The Life of a Showgirl is a loved-up pop victory lap

The last time we met Taylor Swift, she in a spiral.

His latest album, the tortured poets department, was an emotional purge – a deadly stuck pole with two bitter and disorderly ruptures.

We found him at his lowest, “crying at the gymnasium” and “angry” to waste his youth on a six -year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn, who finally failed.

Eighteen months later, she is back with the last update from her office; And the story is very different.

Registered in stolen moments during the ERA tour broken by the record, he found the Happy, Energiszed and newly in love with the star of the NFL Travis Kelce.

“This album concerns what was happening behind the scenes of my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and dynamic,” she said in an appearance on the podcast of the new Kelce Heights last month.

To capture this dynamic, she produced the album not with her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff – whose pillowmates have defined the sounds of Midnights, and the department of tortured poets – but with the Swedish pop brains Max Martin and Shellback, which previously worked with Swift on successes like Shake It and I knew that you were problems.

The goal, said Swift, was to make a tight and compact album of “Bangers” (which is successful songs, not sausages) with “so contagious melodies that you are almost angry with that”.

But enough preamble. Is the life of a showgirl a rhinestone success or a choir line disaster?

Go directly to the point: it is a triumph.

It is a combination of song composers and whipped production which easily erases the high bar that Swift has established itself.

Fans expecting a return to the maximalist pop of red and 1989 could be surprised.

Swift’s new music is cooler and collected than its previous collaborations with Martin; Pressing the atmospheric textures of its recent tubes for The Weeknd and Ariana Grande.

But there is not an ounce of fat on any of these songs.

At 41 minutes, the life of a showgirl is the shortest album that Swift has been released since its beginnings in 2006; And laser focus is a welcome relief after the swollen word soup of tortured poets.

Thematically, Swift’s latest words have two distinct sons.

Half of the 12 songs of the album are going to fall completely, with good humor, with a heels. The rest attacks the belly of the fame.

Along the way, we get classics, such as the image of a burlesque dancer “radiant like the end of a cigarette”; Or compare the beards of a critic to “a chihuahua toy barking with a tiny bag”.

Elsewhere – and I cannot believe that I write this – there is an entire song filled with game insinuations.

However, the album opens with a bad orientation.

Fans supposed that Ophélia’s fate Would attach the story of Swift Shakespeare of a nobleman who drowns in a mania crisis after being made crazy by sorrow.

Instead, she sings to be “saved” from this fate by Kelce, in a net pop track full of cute references to their relationship – including the heads of Kansas City, and the number 100 (the sum of the jersey number of Kelce, 87, and the number 13 of Swift).

“”I heard you call the megaphone,“She says, recognizing how their romance started with Kelce by publicly declaring her affection on her podcast in July 2023.

“”If you never came for me, I might have drowned in melancholy. “”

Musically, the song plays something intelligent by adding an additional bar at the end of all the other sentences, as if Swift lingered right now, too swept in his feelings to continue.

The album is dotted with small fulfillments like that – and it is extremely satisfactory.

The love theme continues on Opalitewhose winding agreements and Abba-Esque harmonies are deployed as a flourishing romance; And Wi $ h li $ t, Where Swift stands out from the Hollywood pack for a life of domestic happiness.

“”They want this Critical Smash Palme d’Or and an Oscar on the floor of their bathroom“She observes.”I just want you“.

(More “a few children” with “a best friend I think is hot”).

But perhaps the most revealing tribute to Kelce is Drink – A piece of Staccato dance, with a jackson 5 guitar riff, which is essentially a double -tight -up understanding.

There, we quickly find “hitting superstitiously on the wood” that their relationship will last and hit the wood in the room, in an unexpected tribute to the “virility” of his fiancé.

It’s so silly and unexpected that I laughed aloud.

The same goes for In fact romantic, A fantastically sarcastic song on a pop star colleague (without name), who calls Swift a “boring barbie” and writes songs on how much they hate her.

Above the grungy guitars and a drum beat slamming, Taylor taunts them with a touch of inverted psychology.

“”It seemed bad but I have the impression of flirting with me“She trille.”All the efforts you have made is actually romantic. “”

She continues to settle the scores Paternal figure – The scathing story of a backstabbing protégé, which plays the George Michael Classic of the same name.

Fans will unleash themselves by trying to discover the identity of the subject, but, for me, the song is more like a history of morality on a Svengali musical industry, which has the power to eliminate anyone who is not “faithful to the family”.

Lots of cinematographic strings and disorienting key changes, it is next to the body, no crime, bad blood and vigilant in the expanding catalog of swift vengeance hymns.

The best piece of the album, however, is the Ballad à Focus Douce Ruin friendship.

Crossing in time for the SWIFT high school days in Tennessee, he remembers a boy whom she confined to the area of ​​friends while sucking on one kiss.

Deliate and nostalgic, you need a heartbreaking turn in the third verse, when Swift’s best friend, Abigail, calls to say that their former school friend died, and she steals in the night to attend the funeral.

In a largely part album concerning contentment, regret and sadness struck doubly.

The collection ends with the title song, a fiery duo with Sabrina Carpenter who doubles an edifying tale on celebrity.

It is the only song that really looks at the concept of showgirl, with an interlude to percussive noise dance and ostentatious key changes, because the stars exchange lines on their industry in the Cup range.

“”All the shots on the head on the walls of the dance hall / are female dogs who wish to hurry and die,“Swift sings.

Then punchline: “But I’m immortal now, baby doll. “”

It looks like a deliberate reminder to look at what you made me do, wrote in 2017 when Swift was the most besieged, after a public confrontation with Kanye West and months of the negative press.

At the time, she sang: “The former Taylor cannot come on the phone right now … why? Oh, because she died.“”

In 2025, with the world at its feet, Swift can finally say with certainty that its place in the history of pop is guaranteed.

The life of a showgirl is his well -deserved victory turn.