One month ago, in her first foray into podcasting, Taylor Swift announced her upcoming 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, which comes out at midnight ET on Friday. Like her last album, 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, this record was created during the high imperial throes of the Eras Tour, and it promises to deliver a look at this world-conquering stretch of her life and career. But unlike the floridly verbose Tortured Poets, Swift is pitching The Life of a Showgirl as a ruthlessly edited collection of bangers, produced with help from Max Martin and Shellback, the collaborators with whom she’s created the most big hits. It’s also the first album Swift has written in full since she began seeing her now-fiancé, Travis Kelce. Swift has said that she wanted this album to reflect the behind the scenes of “the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place” in her life, but of course there are plenty of questions about what that will look (and sound) like. So before the album can answer those questions itself, let’s take a stab at a few of them–we’ll make it 12, the same number of tracks Swift has promised she’s cut down this album to.
1. What is this album about?
Swift said on New Heights that the album is about “what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant.” That seems like a reference to falling in love and gallivanting around the world with Kelce, which fits with Swift’s descriptions of the album as bright and full of joy.
At the same time, most of the imagery Swift has released ahead of the album suggests darker, moodier themes. The cover art is Swift, dressed in Bob Mackie–esque showgirl regalia, sinking into a bathtub. She’s presumably recovering after a long show, but also barely keeping her head above water. The presumed lyric “Oftentimes it doesn’t feel so glamorous to be me” showed up on a Spotify billboard promoting the album this week. There’s a song called “CANCELLED!” (Do what you will with the fact that she’s used the British spelling.) Most of the promotion suggests an album about a complicated relationship with fame and performance.
2. What are we on “standby” for?
Please credit me for getting through a whole intro and one question before getting to the high jinks, OK?
Swift’s official fan social media account, Taylor Nation, posted a schedule earlier this week of various events surrounding the album release, including when certain vinyls will ship out and when a handful of interviews will air.
On Saturday night, though, there’s a hole punch next to the word “standby.” And that sound you’re hearing is a million Swifties canceling their weekend plans. What could it be? Nothing? Doubtful. There are other stretches of the schedule calendar that are blank and have been left that way. Saturday Night Live famously happens on Saturday night, although the location of the hole punch on the schedule, around 7 p.m. ET, suggests something happening earlier in the evening. Bad Bunny has been announced as the SNL host, with musical guest Doja Cat. Plus, both of Swift’s stateside late-night interviews—with Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers—will air on NBC. Could she hang around 30 Rock long enough for a cameo in a sketch called “All Too Domingo”?
Or could she be in Texas, popping up at Austin City Limits with Sabrina Carpenter, the only guest artist featured on TLOAS? Will it be a documentary release? The reveal of the Reputation vault tracks? A livestreamed elopement with Kelce on the top of the Empire State Building?
3. Can Swift get a megahit?
On the face of it, this question might sound strange given that Swift is the biggest artist on the planet. Every song on this album will almost unquestionably chart. But Swift is an album artist, typically focused on how all the songs work as a collection, and, especially recently, she hasn’t delivered era-defining smash singles like “Love Story” or “Blank Space.” The last Swift song to break through in that way was probably “Cruel Summer,” from Lover, although that’s a strange case because it wasn’t released as a single until 2023—four years after the album’s release, and only because of popular demand.
I think that Swift wants another one of those songs. That’s why you hire the guy who helped make “Blank Space” and “22.” Martin is, above all else, a hitmaker. On New Heights, she described writing “melodies that were so infectious that you’re almost angry.”
At this point in her career, Swift probably won't focus on singles at the expense of the album. But it sure seems like one of the main goals for this era is to release the kind of bona fide smanger (that’s a smash mixed with a banger!) that will be on wedding playlists 20 years from now, a song that will be truly inescapable in the pharmacy and the grocery store for the next several months and is so catchy you can’t even be mad about it.
