sonic turns with incisive storytelling.”
“So there’s no imaginable way she could possibly get any bigger, right?” wrote Maya Georgie. “Well, that’s where ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ comes in. Only a sucker would think the curtain close of the Eras Tour marked the end of Swift’s almighty reign in the pop sphere. With her twelfth studio album, the musician shoots into a fresh echelon of superstardom — and hits all her marks.”
While Swift is the reigning pop princess, she isn’t opposed to sharing the spotlight.
Many reviews noted how her only collaboration on the album is with Sabrina Carpenter for the album’s title track, which is the final song on the project.
“It’s almost as if Swift is passing the torch to the next generation of showgirls as she takes a bow. Could it be her final one? Well, no. This showgirl won’t be left for dead; she’s immortal now,” write Georgie. “’We will see you next time,’ Swift promises as an audience cheers. After all, despite the rock on her finger, Swift is married to the hustle — and with an album as good as this one, she might even try to outdo herself, again. That’s just show business for you.”
Variety’s Chris Willman said Swift has “made such a contagiously joyful record, even her score-settling detours sound sunny,” as opposed to her “The Tortured Poets Department,” album.
“Swift has never made two albums that sound alike, and that’s certainly the case with this nearly polar-opposite follow-up to her ‘Tortured’ era. We like her when she’s mad (with apologies to the Incredible Hulk), and of course, she already proudly told us there’s nothing like a madwoman. But she also once told us, ‘Why be mad when you can be glad?”’ Yes, there was an acronym involved there we’re leaving out, but the point stands: Maybe, just maybe, we can like her at least as much when she’s just mad about the boy,” he wrote. “It’s too late for Swift to have a “song of the summer,” but this feels like the Album of the Summer — the calendar be damned. It’s giddy, funny, touching, silly, haughty and moving in about equal measure, but most of all, it’s got a sunstruck kind of love that besottedly seeps through the orange LP grooves and might even make you believe in romance again, too.”
Finally, the Los Angeles Times had a little shade directed at her “Tortured” album, saying that the new album is an “immaculate act of damage control.”
“After the mess, the mop-up,” pop music critic Mikael Wood said. “That’s one way to understand Taylor Swift’s new album, ‘The Life of a Showgirl,’ on which music’s biggest star offers up a dozen precision-cut pop songs just 18 months removed from last year’s sprawling and emotionally unstable ‘The Tortured Poets Department.’”
“That earlier LP, which contained 16 tracks before Swift expanded it with 15 more, was perhaps the most divisive of the singer’s two-decade-long career; it racked up bonkers sales and streaming numbers, of course — at this point, she’s truly too big to fail — but its mixed reception among tastemakers and even some fans seemed to rattle Swift, who for all her alertness to the brutality of being a woman in the public eye has become accustomed to a certain level of idolatry.”
Jason Lipshutz of Billboard take is that the singer brings the “bangers,” but warns Swifties against calling it “‘1989’ Part Two.”
“While ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ is composed of classically designed pop tracks, with standard verse-chorus arrangements and rarely exceeding four minutes in run time, Swift’s eagerly anticipated Return to Bangers is not, say, ‘1989’ Pt. II. Instead of coming back with party tracks, Swift has synthesized the commitment to pristine hooks that she shares with Martin and Shellback, an increasingly idiosyncratic lyrical slant, and the mid-thirties perspective of her past few albums,” he wrote. “The result is a collection of songs that are immediately engrossing and among the most affecting of Swift’s career, while also focusing on topics like Hamlet and suburban bliss. Call it Bangers for Adults.”
“The Life of a Showgirl” is out now wherever you get your music.
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