\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIs the world ready for Taylor Swift, utterly untortured poet? Possibly \u2014 it\u2019s not as if a whole season\u2019s worth of NFL television cutaways didn\u2019t prime the planet for the idea that Dark Taylor might be ready to take five for a bit. And, sure, the Eras Tour went a little way toward that, too, as no one\u2019s idea of an angst-ridden experience. But not everyone has gotten past the original line on her, that she is someone who professionally mines heartache for hits. She\u2019s almost overturned that notion as a cliche when her last album, \u201cThe Tortured Poets Department,\u201d actually really did trade in real-life misery, again, for much of its length\u2026 not withstanding the very late-breaking addition of a single song about a football player. Even on tour, fans go expecting dramatic catharsis to be undergirding all that glee. \u201cI Can Do It With a Broken Heart,\u201d she proclaimed, asking fans to dance while considering whether her performance might be a false front.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut now we have it confirmed, for sure: She can also do it with a fully intact ticker. <\/p>\n
\n\tAnd nobody does it better, now or at any recent time, when it comes to delivering world-dominating pop that feels all the feels and doesn\u2019t stint on the thoughts, either. That those feels are now very much on the sunny side is not a huge surprise, but it\u2019s still just slightly startling how light-hearted the near-entirety of her 12th album, \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl,\u201d is. She\u2019s flirted with writing an album focused on a love that is actually realized before \u2014 most notably on the half of \u201cReputation\u201d that was about her then-burgeoning relationship and not about Kimye-gate. But on that record, even the happiest songs had a kind of love-among-the-ruins feel, where the romanticism seemed hard-fought. On \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl,\u201d though, love seems easy<\/em>-fought. And the belief that it might actually be a breeze, instead of, like, the eye of a hurricane, makes for an album that stands as close to being an uncomplicated good time as anything she\u2019s ever done.<\/p>\n \n\tThere is<\/em> shade amid all this sunshine, mind you\u2026 as in, the thrown kind. If you haven\u2019t yet heard about the pair of diss tracks that arrive as prominently as banner headlines in the middle of the album, \u201cFather Figure\u201d and \u201cActually Romantic,\u201d you probably will soon enough. What would a Taylor Swift album be without scores to settle, even if they are just passing asides this time instead of a main dish? She flourishes with adversaries, even if they are relegated to her peripheral vision or rear-view mirror. But the aforementioned tracks are actually two of the happiest-sounding numbers on the album, which is saying something. It\u2019s just a given: the suite at Arrowhead Stadium will never be the only place where she\u2019s keeping score.<\/p>\n \n\tBut back to love. \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl\u201d is filled with it, and in getting that ebullience across, she has the aid this time of two super-producers who are returning to her side after eight years, Max Martin and Shellback. It\u2019s one of the few times she\u2019s ever used the same producer(s) for an entire album project, and certainly the first where she\u2019s only co-written with that same team and no one else. It seems safe to assume she is not estranged from either Jack Antonoff or Aaron Dessner, the steadiest enablers of her modern eras. And those two maestros can certainly help her write a good love song, it\u2019s been proven. But you get the sense she wanted to make sure there was nothing dainty<\/em> about this aural engagement party, and maybe that\u2019s where she felt Martin and Shellback would offer some extra insurance. <\/p>\n \n\tThey have delivered, with an album that doesn\u2019t really sound exactly like their parts of \u201cRed,\u201d \u201c1989\u201d or \u201cReputation,\u201d yet is filled with basic-sounding but compelling beats that immediately make you feel like she has entrusted herself and her fans into the right hands for now. It\u2019s a love story, and it\u2019s also a Swedish family reunion. <\/p>\n \n\tThe album starts off with what we now know to be its first single and music video, \u201cThe Fate of Ophelia.\u201d (In true 2010s Swift fashion, no one got the slightest public whiff of either before the full album was out for judging as a whole; she learned her lesson from her very last pre-album single, \u201cMe!,\u201d and can also afford to be withholding.) From the title, you\u2019d think it would be one of those fatalist ballads that peppered the second half of the deluxe edition of \u201cTortured Poets Department\u201d\u2026 most of which were pretty terrific, by the way. And for about 10 seconds, the chords sure sound like a Dessner track. Then the Martin\/Shellback throb<\/em> kicks in, and before the first word is sung, we know we\u2019re not in New England anymore. Of course, title notwithstanding, this opener is as gleeful as the rest of the record, as Swift sings about being rescued from a descent into Shakespearian madness by her happy-go-lucky baller. She sings: \u201cOn the land, the sea, the sky \/ Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes.