REVIEW: The Life Of A Showgirl Finds Most Of Its Marks

It's not perfect, but it's not the one-star dud a number of critics have panned it as

Future and present showgirls Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift duet on the title track from The Life of A Showgirl.

It’s remarkable how quickly listeners around the world have taken Taylor Swift’s twelfth album, The Life of A Showgirl, and jammed it into their preconceived notions and worldviews. An album written from her emotional mountaintop, both personally and professionally, the twelve tracks [Taylor’s numerology firmly in play here] are an ode to her personal joy, along with some cosplay moments in different roles: having a conversation with legendary film star Elizabeth Taylor in Elizabeth Taylor (or, depending on your viewpoint, writing it from Elizabeth’s viewpoint), mentoring Sabrina Carpenter in the title track, and inhabiting the mind of Scooter Braun on Father Figure (trust me, it’s there if you look closely).

I waited until I’d had a chance to listen a few times and listen to Taylor do some interviews before I wrote this, because over the years, I’ve found that it’s important to know what the artist thought and felt when creating the art. Consumers of art have a tendency to impress their perceptions upon the art, and it’s often said that art is, indeed, what we perceive it to be. When it comes to Taylor Allison Swift, however, everything she creates is done with purpose, which makes her input important when analyzing the output of her creativity.

From a musical perspective, there are a lot of enjoyable rhythms on this album. The chorus on The Fate of Ophelia is an earworm, as is Opalite’s. I’ve found myself humming Opalite a number of times over the last few days—it also forms a lovely bookend with Actually Romantic. Opalite shimmers with a distinct late-90s female rock hue that channels Natalie Imbruglia and Sixpence None The Richer, while Actually Romantic casually strolls in with the cheeky vibe and rhythm of Wheatus’ Teenage Dirtbag.

Speaking of the late 1990s, Wood is built on a brash guitar lick that reminds me a lot of Mariah Carey’s Heartbreaker (Jay-Z version). I’m not going to criticize Taylor for “third-grade lyrics” or “juvenile behavior that’s beneath her,” as some other hipster critics did on Friday. She’s clearly in love with Travis and all of his equipment, and wanted the world to know about it. Heartbreaker was a much, much better song lyrically, but Wood’s staying power (no pun intended) begins and ends with its very danceable music, and makes for an enjoyable song, albeit one I’ll never sing along to at any future concerts. Travis Kelce is a good dude, but I don’t need to sing about his junk.