Taylor Swift’s The Life Of A Showgirl Is Here

The new Taylor Swift album is out. Swift announced The Life Of A Showgirl, her 12th LP, back in August on Travis and Jason Kelce's New Heights podcast (right around the time the former proposed to her). No music from The Life Of A Showgirl had been released until now.

Last year's The Tortured Poets Department was a 16-song sprawl even before Swift dropped a whole surprise second disc on us hours later, bringing the total to 31 tracks. The Life Of A Showgirl, meanwhile, is a comparatively tight 12 tracks long. It finds Swift cycling out Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, her main co-producers and co-writers over the past half-decade, and returning to Swedish pop master craftsmen Max Martin and Shellback, with whom she worked closely throughout much of the 2010s. Sabrina Carpenter guests on the title track, which closes the album, and "Father Figure" interpolates the George Michael song of the same name.

The song many people will be discussing today is "Actually Romantic," a pop-rock diss track apparently aimed at Charli XCX. The opening line: "I hear you call me Boring Barbie when the coke's got you brave." The song is Swift's response to Charli's Brat track "Sympathy Is A Knife," which was clearly about Swift but is not really a diss track. It's more like a diary of Charli's strained relationship with Swift and the anxiety she feels when Swift is around. Based on the "Actually Romantic" lyrics, Swift may be reacting to private insults we're not privy to, not just the text of "Sympathy Is A Knife." Or maybe she was just really offended by the song. Or maybe she just saw an opportunity to sell some drama and could not resist. So much for working it out on the remix.

There are also songs called "Wi$h Li$t" and "Cancelled!" Opening track "The Fate Of Ophelia" doubles as the lead single, so don't be surprised to see that one debut atop the Hot 100 next week. While the press tour has been non-existent beyond her fiancé's podcast, things will ramp with appearances on Graham Norton, The Tonight Show, and Late Night in the coming days. Swift is also screening an 89-minute "film event" called Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party Of A Showgirl at movie theaters worldwide.

Marking this album release on social media, she writes:

Tonight all these lives converge here
The mosaics of laughter and cocktails of tears
Where fraternal souls sing identical things
And it’s beautiful
It’s rapturous.
It is frightening.
———
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.

If you thought the big show was wild, perhaps you should come and take a look behind the curtain...

The Life of a Showgirl is out now.

The full album is streaming below, so dive in and share your hastily rendered takes before we publish our own Premature Evaluation later today.

The Life Of A Showgirl is out now via Republic.