\u201d (Don\u2019t worry \u2014 that is the last quasi-football reference on the album.)<\/p>\n \n\tNext up, \u201cElizabeth Taylor\u201d is the closest thing to a skip on the album \u2014 disappointing maybe to those of us, anyway, who\u2019d hoped it would have more to do with the actress herself than a reference to Swift \u201ccrying my eyes violet.\u201d (\u201cReady for It?\u201d seemed to have more to do with Liz than the track named after her does.) And the weight of \u201cReputation-but-not-as-good\u201d hangs over it. But the album seriously kicks into gear with its third number, \u201cOpalite,\u201d a song that starts modestly and then surprises you with a sheer pheromone rush of a chorus. From that slow-burning head-rush forward, \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl\u201d never lets up, in the quality of its subtle but completely engaging pop arrangements or in Swift\u2019s audacity in giving every lyric a high-concept variation on a theme. The Chiefs\u2019 chief music critic did not lie, in that podcast: It is<\/em> an album full of bangers, and even the ballads pop off.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShowgirl\u201d is not aimed at the dance floor, per se, though there are plenty of songs that have propulsive rhythm enough for a sweeter kind of grind. One track is a real outlier, though, and bears a prominent mention as such: \u201cWood.\u201d It\u2019s a Jackson 5 song in everything but name, credit or composition, with a funk-pop guitar riff classic-sounding enough that I had to double-check the credits to make sure it wasn\u2019t a Motown sample. (No, this is not an invitation for someone to file a nuisance suit.) It also ends up being maybe the most sexual song Swift has done, and while that may not seem like it\u2019s saying a lot, this is the women who sang \u201cDress,\u201d so there\u2019s some precedent there. Let\u2019s just say that the title may not refer strictly to Home Depot materials, and there is a repeated reference to Swift\u2019s thighs that rivals her friend Sabrina Carpenter\u2018s recent single for anatomical specificity.<\/p>\n \n\tOn the other side of the coin, a hearty shift toward big romance and a little eroticism has not kept Swift from dipping into her characteristically more reflective songwriting, as a yin to the album\u2019s celebratory yang. All the talk of sun rays does not negate that there\u2019s one truly sad song on the album, \u201cRuin the Friendship,\u201d although it sounds so uplifting, it doesn\u2019t drag the proceedings down. There, Swift sings about a boy who knew in school who was kept in the friendzone, by unspoken mutual assent, despite a shared crush. By the end of the song, she is being called home \u2014 by Abigail, the bestie Swifties well know \u2014 to attend his funeral, where she whispers, \u201cShould\u2019ve kissed you anyway.\u201d It actually ends up being rousing, in spite of itself, as Swift gives her young and old listeners some life counsel: \u201cMy advice is always ruin the friendship \/ Better that than regret it \/ For all time\u2026 \/ And my advice is always answer the question \/ Better that than to ask it.\u201d If this reads at all treacly on paper, rest assured it will break just a tiny piece of your heart off as you hear it sung.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cRuin the Friendship\u201d counts as one of the prettiest songs Swift has ever written, and so, for that matter, does a much happier number, \u201cEldest Daughter,\u201d which is about being a lover first of all and birth order only incidentally. It\u2019s one of her love songs to her new beau, and begins with a dystopian view of the meanness that the web fosters, before Swift lifts her voice and plaintively sings: \u201cBut I\u2019m not a bad bitch \/ And this isn\u2019t savage.\u201d She reverts from talk of childhood to the self-protections that set in in life: \u201cEvery eldest daughter \/ Was the first lamb to the slaughter \/ So we all dressed up as wolves and we looked fire.\u201d And a nod to hjim when she says: \u201cEvery youngest child felt \/ They were raised up in the wild \/ But now you\u2019re home.