REVIEW: By Faith Agbonson
Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, feels like a blank space in an otherwise beloved discography.
The album, teased with visuals reminiscent of Christina Aguilera’s Burlesque era, was meant to focus on the behind-the-scenes of the Eras tour, the re-ignition of her love life and the pressures of scrutiny from online hate.
Despite Swift describing it as a more electric and exciting album than her previous, more melancholic album, The Life of a Showgirl still fails to deliver an infectious pop song that one would expect from an album themed around the old Hollywood glam of showgirls.
It starts promisingly with ‘The Fate of Ophelia’, a bass-heavy synth-pop song with hints of new wave groove sprinkled in.
It’s a dreamy, romantic song, where she positions herself in the shoes of Shakespeare’s Ophelia, a tragic girl driven mad by the men in her life, ultimately leading to her death.
The difference here is that Taylor is saved by her new lover and blissfully escapes the tragic ending Ophelia faces.
Although the song is beautifully made production-wise, it is dampened by Swift’s rather mediocre vocals.
Instead of being the fun and lively hit she was hoping to make, she comes across as bored and disinterested because she doesn’t quite have the right voice for it.
Despite having a naturally lower register, Swift insists on singing out of her range, unfortunately making ‘The Fate of Ophelia’ a missed opportunity.
Sadly, the album starts going downhill from here.
Tracks like, ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ and ‘Opalite’ seem to blur together and are both as boring as watching paint dry.
With incredibly dull beats that are so repetitive it’s hard to differentiate the songs apart, all being sung at the same monotonous register, parts of the album are almost sleep-inducing.
This flat and muted way of singing becomes increasingly more common throughout the album and only makes the awkward lyrics featured later even more cringeworthy to listen to.
The tracks ‘Father Figure’ and ‘Eldest Daughter’ both feature lyrics antithetical to the sombre atmosphere of the songs.
With deep-as-a-puddle lyrics such as, “I can make deals with the devil because my dick’s bigger” and “but I’m not a bad bitch, and this isn’t savage,” subtlety is thrown entirely out of the window.
It’s jarring to listen to such on-the-nose lyrics from an artist previously lauded for her songsmith skills.
This all culminates in the most embarrassing song of the album, ‘Actually Romantic’.
This desperate attempt at a hater anthem falls completely flat as Swift has never been one to nail a ‘badass’ theme due to her breathy, powerless way of singing.
Trying to give off the impression that she doesn’t care with lyrics like, “but it’s actually sweet, all the time you’ve spent on me,” ultimately fails.
The biggest problem with writing an entire song about how you don’t care is that it only shows that you do care. A lot.
The problem with this album is that it’s filled with boring choruses, repetitive chord progressions and lyrics that feel like part of a humiliation ritual.
In short, The Life of a Showgirl is a step backwards, and it worries me that Taylor Swift is no longer the once-in-a-generation writer people claim she is.
