It’s no surprise that Taylor Swift has a new album in the works—did you really think the woman who released an entirely new double album in the middle of the biggest tour in history is at any point not working on new music?—but the particulars of her first The Life of a Showgirl announcement show that Swift has some new tricks to offer.
Never before has Swift involved another public figure, let alone a romantic partner, so heavily in the rollout of a project. Beau Travis Kelce, as well as muppet-turned-man (a glowingly positive descriptor, to be clear) Jason Kelce, will be forever linked with Swift’s nascent Showgirl era. The brothers sent the Swiftie-aligned world into a frenzy first with the tease of a super-special secret guest on an off-cycle episode of their podcast, New Heights, this Wednesday then revealed that, of course it would be Swift, then at 12:12 am Tuesday (disrespectful to my advancing age, but I digress) revealed the album’s title. It is now available for a so-called pre-pre-order. (The listings on Swift’s web store say the albums will ship by October 13, while making it clear that that is not the official release date. There are six Fridays between now and then, but would Swift want to sneak the release in just before the eligibility deadline for the 2026 Grammys, or at the crack o’ 2027 Grammy dawn?)
The Kelce brothers’ podcast, already popular with sports fans pre-Swift, broadened its audience significantly when Swift and Travis Kelce went public with their relationship in September 2023. In the two years since then, she’s gone to a lot of his games, he’s gone to a lot of her shows, they’ve eaten a lot of dinners, and he’s even made an onstage cameo, scooping her off the ground in a tux and tails to segue into all-time depression bop “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” Apart from the constant speculation that a just off-camera Swift is the cause of a twinkle in Travis’ eye while recording the show, she’s never appeared on New Heights, as a guest or even as a cameo, as Jason’s wife Kylie Kelce and their daughters have many times, whether audibly or visibly.
The album itself is a new era (finally, a use for all those unused orange beads in your bracelet-making kit!), but so is this very public link between Swift and Travis. Ex-partner Joe Alwyn co-wrote tracks with Swift on a few albums, under the pseudonym William Bowery, but didn’t publicly knit his image with her work like this. As the terminally online chroniclers of Swift’s smudged red lipstick over the past few years will eagerly tell you, Swift and Kelce are no strangers to PDA, but this is a public display of association unlike anything we’ve ever seen from Swift before. Of Swift’s partners, Kelce is certainly the person most welcoming of publicity himself, but it’s a big step to make him so permanent a feature of the album’s lore.
Of course, Swift being Swift, Showgirl Easter eggs and clues already abound. Three squares with the “T.S.” logo treatment being used in early promotion are visible on the shelves behind Swift and Kelce in the New Heights video, each a different color. The Wednesday evening episode tease indicated she’ll be revealing the album art on the show, so it feels like a non-zero chance that this signals special editions.
There’s also a newly released playlist on her Spotify account titled “And, baby, that’s show business for you.” It features 22 of Swift’s own tracks, beginning with Red’s “22.” All the songs on the compilation (which runs one hour and twenty-two minutes, ahem) are from Red, Reputation, and 1989, original flavors, not Taylor’s Version, with the exception of “Message in a Bottle,” which was a vault track only released on Red (Taylor’s Version). What does this mean? Well, for one thing, all the included tracks were co-written or co-produced by Max Martin and Shellback, a Swedish producing duo, perhaps portending a fresh collaboration between Swift and the team on Showgirl. If her 2024 original album, The Tortured Poets Department, was by and large a sad-girl soundtrack, helmed by frequent Swift producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, the return of Martin and Shellback hints at a pop-rock inflected sound for the new work.
Then there’s the prevalence of the number two in the rollout: Swift loves a good numerical hint, and this is no exception. Seeing double? Perhaps. I predicted a double album drop for The Tortured Poets Department and was right-ish, and I’ll predict it again for Showgirl. Act I and Act II, anyone? Swift is as maximalist in her musical output as she is in her productions, and she’s already said that the vault tracks for Reputation are finished. Since buying back her masters, there’s not a whole lot of reason for Swift to release Rep TV—why not release them as part of a second album, along with relics that didn’t make her self-titled debut album? After all, if we’re talking about the life of this showgirl, a return to where her stardom started would make sense.
As for why those fresh trademark applications for “The Life of a Showgirl” and “TLOAS” filed by Swift’s corporate arm this week are officially categorized in paperwork as being for candles…that remains a mystery. It’s good to wonder, no?
