Since releasing her debut album in 2006, Taylor Swift has continued to dominate the music industry. She’s won more Grammys for Album of the Year than any other musician. The release of her last album The Tortured Poets Department saw her take up the top 14 spots of the Billboard Hot 100. Whether you love her or hate her, Taylor Swift is undeniably one of the most influential celebrities of our time.

On August 13th, 2025, Taylor Swift announced that she would be releasing her twelfth album, entitled The Life of a Showgirl. Like her other albums, Life of a Showgirl has a unique and distinctive vibe. Many of the photos released for the album include the color orange and glitter and have leaned into the provocative and flamboyant aesthetics associated with showgirls. 

The Fate of Ophelia: 8/10

The lead single of the album was also its best track in my opinion. The influences of Max Martin and Shellback, who produced this album as well as Taylor’s 5th and 6th albums, 1989 and Reputation, were obvious. In particular, this song felt very reminiscent of 1989. I thought the songwriting was decent. I didn’t like it as much as my favorite songs from Taylor’s other albums. However, I overall enjoyed this song and thought it was catchy.

Elizabeth Taylor: 3.5/10

Going into the album, I had high expectations for this song and thought it would be my favorite. I might be biased because I thought it was going to be more like Folklore (my favorite album), so it had a higher bar, but it didn’t live up to my expectations. The lyrics weren’t up to the standard of former albums and the mentions of Elizabeth Taylor, an actress during the 1940s-1960s, felt forced. It felt like Taylor was trying to play into a vintage aesthetic with the song. 

Opalite: 7/10

This was probably my second favorite song on the album. It has a catchy beat, and the chorus is an earworm. Compared to some of her more recent albums, such as Folklore, it feels unabashedly fun. It’s succeeding in what it aims to be, an upbeat love song.

Father Figure: 2/10

While the first verse of the song was promising and enjoyable, it all went downhill from there. The chorus in particular felt overly intense and like it was trying too hard to be scandalous. I didn’t like the songwriting very much.

Eldest Daughter: 6/10

Taylor Swift always puts her most emotional/sad songs in the fifth spot on her albums. This was the fifth song, so it was more emotional and slow than the other tracks. It’s kind of a promise to Travis Kelce, her fiance, that she’s committed to the relationship. While some of the song’s lyrics felt kind of clunky and didn’t really flow very well, I enjoyed the bridge because in an album where I found many of the lyrics didn’t feel like Taylor Swift lyrics, it was reminiscent of bridges from her earlier albums.

Ruin the Friendship: 5/10

At first, I was kind of weirded out by this song. My initial thoughts were, “Why is Taylor Swift, a woman in her mid-30s, still writing about her high school crush?” While that thought didn’t completely go away over the course of the song, context helped explain the reason. She’s singing about an old high school friend, Jeff Lang, who died after a long struggle with both his mental health and drug usage. So while I think it’s a bit weird to be singing about him, I get that there’s an unanswered what-if there. I didn’t love the song, but I thought it was nice and kind of sad.

Actually Romantic: 1/10

I did my best going into this album to avoid the online commentary about it. However, I did know going into this song that it is aimed at Charli XCX, another pop singer. The background of the alleged controversy comes from Charli XCX’s album, Brat, where she had a song called Sympathy Is a Knife. Her song talks about how she feels insecure around Taylor Swift and how she makes her feel inadequate. Going into this,the beginning chord progression is the exact same as Where Is My Mind? by The Pixies. While Taylor can technically use it and not credit the Pixies, it’s such an obvious copy that it kind of feels like cheating. 

Overall, the song just felt mean. While there are almost certainly elements to the feud between Swift and Charli XCX that we don’t know, the song made me cringe. It feels overly catty and like something a high school mean girl in a movie would say. Something also rubs me the wrong way about it. This was my least favorite song on the album, and while it is admittedly catchy, the beat couldn’t make me overlook the lyrics. 

Wi$h Li$t: 2/10

I don’t have very much to say on this song, but it didn’t really stand out to me. The songwriting wasn’t great, and the beat didn’t strike me. If I’m being completely honest, the song kind of annoyed me.

Wood: 1.5/10

This was another song I didn’t enjoy. I felt like the song wasn’t that catchy and was overall forgettable. The songwriting is cringe-worthy and relies heavily on sexual innuendos. It feels like Swift is trying to emulate Sabrina Carpenter, who typically writes very sexually explicit lyrics, on this song, but I don’t think that lyric style works for her or Carpenter, so I didn’t enjoy it.

CANCELLED!: 2/10

This is another song that I don’t have much to say on. The melody didn’t stand out, and some of the lyrics, such as “did you girl-boss too close to the sun?”, were honestly just bad. This doesn’t seem like the same person who wrote Folklore.

Honey: 4/10

When I first listened to this song, I had absolutely no reaction to it. It didn’t inspire any good or bad feelings in me. The tune was good, but it just didn’t do anything for me.

The Life of a Showgirl (featuring Sabrina Carpenter): 5/10

While I enjoyed this song, Sabrina Carpenter being on it dragged it down a lot for me. I really dislike Sabrina Carpenter, so I couldn’t enjoy it when she was singing. However, I thought the parts of the song Swift was on were good.

The Overall Album: 3.5/10

Overall, I would rate this album a 3.5 out of 10. This is probably my least favorite Taylor Swift album, and I don’t think it was on par with her earlier work. I feel like she should’ve waited another year or two to release an album because releasing one this soon after The Tortured Poets Department seems to have decreased the quality. There were definitely some catchy tunes on the album that got stuck in my head, but I didn’t enjoy her lyrics as much as I have in the past.