Love her or hate her, you received’t have been in a position to keep away from the popular culture phenomenon that’s Taylor Swift this previous month. Swift, whose 2023-2024 Eras Tour was the highest-grossing music tour of all time, has been setting and breaking information since she began her profession on the age of 14 because the youngest musician to signal a contract with Sony/ATV. She broke the file for essentially the most streamed observe on Spotify together with her single “The Destiny of Ophelia” simply 24 hours after the discharge of her twelfth album, The Lifetime of a Showgirl, and inside every week of the album’s launch she had damaged all modern-day information for many albums offered, touchdown each single certainly one of her 12 tracks within the high 12 slots of the Billboard Scorching 100. Everyone seems to be listening to Swift’s new album, it appears, and everybody has opinions.
It’s been a little bit over a month because the launch of Swift’s newest album, and as I wrote in one other article right here on Verily, it has taken me some time to tune out the noise and begin to really feel my manner towards my very own conclusions about The Lifetime of a Showgirl. For context, I’m a longterm fan of Swift’s music and admire her means to explain the expertise of being a contemporary girl navigating romantic love and heartbreak like no different pop singer. My favourite songs by Swift are typically her quieter, extra reflective and lyrically poetic songs like “seven” (folklore, 2020), “invisible string” (folklore, 2020), “marjorie” (evermore, 2020), “Candy Nothing” (Midnights, 2022), and “Black Canine” (The Tortured Poets Division, 2024), so you possibly can say that I didn’t have excessive expectations of her new album, provided that the showgirl persona isn’t one which I discover significantly interesting.
Upon first pay attention, I used to be instantly struck by how catchy the album is and the way in which the tunes instantly get caught in your head, rather more like albums like Lover and 1989 in that respect than her earlier 4 albums which have been lyrically wealthy and sophisticated, however not so tune-driven. Musicians like @morganbrookmusic have taken to Instagram to level out the harmonic genius of tracks like “Wi$h Li$t”, and it does seem to be this album is extra in regards to the tunes and a way of playful enjoyable than it’s in regards to the lyrics, which is sensible for a cheerful honeymoon section album. Heartbreak makes nice fodder for poetry, however it’s tougher to write down attention-grabbing lyrics about simple happiness.
The extra express language in The Lifetime of a Showgirl hit me straight away, too, and it tracked with the intentionally titillating album art work. I instantly disliked a few tracks, together with “Really Romantic” (I at all times recoil from sarcasm, from Swift or anybody else), “CANCELLED!” (felt like a drained throwback to Status) and “Wooden” (I can inform she’s having enjoyable right here however oof, the clumsy innuendos!). General, although, I used to be shocked how attention-grabbing I discovered the themes she’s exploring on this album, particularly provided that many individuals have discovered it disappointing.
For my part, Swift’s new music “The Destiny of Ophelia” is a a lot stronger exploration of Shakespearean themes than her 2008 hit, “Love Story” (hardly stunning, provided that she was simply 17 when she wrote it). One thing that also bugs me about “Love Story” to at the present time is that there is no such thing as a clarification of why the daddy within the music switches from saying “Avoid Juliet” to instantly giving her suitor his approval and sending Juliet off to “Go pick a white gown.” It appears like sloppy storytelling with a catchy tune. I’ve heard folks (together with my husband, who I nonetheless haven’t been in a position to persuade in any other case) say that they’re left equally unconvinced by the parallel with Ophelia that Swift attracts in her newest album, however I disagree.
In “The Destiny of Ophelia”, a melancholic showgirl is in contrast with the character of Ophelia who drowns after being pushed mad by the actions of the lads round her who deal with her like an object to regulate slightly than an individual with emotions and company. It flows thematically from Swift’s earlier album, The Tortured Poets Division, wherein she explores the emotional panorama of a girl who feels deceived and discarded by the lads she has cherished (“Don’t need cash / Simply need somebody who needs my firm,” she sings in “The Prophecy”).
Within the new album, Swift hints on the darkish aspect of being a showgirl that tracks with Ophelia’s destiny with lyrics like: “‘I’d promote my soul for a style of a powerful life that’s all mine’ / however that’s not what showgirls get / they depart us for useless,” and “They ripped me off like false lashes after which threw me away.” The Shakespearean parallel works for me as a result of ladies in showbusiness are on the eye of the objectification storm, topic to male projection and exploitation, and sometimes brutally discarded as they age out of youthful norms of attractiveness.
In Hamlet, Ophelia tries to behave in a manner {that a} “good, chaste” girl of the time ought to upon the urging of her father and brother; however regardless of her greatest efforts, she will get mocked, rebuked, and sexualized by all the principle male figures in her life. She dies singing songs (together with one a couple of girl who loses her virginity to somebody who promised to marry her however subsequently abandons her), pushed mad by the conflicting net of male wishes and management that closes in round her. In Ophelia’s world, there’s no solution to win; it’s not exhausting to think about that that is how Swift has felt at occasions all through her profession, particularly as she transitioned from a self-professed people-pleaser to somebody extra in control of her life and work.
