Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

I can recount my life in parallels to Taylor Swift eras. 

“Fearless” and “Speak Now” were the first albums I knew by heart. By the time “1989” hit, I was old enough to know that Swiftmania was truly cultural. “Reputation” released when I was 13 and melodramatic, and through COVID-19, “Folklore” and “Evermore” gave isolation a mystic undertone.

“Midnights,” full of songs that reflected the uncertainty of teetering between adolescence and adulthood, marked the end of high school for me.

Swift’s edge has always been her gift for guiding listeners through the shifting eras of her life in tandem with their own — crafting lyrics grounded enough to feel lived-in yet expansive enough to spark daydreams. 

I’ll admit I was one of the people clowning hardest for the release of “Reputation (Taylor’s Version).” I wanted to hear what Swift’s famous vault tracks would sound like on one of my favorite albums. So, when Swift announced a brand-new record instead, I was caught off guard. The title alone, “The Life of a Showgirl,” made me wary of tiring reflections on the burdens of being famous and rich.

The promise vs. the delivery

There’s something remarkable about how prolific Swift is, but at a certain point, the endless cycle of new music starts to feel numbing. Coming right on the heels of the record-shattering success of the Eras Tour, this album announcement read less like inspiration and more like capitalization. Maybe the Eras Tour needed time to settle into history before it was memorialized in song.

And while she promised a “peek behind the velvet curtain” into a vibrant, electric inner life, what we received didn’t match the sharp showgirl imagery of the visuals. “Showgirl” gives us breezy soft rock and synth gloss that feel fun but flimsy. Across the record, Swift gestures at the fissures of fame, the ambivalence, the loneliness, the cracks beneath the spectacle, but we’ve heard sharper and catchier versions of that already in “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” or “Clara Bow.” Here, the lyrics often fall into shallow, tongue-in-cheek attempts at sexiness or wit that don’t quite land.

There are tracks I enjoy, but enjoyment isn’t the same as being moved. Instead of hearing Swift at her boldest or most vulnerable, I hear someone taking swings in all the wrong directions: too comfortable in her stardom to risk real intimacy, too mediated to cut deep, too quick to dress up banality in glitter.

‘I’m not a bad bitch’ — a voice at odds

One of the greatest dissonances of “Showgirl” is how Swift addresses power, identity and intimacy. In earlier eras, she thrived in the grey space: the vulnerable but knowing girl, the ambitious narrator who anticipates betrayal, the lover who risks hope anyway. That tension made her lyrics cut. Here, she often trades subtlety for overt swagger. “I’m not a bad bitch” isn’t offensive because she can’t say it — it’s jarring because I don’t believe it. The line seems written for a version of herself that doesn’t quite fit.

There’s a strange reliance on brand name-dropping, meme-ified turns of phrase (“did you girlboss too close to the sun?”) and the kind of slick, over-processed language you’d expect from a Colleen Hoover paperback, a strange choice from the sharp, world-building songwriter she once was.

One song, “Wood,” seems to emulate the fun, flirty wordplay Sabrina Carpenter has mastered. But where Carpenter leans into cheekiness and self-awareness, never pretending to be profound, Swift tries to splice that tone onto her own posture of earnest reflection. The result feels awkward: neither sexy nor insightful.

“I’m not a bad bitch ,and this isn’t savage” could have been reframed into something layered and self-referential — even devastating. Instead, it feels like a line plucked from Twitter in 2019.

Hooks without teeth: ‘Showgirl,’ song by song

When you zoom in on the songs, the problem becomes clearer.

“The Fate of Ophelia” is probably the album’s strongest contender. It’s catchy — and even a little haunting. But too many of the other songs slip into Swift’s most predictable buckets. “Opalite” is fun but paper-thin. “Elizabeth Taylor” name-drops old Hollywood without giving it weight. “Father Figure” alludes to drama but isn’t specific enough to stick the landing.

“Wi$h Li$t” is thick with suburban sweetness. The chorus spells it out plainly: “I just want you / have a couple kids / got the whole block looking like you / we tell the world to leave us the fuck alone / and they do.” It’s simple and almost quaint. Love is imagined as domestic ease: neighbours, kids, privacy secured. 

There’s nothing wrong with that on its face, but compared to the jagged intimacy of “Lover” or “folklore,” it feels deflated. Back then, Swift could write a line like “Give you my wild, give you a child, but I could never give you peace,” a lyric which towers because it acknowledges love’s limits even at its most consuming. In “Wi$h Li$t,” the love is flatter, easier and untroubled. Maybe that’s the point. But it’s also why it doesn’t cut. “Wood” is catchy, sure, but it feels like the musical equivalent of a graphic tee at Marshalls or a half-trendy accessory from Target: easy, disposable and not meant to last.

Final verdict (for now)

“Showgirl” plays it safe. It is smooth where it could have cut and pleasant where it might have hurt. Swift has built her career on being a wordsmith, a songwriter who could take even the most private emotion and make it feel universal. That’s why the standard we hold her to isn’t unfair. It’s one she set herself.

And for the first time, Swift has nothing of substance to say.

This record is her most predictable yet: a handful of love songs, a few tracks about sex, one about being hated but still on top and a biting diss track. The mirror she once held up to her fans’ lives now feels less like a reflection and more like a store window. Swift is polished, curated and made for display.

That doesn’t make “Showgirl” un-listenable. But when you’ve grown up with Swift setting the stakes higher each album with teenage drama turned myth, heartbreak turned cinema and whispers turned confession… “fine” and “occasionally catchy” aren’t enough.

What Swift needs most isn’t another deluxe variant or another world tour. What she needs is time. Time away from the cycle to sharpen herself. Until then, “The Life of a Showgirl” offers spectacle without soul and a mirrorball that turns but never reflects.