4. Can the quill pen write some bangers?
Whether or not Swift can pull off that kind of megahit at this moment is an interesting challenge in and of itself, even more so because of the state of her lyrical writing. Since Folklore, Swift has spent a lot of time writing with what she calls her “quill pen,” spinning out multisyllabic phrases that spill over bars of music like poetry. This writing style reached a divisive apex on Tortured Poets, in lines like “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist,” “At dinner you take my ring off my middle finger / And put it on the one people put wedding rings on,” and “Whether I’m gonna be your wife or / Gonna smash up your bike I haven’t decided yet.”
No matter how you feel about that writing style in general, it’s a tool that seems better suited for world-building in the nooks and crannies of a long album than for the pith and catchiness of a hit single.
Swift has talked about how the economy of this album will apply to the lyrics as well as to the melodies. Still, she seems broadly determined to hold on to her current writing style. She said on New Heights that Martin—who is famously exacting about fitting lyrics to melodies to reach maximum earworm potential—told her that he wanted her to stick with it. More to the point: The album’s lead single is called “The Fate of Ophelia.” Can a song with that name become a megahit? It’s one of the biggest questions about the album.
5. What is happening at the theater?
From October 3 to 5, Swift is holding a theatrical release for the music video for single “The Fate of Ophelia,” followed by a listening party for the rest of the album, including the lyric videos. Dancing in aisles encouraged.
6. Can Travis Kelce be a muse?
This album figures to be the first time Swift really renders a full picture of her relationship with Kelce in song. Past relationships have taken on their own narratives in other albums: an anxiety-tinged whirlwind of desire with Harry Styles on 1989, a block-out-the-world cocoon with Joe Alwyn on Rep and Lover. “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” has been a good placeholder, but, Travis, it’s your time now.
7. What is up with the song “Wood”?
There is a three-track stretch on the back half of The Life of a Showgirl with the titles “Wi$h Li$t,” “Wood,” and “CANCELLED!” It will take all I have not to skip ahead and find out what’s going on there.
8. Will there really be just 12 songs?
She promised.
“This is 12,” she said on New Heights. “There’s not a 13th. There’s not other ones coming.”
I can entertain the “baker’s dozen” theory—that sourdough enthusiast Swift will add a 13th bonus track to Showgirl and still claim she’s staying true to her word about the amount of music. But ultimately, I think that this is a 12-track album, with the potential for some bonus material, like a documentary, in a different medium.
9. I have no explanation … but could this still be Reputation?!
For those of us with clown noses permanently affixed to our faces, there have been some notable references to Reputation in the lead-up to The Life of a Showgirl.
Earlier in the rollout, she used the song “Gorgeous” in a promo video. On Tuesday, certain letters were capitalized in the track listing for Reputation on Apple Music. The hidden message—“They don’t make loyalty like they used to”—seems likely to be a lyric from the new album, but the choice to embed it in Reputation specifically was notable.
On Apple Music, Swift’s album art for Showgirl appeared with sparkly purple cracks, which kiiiind of make it look like a hatching egg. And in the letter Swift posted after she bought back her master recordings in June, she said that she didn’t feel the original Reputation needed to be reimagined or improved on, but, someday, there might be a time for the Reputation (Taylor’s Version) vault tracks to … “hatch.”
10. Will she tour?
It’s a huge question. Odds are that Swift will find some way to showcase this album live. But it seems impossible to imagine another Eras Tour–level amount of world traversing, and Swift will have just one new album to put onstage, as opposed to five. The Super Bowl halftime show was an interesting possibility, but we now know for sure that Swift isn’t performing there. Could she bring back a festival format, like she wanted to do with Loverfest? Mini-residencies in a handful of cities? Start saving up now.
11. George Michael, what are you doing here?
Barring a resurrection situation that your aunt Stephanie would be really excited about, George Michael's feature on the album is probably following in the footsteps of Right Said Fred, another artist notably sampled by Taylor Swift. Michael is credited as a writer on the track “Father Figure,” which is also the name of one of his biggest hits. The pop girls love to sample George Michael, and I’m personally here for it.
12. What number comes after 12?
You know what it is. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
