Media Review/Resources

By Summer Lane

Photo: Deposit

A Taylor Swift album release has become a mainstream cultural event at this point. There is nowhere you can turn where Swift isn’t present – at NFL football games, gracing the cover of multiple magazines, or being idolized by millions of self-described “Swifties.” 

Swift’s newest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” was released on Friday, and it’s already broken streaming records on Spotify. Eager fans waited on pins and needles to see what newest lyrics Swift would reveal – would it be about heartbreak (it usually is)? Would it be about her romantic relationship with now-fiancé and Kansas City Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce (seems likely)?

The answer seems to be yes, but it’s hard to tell. For the first time in Swift’s career (this is her 12th studio album release), she doesn’t have nearly as many tales to tell. But perhaps that’s a good thing, because she makes a few revelations in the lyrics that point to a softer side of Swift.

The Good

Swift’s songs on this album carry the theme of “showgirl” well. With titles like “The Fate of Ophelia,” “Elizabeth Taylor,” and the album headliner, “The Life of a Showgirl (featuring Sabrina Carpenter), the music has an almost whimsical tone, with a touch of nostalgia for the golden days of Hollywood glamour that seem to have disappeared into the distant past. Swift is well known for her unique style of songwriting at this point. She tells a story by utilizing vivid word choices that evokes strong images in listeners’ minds.

In “The Fate of Ophelia,” she writes:

The eldest daughter of a nobleman

Ophelia lived in fantasy,

But love was a cold bed full of scorpions, 

The venom stole her sanity.

In songs like this, or “Opalite,” Swift weaves together clever storytelling and catchy, pop-laden tunes that will be popular with both teens and the throngs of 20-to-30-something-year-old women who love Swift’s eternal infatuation with singing about boyfriends and breakups. Obviously, there’s a huge market for this kind of stuff, and Swift has become the face of it.

When it comes to telling a story, Swift always does a good job, and this album is far more fun – and far more memorable – than her previous release, “The Tortured Poets Department.” You can read that review on the Counter Culture Mom HERE.

The Bad

“The Life of a Showgirl” is not an album that is child-friendly. As Swift has gotten older, so has her audience. Unfortunately, she has detuned the family-friendly approach she once had in albums like “Fearless” and “1989,” and progressively delivered darker and more explicit lyrics. With Swift, this appears to be her attempt to paint herself as a “baddie,” but she still presents on this front a little awkwardly. I certainly don’t buy the image that Swift is a savage in the music industry – she was created by it and molded into it, selected specifically to hold this role.

Most of the songs on this album have an explicit label, making them unsuitable for little listening ears. “Actually Romantic!” talks about a girlfriend’s insidious obsession with Swift – an obsession that Swift paints as borderline homosexual:

“I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave, 

High-fived my ex and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me, 

Wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face, 

Some people might be offended…

But it’s actually sweet, 

All the time you’ve spent on me, 

It’s honestly wild, 

All the effort you’ve put in, 

It’s actually romantic, 

I really gotta hand it to you, ooh, 

No man has ever loved me like you do.” 

In “Wood,” she uses a series of vivid word choices to illustrate her sexual escapades, almost bordering on the edge of pornographic. In “Wi$h Li$t,” she discusses something revealing: she just wants to be with the man she loves and have a cadre of kids in a normal neighborhood – very “trad,” if you know what I mean.

But her lyrics are still filled with expletives. “I just want you, huh,” she writes. “Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you, we tell the world to leave us the f*** alone, and they do, WOW.”

Swift ponders “normalcy” and the simple uniqueness of yearning for marriage and children in this album quite a bit. Perhaps this is the real Swift, not the carefully curated cookie-cutter image the studios want people to see. These glimpses of her real feelings and real desires seem to bleed through lyrics that become fragmented and disjointed by misplaced curse words that really don’t make any sense, other than to remind audiences that, yes, you have to use bad language to be a grown-up. It’s too bad, because without the explicit language, Swift’s album would almost be entirely clean (minus “Wood.”)

In “Eldest Daughter,” she admits, “I’m not a bad b****, and this isn’t savage.” She also notes, “When I said I don’t believe in marriage, that was a lie.”

She’s got the right idea, but she delivers it poorly at times. It’s a shame that someone with a broad appeal like Swift has taken her music in a direction that can no longer be shared with little girls who dream of romance in the schoolyard. She began with simple, sweet love ballads, ever-present in hits like “Teardrops on My Guitar” and “Love Story.”

Unfortunately, her songs are so void of hope – and so peppered with explicit content – that little girls would be better off sticking with Swift’s albums from 15 years ago.

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⁸ Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. ⁹ The things which ye both learned and received and heard and saw in me, these things do: and the God of peace shall be with you.

Philippians 4:8-9

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Summer Lane is the #1 bestselling author of 30 books, including the hit Collapse Series and Resurrection Series. She is an experienced journalist and editor who is covering the White House and Trump administration. She owns Write Revolution News.

Summer is also a mom and wife who enjoys rural country living, herding cats, and gardening. She is passionate about writing on women’s issues, parenting, and politics from a theologically-grounded perspective that points readers to the good news of the gospel.

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