It's Taylor Swift album release day! The pop superstar has officially dropped her twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. It's the follow-up to last year’s The Tortured Poets Department and its extended edition, The Anthology. This new record notably features Sabrina Carpenter on the title track, contributions from Max Martin and Shellback, and a sample of George Michael’s “Father Figure” on the song of the same name.
The Life of a Showgirl contains twelve new tracks - Swift chose not to release any singles before the LP's drop. According to NPR, she wrote the album while touring her discography around the world with The Eras Tour and falling in love with her now-fiancé, Travis Kelce. Swift mainly worked on her new record with the previously-mentioned Max Martin and Shellback: the Swedish production duo who co-helmed much of 2012’s Red, 2014’s 1989, and 2017’s Reputation.
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To celebrate the release, Swift posted a statement to social media. "I can’t tell you how proud I am to share this with you, an album that just feels so right," she wrote. "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..."
In a statement on social media, the George Michael estate said, “We were delighted when Taylor Swift and her team approached us earlier this year about incorporating an interpolation of George Michael’s classic song ‘Father Figure’ into a brand new song of the same title to be featured on her forthcoming album. When we heard the track we had no hesitation in agreeing to this association between two great artists and we know George would have felt the same. George Michael Entertainment wishes Taylor every success with The Life of a Showgirl and ‘Father Figure.’”
Like any typical Taylor Swift album, The Life of a Showgirl does not hold back when it comes to drama between the lyrics. She bemoans cancel culture and welcomes scandal-plagued friends to her "underworld" in the song "CANCELLED!" In "Father Figure," she tells the story of a betrayal by a music industry executive. (Scooter Braun, perhaps?) And in a move that has raised eyebrows across the internet, Swift seemingly disses Charli XCX in the number "Actually Romantic."
After announcing The Life of a Showgirl almost two months ago, Swift revealed the album's cover art and tracklist on an episode of New Heights: the podcast hosted by Travis and Jason Kelce. Since releasing The Tortured Poets Department in 2024, she concluded her record-breaking, 149-date Eras Tour, which reportedly grossed over $2 billion in ticket sales and spawned both a companion book and a three-hour concert film.
In May, Swift announced she had bought back the master recordings for her first six studio albums, which she’d been steadily re-recording as the Taylor’s Version series. She ended up releasing new versions of Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and 1989 between 2021 and 2023. A re-recorded version of her self-titled debut album has been completed, but Reputation (Taylor’s Version) was never finished.
Listen to some tracks from The Life of a Showgirl below.
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Article Image: Promo photo of Taylor Swift sitting on a fancy velvet couch, wearing a red showgirl costume. (taylorswift via Instagram)
