At midnight, Taylor Swift released a four-song update to her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, which came out last October and had the cultural impact of a Skechers sneaker drop. Despite juicing its commercial success with several variants on the physical copies for sale, responses to the album from critics and fans alike have been lukewarm at best. Certainly nobody that I know liked hearing Travis Kelce’s dick compared to a redwood tree.
One might think that after reaching the economic pinnacle that was the Eras Tour, the accompanying concert film and Disney+ docuseries, three albums in four years, and a single for the billion-grossing Toy Story 5, Swift would maybe consider chilling for a second. But for better and for worse, this woman is a compulsive writer who must metabolize her life into song. The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore is proof that some ideas should just stay in the diary, the voice memos, or the group chat.
All four of the new songs on this extended edition land with a thud, with the most egregious of the lot being one called “Cleveland!” It’s an attempted rejoinder at Swift’s ever-present “haters” who criticize her looks, her values, and her dancing ability. But she doesn’t worry, because “you only need to find one person in this entire world who doesn’t find you completely insufferable,” and Swift has found hers in Kelce, whom she married at an intimate ceremony in Madison Square Garden in July. Kelce, she writes, has blown her socks off with a trip to Cleveland exclamation point. Gone is the sardonic self-awareness of singles like “Anti-Hero” and “Blank Space,” as is the storytelling and mathematical rhythm work from folklore and evermore. For someone who just a few short years ago wrote songs like “ivy” and “peace” about people who were apparently not her soulmates, the shallowness of these songs that point to Kelce is shocking. “He already took me to Cleveland / And showed me The Heights, so hate all you like / This is the love of my life, hey, hey, hey,” she sings on the chorus. It’s very much giving “I have never EVER been happier!!!”
@cerebralhawks
I see what you say about *Patient Zero*. It has something.
I think I also agree Cleveland is the weakest of the bunch. I think you are onto something when you mention your generation. While I’m sceptical of the idea of generations, I think Taylor does write songs that speak differently depending on your history, and how much of the back catalog you know.
Pink Clouding for example contains so much reflecting upon earlier songs.
@CombatWombat
Generations, especially as defined, and especially because they keep moving the goalposts, are about as reliable as astrology. Gen X, Millennials (originally Gen Y and then Y2K), Gen Z, Gen Alpha, you might as well be saying Libra, Aries, Virgo, Leo. But, when you’re more than one apart, I think it can start to matter. Taylor Swift’s fans are a couple generations younger than me. When she was coming out, she wasn’t completely ignored by people my age, but she was singing to people younger than us, and some of those kids grew up on her music like I grew up on music from the 70s and 80s. I’m sure she has plenty of fans my age and I’m sure it doesn’t surprise her. Maybe even a few Boomers like her, but she’s not singing to them. Some of what she says, I’m hearing the words, but I don’t think she’s talking about shit. Not always, but some of the time, like in Cleveland and Cancelled!. Oh, and pretty much all of Wood.
That said, I did appreciate Father Figure. It doesn’t lean as much into the George Michael song as I would have liked, but the fact that it does it at all delights me.