On Oct. 3, 2025, Taylor Swift released her 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” A sharp contrast to her last album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” Swift’s newest album uses playful, sensual and sarcastic lyrics paired with a theatrical pop tone inspired by her life as an entertainer. The album also features lyrical subversions and a likely reference to “Forever Winter,” a track from “Red.”
In “Ruin the Friendship,” a track interpreted by many fans as reminiscing about and regretting a love who passed away without knowing the speaker’s feelings, Swift encourages listeners to be brave, bold, and tell people how they truly feel. This is a common theme echoed throughout the album, after all, as Swift sings in “Elizabeth Taylor,” “you’re only as hot as your last hit, baby.” Instead of weaving elaborate metaphors together in an elegant manner, like in her previous album, Swift comes out with a fire ignited beneath her and doesn’t hold back.
Throughout Swift’s career, there have been constant attacks and attempts to force her to stay in one genre of music. With “The Eras Tour,” Swift defied these critics, celebrating her very different albums together with fans across the world. Swift is not someone who likes to stay comfortable and complacent: she is always experimenting with new looks, lyrics, beats and rhythms.
It makes sense that after an all-encompassing tour like “The Eras Tour” Swift has a new style modeled after the emotions she went through losing Joe Alwyn, a tumultuous stunt with Matty Healy of The 1975, fighting to gain the rights to her music back and starting a relationship with her now fiance, Travis Kelce. Going through such changes elicited new memories, friends, foes and experiences that listeners will never fully understand, but are given a glimpse at on “The Life of a Showgirl.”
While the album has received mixed reviews overall, here are 5 tracks from the 14-time Grammy Award winner’s “The Life of a Showgirl” that deserve some love.
5. Actually Romantic
“Actually Romantic” knocked my socks off with its witty wordings and sultry descriptions of a one-sided obsession. Swift described her song to Amazon Music, calling it “…a song about realizing that someone else has kind of had a one-sided, adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about.” Rumors and speculation have been circulating the music industry like vultures with this track, and there is a theory that this track is about Charli XCX. Charli and Swift have a storied history, with Charli performing as Swift’s opener during “The Reputation Stadium Tour.” Charli is also married to Matty Healy’s bandmate George Daniel, intertwining the two stars further in a messy situation.
In “Actually Romantic,” Swift embraces the resentment and jealousy of someone and turns it into an acceptance of a passionate obsession. Her boldness in lyrical choices and history behind each word have definitively landed this in my top 5.
4. Opalite
When asked by his brother, Jason, on the “New Heights” podcast about what his favorite track off the album was, Travis Kelce answered “Opalite.” Not only is this track Kelce’s favorite, it’s also inspired by his birthstone, opal. With a catchy rhythm and fun lyrics to follow along with, Swift took me along with her “dancing through the lightning strikes” of failed lovers that led her to Kelce. Taylor loves to associate colors with feelings, as noted in her album “Red” and songs such as “Maroon,” “Lavender Haze,” “gold rush” and “Daylight.” “Opalite” is an upbeat mesh of calming colors and hopeful lyrics, serving as a safe destination for the rocky ship of relationships that Swift has captained throughout her life.
3. Father Figure
Swift pulls from George Michael’s 1987 song also titled “Father Figure” in this bold, highly debated track. There is much speculation that Swift’s track is about her earliest days in the music industry, potentially about someone who was trying to “protect” Swift but failed to uphold that promise. By the end of the song, she changes the point of view to her own, saying she is her own father figure. “Father Figure,” is reminiscent of “The Man,” a track off of Swift’s 7th album “Lover,” but with more punkish rage and a cutthroat attitude. “Whose portrait’s on the mantle? Who covered up your scandals? Mistake my kindness for weakness and find your card cancelled.” The evolution of Swift from a small country star to a powerful woman at the echelon of show business is shown splendidly through “Father Figure” and the tribute to George Michael is the shiny bow on top.
2. The Fate of Ophelia
The lead single from the album, “The Fate of Ophelia” makes you want to get up and dance with Swift, screaming happily about avoiding the terrible fate of Ophelia. “The Fate of Ophelia” seems to be a Shakespearean reference to “Hamlet,” where Ophelia ends up drowning herself after her relationship with her lover, Hamlet, goes wrong. Swift credits Kelce with saving her from drowning, writing, “All that time, I sat alone in my tower, you were just honing your powers … you dug me out of my grave and saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia.” For the critics claiming Swift lost her lyricalism with this album, I challenge them to explore her literary references in this song and celebrate her happiness with Kelce.
1. Ruin the Friendship
Take a minute to sit down and buckle up before you listen to this song for the first time. At the start of the song, Swift sings about wishing she had kissed a guy who had a girlfriend, presenting her desire with typical high school scenes such as prom. In its final verse, however, the song takes a painful turn when Swift sings, “Abigail called me with the bad news. Goodbye, and we’ll never know why… It was not convenient, no, but I whispered at the grave, ‘should have kissed you anyway.” This pulled at my heartstrings because these lyrics emphasize that tomorrow is never promised and what you love can be taken away in the blink of an eye.
Fans speculate that this surprising lyrical turn is in reference to the song “Forever Winter” off of “Red,” in which Jeff Lang is speculated to be the subject. Jeff Lang was a high school friend of Swift who passed away in 2010. Whether “Ruin the Friendship” is about Lang or not, the track pulls at the heartstrings in not knowing what could have, would have or should have happened between two people. The album’s theme of boldness comes through again in a new light: be bold because life is too short to live fearfully.
If you haven’t listened to “The Life of a Showgirl” yet or had any preconceived notions about the album, hopefully this review has enlightened you about Swift’s experiences that have led her to craft this unique album.
