Critics weigh in on Taylor Swift’s new album ‘Life of a Showgirl’

WASHINGTON — Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” has finally arrived.

The album, which Swift describes as a look inside her life during her record-breaking Eras Tour, features twelve tracks and is produced by Max Martin and Shellback.

“This album is really about what was going on in my life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” Swift said when announcing the project on the New Heights podcast, hosted by her now-fiancé, Travis Kelce, and his brother Jason, back in August. “I’m so proud of it. It just comes from the most infectiously, joyful, wild dramatic place I was in my life.”

In an Instagram post shared by Swift Friday, just after the album released, she wrote, “I can’t tell you how proud I am to share this with you, an album that just feels so right. A forever thank you goes out to my mentors and friends Max and Shellback for helping me paint this self portrait.”

As fans dive into the record, critics are weighing in on Swift’s latest reinvention. Here’s what they’re saying.

“The Life of a Showgirl ” isn’t a “1989 Pt. II,” according to Billboard’s Jason Lipshutz. Instead, it’s a collection of tracks with varying emotions. 

“Bangers for Adults,” Lipshutz called it.

The opening track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” is one he predicted will be a standout hit.  

“‘The Fate of Ophelia’ is a stick of dynamite opening the album, and sounds like it will join her collection of smashes in no time,” he said.

“The limit does not exist to how high Swift can keep soaring — anytime her downfall (or even a notable downturn) has been predicted, she climbs higher and winks at her naysayers. By pivoting back to pop anthems with humor, empathy, a little fury and a lot of wisdom, Swift ensures that ascent will continue.”

Maya Georgi of Rolling Stone rated the album five stars, stating Swift “stepped into uncharted territory.” 

Georgi also commented on the album’s sole feature, Sabrina Carpenter, who joins Swift on the title track.

“It’s almost as if Swift is passing the torch to the next generation of showgirls as she takes a bow. Could it be her final one? Well, no. This showgirl won’t be left for dead; she’s immortal now. ‘We will see you next time,’ Swift promises as an audience cheers. After all, despite the rock on her finger, Swift is married to the hustle — and with an album as good as this one, she might even try to outdo herself, again. That’s just show business for you.”

Jon Caramanica described TLoaS as “a catchy and substantive but unflashy album” that “takes the songwriting intimacy of her Folklore/Evermore era and renders it with more clarity and oomph.”

“Swift is hungry — hungry to move on from the battles of her past and into the embraces of her future. That sentiment is all over her 12th original album, a deceptively modest set of songs about the facade of fame, and what it takes to scrape it away and claw past it. Swift has been pop’s alpha figure for more than a decade, a spot she’s clung to ruthlessly. Showgirl isn’t precisely a goodbye to all that, but it does cast a wary eye on her past while greeting her future with a glee that verges on the unbridled.”

Comparing the new project to Swift’s past albums, Caramanica wrote, “Showgirl isn’t a hard pivot like Red or Reputation, risky-in-their-moment albums that expanded Swift’s musical palette.” 

Based on its subject matter, “it feels most kin to Reputation, but her collaborators aren’t slathering her in gloss or skronk here, instead letting her songwriting breathe,” he added.

Chris Willman of Variety celebrated the album’s unexpectedly light tone, noting it feels like a full embrace of joy and ease in love in a contrast from past records.

“And nobody does it better, now or at any recent time, when it comes to delivering world-dominating pop that feels all the feels and doesn’t stint on the thoughts, either,” he wrote.

“That those feels are now very much on the sunny side is not a huge surprise, but it’s still just slightly startling how light-hearted the near-entirety of her 12th album, ‘The Life of a Showgirl,’ is.”

He added that “love seems easy-fought” on the record.

Still, the album includes a few sharper moments, according to Willman. 

“There is shade amid all this sunshine, mind you… as in, the thrown kind,” Willman noted in his review. “If you haven’t yet heard about the pair of diss tracks that arrive as prominently as banner headlines in the middle of the album, ‘Father Figure’ and ‘Actually Romantic,’ you probably will soon enough.”

He singled out “Wood” as a surprise, comparing it to a “Jackson 5 song in everything but name, credit or composition, with a funk-pop guitar riff classic-sounding enough that I had to double-check the credits to make sure it wasn’t a Motown sample.”

Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times called the album an “immaculate act of damage control,” following the release of the dense “Tortured Poets Department” in 2024.

“In contrast with the bleary Tortured Poets, which yielded only one pop-radio monster in the Hot 100-topping ‘Fortnight,’ Showgirl is likely to spin off several, not least the album’s lead single, ‘The Fate of Ophelia,’ which rides an irresistible new wave groove that evokes the veteran hookmeisters of Eurythmics.”

He wrote about seeing the record as a tonal shift, writing “Showgirl feels like a retreat from the vivid bloodletting of Tortured Poets, which captured a woman whose one-of-one success had emboldened her to speak certain toxic truths.”

Still, he critiqued some of the romantic storytelling on the album: “There’s no denying that Swift’s lyrics about love here lack the kind of depth she’s mined in tunes thought to have been inspired by the dastardly likes of John Mayer and Matty Healy.”

Wood also commented on “Actually Romantic,” which he interprets as a possible response to Charli XCX and the complicated history the two singers share. 

“Swift gets off some funny lines about chihuahuas and cocaine but totally forgoes the sense of empathy that made her such an icon to every pop songwriter who’s come up behind her.”

He opened his review with a sharp summary: “After the mess, the mop-up.” In many ways, “The Life of a Showgirl” seems to be just that, offering a sweeping reset that’s still dazzling in its own way.