The Life of A Showgirl Review

Taylor Swift released her 12th album on October 3rd, 2025. It is Swift's shortest album yet, with only 12 tracks for a total of 41 minutes and 40 seconds. Starting with “The Fate of Ophelia” and ending with “Life of a Showgirl (feat. Sarbrina Carpenter),” Swift illustrates finding love and happiness in the things you have, how broken relationships can affect someone, and a complicated love life. 

Taking a deeper dive into the first part of the album. The first track of the album is called “The Fate of Ophelia.”  This song, though it has a catchy tune, is a dark story. It's about a girl named Ophelia's slow descent into madness and drowning, which has been seen as a metaphor for heartbreak, and fragility. These are all common themes in Swift's personal life, tying back to why she might have written this song. Next up is track 2, which Swift named after the late actress Elizabeth Taylor. The song sets Swift and Taylor up as parallels, Taylor being in the show business and also facing the anxieties of being in the public eye. Swift uses Taylor as someone who can answer her questions, asking, “I'd cry my eyes violet Elizabeth Taylor tell me for real, do you think it's forever?” Track 3, called “Opalite,” expresses Swift's happiness in her new relationship with Travis Kelce, after struggling in all her past relationships. “Father Figure” as the next track explores the manipulation that is suffered when a mentor of some sort betrays your trust and uses you. Some have speculated that this pertains to Swift with her relationship with Big Machine Records. 

Now onto the middle third of the album. The fifth track named“Eldest Daughter.” Eldest Daughter talks about the pressures of being the oldest sibling, having to always be strong and independent, never getting the chance to be vulnerable like everyone else. The next track named “Ruin the Friendship” is about Swift's high school friend, for whom she had romantic feelings but never acted on them. Since that friend has passed away, and Swift expresses her regret in never saying how she felt. “Actually Romantic" as track 7 is rumored to be about fellow singer Charli XCX. Swift explains in this song that there is some one-sided hate between the two, and that Charli XCX is obsessed with Swift and that she hates her so much it borders on love. Swift's track 8, titled “Wi$h Li$t,” describes Swift's desire to have a normal, plain life with her fiancé. As shown in the money symbols in the title, her life is very extravagant and luscious, though not always as glamorous as it seems, which is why Swift strives for simplicity. 

Entering the last third of the album, Swift's next song is named “Wood.”Like many other songs on the album, this is about her fiancé, Travis Kelce. Having a playful tone, it references the phrase knock on wood, as Swift knocks on it, hoping that Kelce will stay and break her streak of bad luck in relationships. A controversial track 10 entitled “CANCELLED!” allegedly explores Swift's friendship with actress and director Blake Lively. Swift seems to declare a defense to all her friends who have been bashed and canceled in the public eye, even saying, “I like my friends canceled.” Many assume it is about Lively because of all the controversy surrounding her lately. The 11th song on the album, called “Honey,” is about finding love and taking back meaning in words. Swift had previously been called honey in a negative, condescending way, but now, in a healthy relationship, she has taken back the word honey and changed the connotation around it to something sweet. Lastly, Swift uses the title track “The Life of a Showgirl (feat. Sabrina Carpenter)” to close the album. “The Life of a Showgirl” uses Swift's life and unsteady reputation and applies it to another young woman named Kitty. Singing about Kitty's rise to fame, and telling her she doesn't want to be a showgirl, that it isn't all the glamor it seems to be.