Taylor Swift released her twelfth studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” on October 3. The album was highly anticipated by  fans, particularly in the wake of her engagement to Travis Kelce. When she announced the album in an episode of Kelce’s podcast “New Heights” on August 13, Swift revealed that she had created “The Life of a Showgirl” while on the European leg of her tour, and that it would represent her life behind the scenes during such a pivotal point in her career. 

However, “The Life of a Showgirl” has been received with widespread dissatisfaction since its release, with many Swifties feeling that the album was misrepresented by its marketing. 

I found “The Life of a Showgirl” to be really disappointing. While a lot of the songs had the potential to be hits, none of them felt fully finished or up to the quality of any of Swift’s previous music. When she announced it on “New Heights,” Swift said that she wanted “to be as proud of an album as [she was] of the Eras Tour, and for the same reasons,” and that “this is the record [she has] been wanting to make for a very long time.” 

However, it is hard to reconcile such high praise with the album that was actually released. “The Life of a Showgirl” feels more like a first draft than an actual album, which is extremely frustrating to fans who have come to expect Swift’s music to be of a certain caliber. 

While Swift has become renowned for her songwriting, the vast majority of the lyrics in this album were extremely surface-level. Rather than the extended metaphors and poetic storytelling of any of her other albums, she relied on cheesy innuendos and popular internet slang. While Swifties have been affectionately pointing out Swift’s millennial language for years, it has never been as prolific or heavy-handed as it is in this album. 

Her fifth track, “Father Figure,” is a particularly heinous example, with the lines “I’m not a bad bitch / And this isn’t savage” appearing in the chorus. While I wasn’t expecting songwriting at the level of “folklore” or “evermore,” I didn’t anticipate Swift abandoning her clever lyricism altogether.

Swift’s odd songwriting choices could have been forgiven had the production of the songs been as groundbreaking as she seemed to think it was. However, much of the album sounded extremely similar sonically. None of the songs sounded bad, I just didn’t think they were anything special either. 

“1989” completely shaped the way that pop music has come to sound, but “The Life of a Showgirl” didn’t do anything new for the industry or for Swift’s brand. 

For me, the most disappointing part of “The Life of a Showgirl” was the lack of any clear message unifying the album. While many of Swift’s previous albums have been about her love life, they also followed certain themes that tied the songs together into a cohesive narrative. For example, “Red” was about growing into an adult yet still being overlooked due to her youth. “Midnights” was about ruminating on past mistakes and relationships. “The Life of a Showgirl” does not appear to have any consistent theme, making it feel disjointed and inconsistent, a far cry from the elaborate storytelling of her past works.

I really wanted to like this album. I have been a fan of Swift’s music for several years and had a lot of fun following theories and Easter eggs in anticipation of its release. However, I found the lyrics and music to be lacking any of the hard work or soul that her previous albums contained. While I am confident that Swift will continue to release music, I hope that in the future she focuses more on the quality of the songs she creates.