In many ways, 2025 has shaped up to be the year that Taylor Swift ties loose strings back together. In late May, she won back the rights to her masters, concluding a six-year saga that sparked four ambitious re-recorded albums to great acclaim. In August, she announced her engagement to tight end Travis Kelce, closing a chapter in her life that began over 16 years ago with the release of “Love Story.”

And in October, she finally introduced her twelfth studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” as a project meant to reflect upon her whirlwind, globespanning, record-breaking “Eras Tour.” 

Like always, her album rollout was meticulous: full of easter eggs, glittery orange instagram posts and limited-edition releases of countless vinyls. On the “New Heights” podcast where she announced the album, Swift promised that this new work was going to be sleek. 

“I’m so proud of it,” Swift said on the podcast. “And it just comes from like the most infectiously, joyful wild dramatic place I was in in my life.” 

For this album, Swift returned to her roots and collaborated with the producers Max Martin and Shellback, both of whom helped turn songs like “22,” “Style” and “Message in a Bottle,” into pop hits. This was a boon for the album. In contrast with “The Tortured Poets Department,” the production on “The Life of a Showgirl” is outstanding: at times dark and maximalist, it often soars into sugary euphoria. 

As promised, the album opens with banger after banger. “The Fate of Ophelia,” Swift’s lead single and first track, is her best choice of a single in recent years. It’s a breezy, synth-fueled bop that also features a stunning self-directed music video paying homage to showgirls of the past. Literary references have always been a hallmark of her songwriting, and this is no different, direct inspiration from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” 

“Elizabeth Taylor,” which follows, is similarly energetic, with a production mirroring Swift’s works in “Reputation.” Track three, “Opalite,” is the most upbeat, glazed with a head-voice heavy chorus. “You were dancing through the lightning strikes / Sleepless in the onyx night / But now the sky is opalite,” she coos. Never before have thunderstorms felt so exhilarating. 

On “Wi$h Li$t,” Swift hopes for a normal suburban life with her fiancé: “Boss up, settle down, got a wish (Wish) list (List) / I just want you,” she declares in an earcandy of a chorus. The beats here are breezy, almost “Glitch”-like (from her album “Midnights”), and a transposing chord creeping higher up in the second verse gives it some spice. Similarly, track nine,“Wood,” is easy to digest and utterly forgettable, but only if you don’t read through the lyrics and expose the cheeky subject matter. 

Like many of her past projects, a central theme in “The Life of a Showgirl” is vengeance. On “Father Figure,” which interpolates George Michael’s song by the same name, references her own troubled relationship with the music industry. It is the most mature piece on the album, moody and sonically interesting, but is let down by a clunky bridge filled with an abysmally basic level of Rhymezone repetition: “Your thoughtless ambition sparked the ignition / On foolish decisions, which led to misguided visions.” Unfortunately, this is a pattern throughout the rest of the album. Almost all of the songs, regardless of production or vocals, have their sharpness dulled by plainly bad writing.

Track five, “Eldest Daughter,” exemplifies this. Track fives are usually the most emotional and mature tracks on Swift’s albums, and include some of the best songs in her discography, such as “You’re on Your Own Kid,” and “tolerate it.” “Eldest Daughter” is similarly ambitious, covering all sorts of subject matter—from the exhausting nature of trends to nostalgic longings for the past—but with lyrics like “Everybody’s so punk on the internet / Everyone’s unbothered ‘til they’re not,” Swift fails at her messaging. 

Lyrically, “The Life of a Showgirl” could be described as Swift’s most daring work. She makes liberal usage of swears and fills songs like “Wood” and “Actually Romantic” with sexual innuendos, but for all the gutsiness put into the songs, the album as a whole still comes out feeling flat. Swift clings onto the same old subject matter like a swimmer clutching a buoy in harsh waters, and the effect is clear: “The Life of a Showgirl” offers nothing exciting or fresh, lyrically and melodically. Despite the great production, many songs, including “Father Figure” and the title track, sample other songs, such as “Cool” by the Jonas Brothers and “I Want You Back” from the Jackson 5. More importantly, the poeticism which has been inseparable from her artistry in all of her past works has been stripped away here, leaving only a few ribs of beauty poking through an otherwise vacuous soundscape. 

On its face, “The Life of a Showgirl” is a decent pop album. It delivers all the necessary highs. Plus, it has a great title track with an incredible Sabrina Carpenter feature. But, it falls short of what is expected from Swift, who has always defined herself as a great songwriter. For an album with only 12 tracks that was promised to contain some of Swift’s best work yet, this album just doesn’t live up to its promise. It seems as if Swift and her team put far more effort into commercializing the thing, releasing variant upon variant and merch drop upon merch drop. If greater attention was paid to what actually was inside the album, then perhaps this would not have happened.

“The Life of a Showgirl” tries to tie countless different ideas into a smooth tapestry, but the stitches are loose and everything falls apart at the seams. At the album’s core, however, there is a clear wistfulness for a simpler life. In “Midnights” and “The Tortured Poets Department,” Swift bemoaned her small-town existence, and longed for stardom. Here, however, Swift wishes to return to that suburban life, and in times of great uncertainty and divide, “Showgirl” serves as an escape, while also reminding that show business is not always as glamorous as it seems.