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut does the woman who sang \u201cBad Blood\u201d really believe that she\u2019s not a bad bitch, to borrow her language? There are those two provocations, or slap-backs, depending on how you look on it, on the album, and suddenly she doesn\u2019t sound so much like the softie she proclaims herself to be to her man in that tender centerpiece. \u201cFather Figure,\u201d without much filter to speak of, seemingly a deep dig at Scott Borchetta, borrowing George Michael\u2019s title and chorus cadence to invent a new tale of a Svengali who gets what\u2019s coming to him \u2014 some presumed guilt or remorse \u2014 even as she gets the masters that are coming to her. The song doesn\u2019t get quite that literal, but when she sings \u201cYou pulled the wrong trigger \/ This empire belongs to me,\u201d we don\u2019t have to read the Genius.com notes to know what she\u2019s talking about. She\u2019s written her share of slightly disguised songs about that situation \u2014 \u201cMy Tears Ricochet\u201d was one \u2014 but now, at the right time to do a victory lap, she\u2019s taking the brakes off.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd then there\u2019s \u201cActually Romantic,\u201d which will appear to most observers to plainly be an answer song to the tune that former tourmate Charli XCX released last year referencing her. \u201cI heard you call me \u2018Boring Barbie\u2019 when the coke\u2019s got you brave \/ High-fived my ex and then you said you\u2019re glad he ghosted me\u00a0 \/ Wrote\u00a0me a song saying it makes you sick to\u00a0see my face \/ Some people might be offended\u00a0 \/ But\u00a0it\u2019s actually sweet\u00a0 \/ All the time you\u2019ve spent on me,\u201d she sings. If it sounds nasty, it\u2019s in the high-spirited tradition of \u201cI Forgot That You Existed,\u201d her kiss-off to the Kim and Kanye situation of some years back. It\u2019s funny as hell, but barbed as hell, and whether the recipient deserves it with what Swift clearly sees as salvos that came her way first will be much up for debate that goes above our pay grade.<\/p>\n \n\tSwift is obviously on better terms with some of her other opening acts, with Sabrina Carpenter coming in for a full-on duet (versus Lana Del Rey\u2019s recent near-ghost vocal) on the title track that closes the album. Here, the star makes a further detour from the more diaristic songs that preceded it to tell a narrative tale of weathered entertainers passing down homespun and hard-fought wisdom, a la \u201cClara Bow\u201d or maybe even harking back to \u201cThe Lucky One.\u201d It\u2019s an outlier, but an anthemic one to go out on.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat Martin and Shellback have done here, with Swift obviously very active as a co-producer, is help deliver an album that has the confident sheen you expect with them, but also just drops most of the possible instrumentation out for stretches of almost every song. Can a record be shiny and also kind of earthy and spare, in the whole? If it can, that\u2019s what a lot of \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl\u201d sounds like \u2014 utterly pleasing and deceptively simple rhythms, where it really seems like there\u2019s \u201cnot a lot going on at the moment,\u201d to borrow a phrase. Some of the most ear-tickling passages just consist of a bass, a drum loop (or maybe real drums, hard to say) and then Swift\u2019s very naked solo voice suddenly triple- or quadruple-tracked into a playful choir, without any big army of synths to bolster it. \u201cElizabeth Taylor,\u201d the second song, might be the album\u2019s closest flirtation with a truly big and overwhelming production. That one sounds like it could be a \u201cReputation\u201d outtake, but it\u2019s also maybe the least impressive cut on the album. \u201cShowgirl\u201d is really at its most engaging, sonically, when it\u2019s a little more bare-bones than that. And who knew the day would come when you\u2019d fine somebody acclaiming Martin and Shellback for being brilliant minimalists, but here we are, with a pretty groove-alicious Taylor Swift record that spreads its love primarily through crafty mid-tempos.<\/p>\n \n\tSwift has never made two albums that sound alike, and that\u2019s certainly the case with this nearly polar-opposite followup to her \u201cTortured\u201d era. We like her when she\u2019s mad (with apologies to the Incredible Hulk), and of course, she already proudly told us there\u2019s nothing like a madwoman. But she also once told us, \u201cWhy be mad when you can be glad?\u201d Yes, there was an acronym involved there we\u2019re leacving out, but the point stands: Maybe, just maybe, we can like her at least as much when she\u2019s just mad about the boy. It\u2019s too late for Swift to have a \u201csong of the summer,\u201d but this feels like the Album of the Summer \u2014 the calendar be damned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is the world ready for Taylor Swift, utterly untortured poet? Possibly \u2014 it\u2019s not as if a whole season\u2019s worth of NFL television cutaways didn\u2019t prime the planet for the idea that Dark Taylor might be ready to take five for a bit. And, sure, the Eras Tour went a little way toward that, too,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1632,15418,337,1099,9589,9225,9025,3611],"class_list":{"0":"post-25530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-completely","9":"tag-joyful","10":"tag-life","11":"tag-record","12":"tag-showgirl","13":"tag-swift","14":"tag-swifts","15":"tag-taylor"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}