By Hannah Graham and Mackenzie Byerlee
Copy Editors
Taylor Swift’s 13th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” brought a mix of glamorous charm and unique style for a fun experience as a listener. The album, released on Friday, Oct. 3, was unlike anything she has ever released before.
We truly had a spiritual experience. Throughout our entire listen, we just wanted to get up and dance. It was the antithesis of her last album, “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT,” where all we wanted to do was lay down and cry.
She definitely used her glitter gel pen to write this one.
We could easily see how this is the fruit of years on tour. Her previous albums’ voices crept into each song.
“Opalite” is what we think it would sound like for “Bejeweled” from “Midnights” to go out to the club with the “Lover” album. The voice speaking in “The Fate of Ophelia” was so clearly our bookish “evermore” while “reputation” covered it with her brass and drums.
Swift has a rich tapestry of media literacy to pull from, and she made use of every thread. She referenced Shakespeare in her first song, aligning visuals in her special release music video with the famous painting of Ophelia’s drowning by John Everett Millais.
The newly engaged showgirl made her love for her fiance, Travis Kelce, an overarching theme for a lot of the songs. In “Wi$h Li$t,” she sang about dreams she hopes will come true with Kelce.
“I just want you,” Swift said. “Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you.”
What we loved about “Actually Romantic” was that it finally addressed the unnecessary hate Swift received for merely attending her boyfriend’s games. The internet could not stop talking about her. Meanwhile, she was having the time of her life and falling in love.
“Opalite” was all about creating your own happiness, a double-meaning with the titular gemstone which is manmade. It is infectiously joyous, and we felt like we were in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” with our arms out through the car sunroof listening to it.
There were a couple of misses on this album for us, though. “Honey” pairs a soft, emotional set of lyrics and piano with a trap beat, and it is a sonically dissonant disaster. We cannot see her winning awards with this.
We also felt that “CANCELLED!” was, ironically, tone deaf. The song is a rock anthem about how cancel culture is toxic and fame is fickle.
We as a society hold celebrities to insane standards of behavior, especially women, but we do not think that Swift should be trying to find solidarity with those who are cancelled. She should have sat out of this conversation, not tried to create space for celebrity grievances.
Already, anti-fans have pounced on “Eldest Daughter.” Opinions without an ounce of nuance abound.
The song is a satirical treatise on the pitfalls of social media, which rewards falsity and apathy. It uses the language of the internet – unbothered, trolling, memes, hot take, bad bitch, savage, fire – to point out how lame it is that we are punished for sincerity.
Swift is tired of trying to be nonchalant when she just wants to marry her man and earnestly love him out loud.
However, audiences hear “But I’m not a bad bitch, and this isn’t savage,” and they stop at the cringe without thinking she could have the wherewithal to make that an intentional choice. It takes critical reading skills to understand art, and not everybody has them.
While we are not prepared to call this her best album, we think that people just do not know how to have fun sometimes. They overanalyze the lyrics on the hunt for philosophy, and they can not appreciate whimsy.