Isn’t this the journey many ladies undergo, even when we’re not world-famous performers like Swift? By the way, that is one thing that Swift herself attracts out in her track-by-track commentary of the brand new album, saying that she wished to discover how “These days everybody has a public life” that they must handle on social media. “It’s actually exhausting to be honest publically, as a result of that’s probably not what our tradition rewards.”
As she does in “Love Story”, Swift turns the Shakespearean story on its head and provides the story she’s telling in “The Destiny of Ophelia” a cheerful ending, however this time that joyful ending feels tougher received, and is a stronger music for it. I additionally suppose it really works higher lyrically as a result of Swift identifies why the showgirl was saved from the destiny of Ophelia, specifically the truth that reciprocal love reworked a self-protective armor (“swore my loyalty to me, myself, and I”) into an angle of belief and interdependence (“[I] pledge allegiance to your fingers, your crew, your vibes”).
These strains additionally hyperlink in with themes explored in one other music on the brand new album, “Eldest Daughter,” wherein she tracks the journey of a woman who acquired damage (“when your first crush crushes one thing sort”) and pretended to be “unbothered” and to not consider in marriage anymore, till she finds the real love that she thought she would by no means have: “issues I stated have been dumb / ‘trigger I believed that I’d by no means discover that lovely stunning life that shimmers that harmless mild again / like after we have been younger.” This music jogs my memory of all the ladies I’ve identified who’ve been damage by males and tried to persuade themselves that they didn’t need wholesome romantic love so as to attempt to cease themselves from getting damage. There’s something so sweetly relatable and hopeful about this arc.
Regardless of all of this, one thing that journeys me up when listening to The Lifetime of a Showgirl is that the lyrics are peppered with Gen Z Tik Tok-style slang that makes it really feel, at occasions, such as you’re watching a kind of viral movies of previous folks attempting to “communicate like the youngsters” in intentionally anachronistic settings (“Henry the VIII left no crumbs” involves thoughts). “ To me, this appears like an try to sound “cooler” to counteract the decidedly “uncool” wishes expressed in “Wi$h Li$t”: “Obtained me dreaming ‘bout a driveway with a basketball hoop,” and the healthful sincerity of strains like “I’m by no means going to allow you to down” in “Eldest Daughter.” Maybe the identical will be stated of the extra express language on this album (I actually want she wouldn’t maintain calling ladies “bitches”).
I believe the album is strongest when it’s taken as part of Swift’s bigger physique of labor. While you take heed to it this manner, you possibly can see the threads of themes she’s explored all alongside—the pursuit of an enduring love story, what it means to stay a satisfying life, ambition, betrayal, managing a broken repute and controlling your personal legacy, how others understand us, destiny versus making your personal luck—being fleshed out in these new songs, too. On the similar time, I believe the stress between the fictional tales Swift is telling and the extra autobiographical aspect that has typically been at play in her music is extra apparent in The Lifetime of a Showgirl, which provides it a barely much less coherent really feel when taken as a standalone album. (The identical may very well be stated of Status, one other album the place she creates an over-the-top character or persona for herself to considerably complicated impact, provided that she’s clearly addressing actual life occasions.)
The album provides combined messages about whether or not it’s a must to “promote your soul” for present enterprise, whether or not you possibly can each pursue each a lifetime of fame and fortune and a quiet life round love and household, or if the previous inevitably destroys all probabilities of the latter. Maybe it’s because proper now Swift may be very a lot hoping that she can have all of it (to be each one of many greatest residing cultural legends of our time and likewise for everybody to go away her and her household alone). Nonetheless, strains like “All the suitable males promised they’d keep / underneath vivid lights they withered away /… Elizabeth Taylor, do you suppose it’s without end?” show the query on the coronary heart of this album with a quiet vulnerability that I believe, if you strip away all of the glamour, innuendos, and clumsy slang, is The Lifetime of a Showgirl’s not-quite-fully-realized true power.
Swift weaves out and in of the over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek showgirl character and the simplicity of her private life and aspirations. Possibly that is, the truth is, a part of the purpose of the album: Swift is giving us a glimpse of what it means to stay these two lives without delay, the blurring of the road between private and non-private, and what it actually seems to be prefer to need (and to be residing out) each.
As she enters her “fortunately ever after” period, I’m trying ahead to seeing whether or not Swift finds a solution to carry lyrical complexity to match her previous 4 albums earlier than The Lifetime of a Showgirl whereas exploring the themes of marriage and parenthood. We want extra artwork that contemplates these phases of life in a nuanced and attention-grabbing manner.
I suppose the questions Swift has been exploring all alongside are ones all of us need the solutions to, deep down, which can be on the coronary heart of our fascination together with her profession and storytelling: are you able to make nice artwork if you’re feeling fulfilled and joyful? What occurs after you get every thing you stated you ever wished? Are you able to steadiness phenomenal worldly success with private success and peace? No matter comes subsequent, it’s sure to be attention-grabbing.
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