Love her or hate her, you gained’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 report 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 per week of the album’s launch she had damaged all modern-day information for many albums bought, touchdown each single one among her 12 tracks within the prime 12 slots of the Billboard Sizzling 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 potential to explain the expertise of being a contemporary lady navigating romantic love and heartbreak like no different pop singer. My favourite songs by Swift are usually 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 would say that I didn’t have excessive expectations of her new album, on condition that the showgirl persona isn’t one which I discover notably interesting.
Upon first hear, I used to be instantly struck by how catchy the album is and the best way 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 look like 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 part album. Heartbreak makes nice fodder for poetry, however it’s tougher to jot down fascinating lyrics about simple happiness.
The extra specific language in The Lifetime of a Showgirl hit me immediately, 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 Popularity) and “Wooden” (I can inform she’s having enjoyable right here however oof, the clumsy innuendos!). General, although, I used to be stunned how fascinating I discovered the themes she’s exploring on this album, particularly on condition 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 shocking, on condition that she was simply 17 when she wrote it). One thing that also bugs me about “Love Story” to this present day is that there isn’t a clarification of why the daddy within the music switches from saying “Keep away from Juliet” to instantly giving her suitor his approval and sending Juliet off to “Go select a white gown.” It seems like sloppy storytelling with a catchy tune. I’ve heard individuals (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 boys round her who deal with her like an object to regulate fairly 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 lady who feels deceived and discarded by the boys she has liked (“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 facet 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 go away us for lifeless,” and “They ripped me off like false lashes after which threw me away.” The Shakespearean parallel works for me as a result of girls 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” lady of the time ought to upon the urging of her father and brother; however regardless of her finest efforts, she will get mocked, rebuked, and sexualized by all the primary male figures in her life. She dies singing songs (together with one a couple of lady 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 strategy to win; it’s not onerous 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 answerable for 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 onerous 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 glad ending feels tougher gained, 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, particularly the truth that reciprocal love reworked a self-protective armor (“swore my loyalty to me, myself, and I”) into an perspective of belief and interdependence (“[I] pledge allegiance to your arms, your crew, your vibes”).
These traces 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 obtained harm (“when your first crush crushes one thing form”) and pretended to be “unbothered” and to not imagine 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 gentle again / like once we have been younger.” This music jogs my memory of all the ladies I’ve identified who’ve been harm by males and tried to persuade themselves that they didn’t need wholesome romantic love with a purpose to try to cease themselves from getting harm. 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 individuals making an attempt to “communicate like the youngsters” in intentionally anachronistic settings (“Henry the VIII left no crumbs” involves thoughts). “ To me, this seems like an try and sound “cooler” to counteract the decidedly “uncool” wishes expressed in “Wi$h Li$t”: “Bought me dreaming ‘bout a driveway with a basketball hoop,” and the healthful sincerity of traces like “I’m by no means going to allow you to down” in “Eldest Daughter.” Maybe the identical may be stated of the extra specific language on this album (I actually want she wouldn’t maintain calling girls “bitches”).
I feel the album is strongest when it’s taken as part of Swift’s bigger physique of labor. If you hearken to it this manner, you’ll be able to see the threads of themes she’s explored all alongside—the pursuit of an enduring love story, what it means to dwell a satisfying life, ambition, betrayal, managing a broken popularity 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 identical time, I feel the strain between the fictional tales Swift is telling and the extra autobiographical facet that has usually 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 Popularity, one other album the place she creates an over-the-top character or persona for herself to considerably complicated impact, on condition that she’s clearly addressing actual life occasions.)
The album provides blended messages about whether or not it’s important to “promote your soul” for present enterprise, whether or not you’ll be able to each pursue each a lifetime of fame and fortune and a quiet life round love and household, or if the previous inevitably destroys all possibilities of the latter. Maybe it is because proper now Swift could be very a lot hoping that she can have all of it (to be each one of many greatest dwelling cultural legends of our time and likewise for everybody to go away her and her household alone). Nonetheless, traces like “All the suitable males promised they’d keep / underneath brilliant 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 feel, whenever you strip away all of the glamour, innuendos, and clumsy slang, is The Lifetime of a Showgirl’s not-quite-fully-realized true energy.
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, in actual fact, a part of the purpose of the album: Swift is giving us a glimpse of what it means to dwell these two lives without delay, the blurring of the road between private and non-private, and what it actually seems to be wish to need (and to be dwelling out) each.
As she enters her “fortunately ever after” period, I’m wanting ahead to seeing whether or not Swift finds a strategy to convey 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 fascinating 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 whenever you’re feeling fulfilled and glad? What occurs after you get every part you stated you ever wished? Are you able to stability phenomenal worldly success with private success and peace? No matter comes subsequent, it’s certain to be fascinating.
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