The Life of a Showgirl, the 12th original album in Swift’s illustrious career and the first album she’s released after her earth-shattering Eras Tour, had been long-awaited by Swifties everywhere, including the many here at Lakeside. Immediately, there’s something different about this album than the many we’ve received in the past few years: it’s a happy album, describing her state of life right now as she’s finally found the love of her life, Travis Kelce, whom she recently got engaged to. We were so excited for a fun, glitter gel pen-like album, but instead, what we got was slightly subpar. While there are some hits, the exciting album disappointed us as long-time Swifties, being unrelatable and drab, going against everything Swift is acclaimed for in her music.

For us, two things created the lackluster or “hollow” sound haunting each track on this record: the first of which was the lyrics. Lyricism, undoubtedly, is a key component in music, though its importance can vary depending on the artist. For Swift, lyricism has always been a defining characteristic of both her and her artistry. Swift’s storytelling, imagery, and consistent versatility have forever been the backbone of her appeal; however, in The Life of a Showgirl, these enticing aspects do not shine through nearly as brightly as they did before. While it’s fair to argue that, within an album marketed as a pop-disco extravaganza, we should have expected the song to be less reliant on its message and more so on catchy, dazzling “showgirl” beats … Swift has proven time and time again that she can simultaneously deliver a captivating pop song with a level of prose her competitors can only bask in. This is not to say every lyric is terrible, but there are several areas for improvement within many of the songs. For example, based on the title, fans anticipated that the song “Eldest Daughter” would be one of Swift’s most relatable, lyrically surreal songs throughout her discography — it was not. In fact, with lyrics like “Every eldest daughter was the first lamb to the slaughter, So we all dressed up as wolves and we looked fire,” fans began to make their own versions of the lyrics on social media, nearly all captioning their versions as a “fix” for the song. To be frank, most of the replacements truly are. Other lyrics like “I’m not a bad b****, this isn’t savage” and “Did you girlboss too close to the sun?” sound like remnants of a millennial finding out about Gen Z slang for the first time and deciding they’d be a good addition to her songs. Though not every piece of songwriting needs to have some grand philosophical meaning… is it selfish to expect something slightly more moving from an artist who’s proven she’s capable of such craft? 

This album was produced by long-respected pop producers Max Martin and Shellback. At this news, long-time Swift fans (us) cheered, hoping to escape the repetitive synth-heavy hole that had begun to erode after a nearly 11-album streak of Jack Antonoff-produced albums. Upon first listen, we were wrong to cheer. In terms of the production, there’s just… not a lot of it. In addition to this, many of her songs reused melodies or sound similar to other songs, including her own. For example, “Wood” uses the same melody as “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5, even leading me to believe that Jackson 5 had accidentally started playing in the middle of my first listen to The Life of a Showgirl, and “Wi$h Li$t” follows a similar melody to her song “Glitch” from Midnights. Even though there’s nothing wrong with having similar-sounding songs, it definitely did not help the album feel fresh.

To be clear, this is not a bad album. In fact, far from it– the world has seen worse. Though not the majority, there are a decent number of tracks that (with time) have pleasantly grown on us, such as “The Fate of Ophelia,” “Opalite,” and “Wood,” which also happen to be the songs that most vividly capture Swift’s vision of an album with fun, flirty songs to dance along to. Could our longstanding delight in her past music possibly be biasing us towards cutting her some slack? Maybe. For now, though, we’ll aim to enjoy as many tracks as we can. Because baby, that’s show business for you.