The first reviews are in for Taylor Swift‘s The Life of a Showgirl.
The pop icon’s 12th album released at midnight on Friday is being hailed for the singer’s return to upbeat pop following last year’s melancholy The Tortured Poets Department, with Swift reuniting with Swedish hitmaker producers Martin and Shellback.
Right out of the gate, the album’s reviews are mixed-to-extremely positive. The reviews range from glowing and effusive raves to somewhat disappointed takes (though even the more downer reviews concede the album is, at least, good). The consensus seems to be: The Life of a Showgirl is fun, as you would expect, containing a compelling and diverse array of tracks, and is clear step-up tonal relief from the dour Poets, yet it doesn’t fulfill the promise of a return to the bangers-stuffed heights of 1989 and Reputation.
Below we’re going to run down some of the review highlights and key comments from major music critics, but first it’s worth nothing that reviewing music quickly is always rather dicey. There’s such an urgency to post reviews fast when it comes to Swift since online interest is so high. But music isn’t like watching a movie where you can generally see it one time and have a pretty solid take on the material. We all know our impressions of album can shift with repeated listens, and many fans have found this to be the case with Swift’s recent albums.
So with that disclaimer in mind, let’s get to the reviews:
USA Today: “Another triumph for the ultimate showgirl … a dozen brisk songs infused with the playfulness of 1989 and the velvet-sheathed-knife lyrics of Reputation … not since 1989 has Swift crafted an album where every song is a potential smash. ”
Financial Times (two out of five stars): “The singer’s talk of ‘effervescence’ and ‘bangers’ has been inferred as a return to the big pop sound inaugurated by ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.’ But the results lack the sparkle of that song, while reinforcing its message that some things are best left in the past … the quality control blows hot and cold here …. Her mellifluously conversational singing is as appealing as ever. But the promised bangers fail to materialize. Chart history may again be made, such being Swift’s popularity, but this time inspiration has not struck.”
The New York Times: “A deceptively modest set of songs about the facade of fame, and what it takes to scrape it away and claw past it. Swift has been pop’s alpha figure for more than a decade, a spot she’s clung to ruthlessly. Showgirl isn’t precisely a goodbye to all that, but it does cast a wary eye on her past while greeting her future with a glee that verges on the unbridled … A catchy and substantive but unflashy album, it takes the songwriting intimacy of her Folklore/Evermore era and renders it with more clarity and oomph … The lone false note is the stomping, moody ‘Cancelled!’ in which Swift aligns herself with the villains of public life.”
Rolling Stone (five stars): “With her twelfth studio album, the musician shoots into a fresh echelon of superstardom — and hits all her marks … The glitzy sheen across these glitter gel pen songs doesn’t mean she’s skimping on her signature detailed storytelling. She is as hilarious as ever, comparing a foe to a ‘toy chihuahua,’ and thanking the haters that call her ‘bad news.’ She’s bolder than she has been, embodying a dick-slinging music mogul with eerie threats like, ‘You’ll be sleeping with the fishes before you know you’re drowning’ … Showgirl is the castle she built out of all the bricks that have been thrown at her.”
NPR: “For the first time on a recording in a while, Swift is having fun. Her voice has never sounded stronger, the collaboration with her studio mates never easier …Showgirl is generally a sunny album, its pleasure rooted in its basic motivations: Swift’s happiness with Kelce and her joy in flexing in the studio with Martin and Shellback. The love songs that set its mood are unreservedly sexy and most of all funny — including that dirty ‘Wood’ — expressing genuine affection and delight. Showgirl also offers a couple of signature memory songs, one a classic that could have been on almost any of her albums and another adroitly up-to-date.”
The Telegraph (three stars): “It is a fine album – a witty, literate, mellifluous collection of overwhelmingly romantic singer-songwriter-style pop songs about the triumph of love, almost certainly spelled L-U-R-V-E. But for all its sophistication, Showgirl showcases Swift at her least dramatically intense … The overwhelming emotional mood is relief. It pervades the songs, a self-soothing blanket of gratitude that she has been rescued from solitude by a man characterized with all the depth of a cartoon fairy tale Prince Charming … After 13 very public romances and 11 albums about her turbulent love life, Showgirl represents 35-year-old Swift’s happy ending. It is a long way from her persona as a modern everywoman, forensically dissecting the affairs of her battered heart. No one could begrudge her happiness, but Swift’s new album has all the bite, realism and piercing psychological acuity of a Barbara Cartland fever dream.”
The Guardian (two stars): “Dull razzle-dazzle … The fizzing electronic pop of Reputation and 1989 is conspicuously absent. Instead, its primary currency is breezy, easy-on-the-ear soft rock: acoustic guitars, misty synth tones, subtle orchestrations and breathy backing vocals …More startling still is the distinct lack of undeniable hooks and nailed-on melodies … [The] album isn’t terrible: it’s just nowhere near as good as it should be given Swift’s talents, and it leaves you wondering why. Perhaps romantic contentment simply writes whiter than vengeful post-breakup bitterness, or perhaps it wobbles your judgment. Perhaps it was rushed. Or perhaps its author was just exhausted, which would be entirely understandable. Even the immortal, it seems, sometimes need to take a break from pop’s constant churn and unceasing clamour for content.”
The Independent (four stars): “Swift has seemingly raised the bar higher than any other artist can hope to reach – at least this decade. So what next? In the case of this album, her answer seems to be to go as rogue as she fancies. Sonically, this is one of Swift’s most experimental albums, one where she flits between Stevie Nicks-indebted pop-rock (‘Opalite’), the Folklore-meets-Reputation backdrop of ‘Honey’ – with its stuttery beats, fuzzy Hammond organs and cascading piano notes – and even Jackson 5 funk on the innuendo-ridden ‘Wood,’ the most outrageous song she’s ever released. In theme, too, she is giddy and in love one moment, pen sharpened and ready to draw blood the next. The Life of a Showgirl might be one of her most uneven records, but she’s as compelling as she’s ever been – the showgirl, the ringmaster and the circus all in one.”
Billboard: “Swift’s eagerly anticipated Return to Bangers is not, say, 1989 Pt. II. Instead of coming back with party tracks, Swift has synthesized the commitment to pristine hooks that she shares with Martin and Shellback, an increasingly idiosyncratic lyrical slant, and the mid-thirties perspective of her past few albums. The result is a collection of songs that are immediately engrossing and among the most affecting of Swift’s career, while also focusing on topics like Hamlet and suburban bliss. Call it Bangers for Adults … The Life of a Showgirl is one of the most grounded, well-rounded projects of Swift’s career — a surprise, in the context of the hype preceding it. That doesn’t make it any less successful.”
The Times (four stars): “These are solid, hook-filled tunes, with production from the Swedish pop team Max Martin and Shellback, which head toward a classic style that recalls the soft rock ease of Fleetwood Mac, the country rock zest of Sheryl Crow, the doomed romanticism of Lana Del Rey. Most of all it sounds like Taylor Swift, expressing both the desires of everyday people and the realities of global fame in a way that is both approachable and impossibly out of reach …The Life of a Showgirl is essentially a companion piece to Reputation, but where that album railed against the vagaries of fame, this one accepts them, possibly because a fairy tale love story has made Swift a lot happier and more capable of handling it all. That’s why it is so much fun.”
