Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl (October 3, 2025) • Page 61

It’s much more of a discussion than for me to type on my phone but Taylor regularly punches down on other female artists, just less explicitly so. Her consumption of all the oxygen in the room is evidence of that.

 

I’m actually not minding this? Some obvious duds and some retreads but it’s mostly pleasant.
I actually kind of like “Actually Romantic”, just wish it wasn’t more petty nonsense.

 

Ruin the Friendship is growing on me. will be in meetings all day and have some other albums to check out, but i wanna give this my undivided attention with the lyrics in front of me a bit later.

 

This is a genuine question: how did Brat “completely shift the culture”? Because like @Garrett said above, I see a lot more lingering influence and aftershocks from the Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter albums that were big at the same time.

 

A different super fan did

 

I more mean that it's written in exactly the mode that he writes about Taylor, where every other sentence is a reference to an older Taylor lyric.

 

There is a huge difference in the way that a lot of younger and queer artists are now approaching songwriting that has direct ties back to the anti-metaphor, plain language lyricism of BRAT. Lorde talked about it rather plainly when talking about the way she approached a lot of the songs on Virgin after collaborating on Girl, So Confusing; there is a much more noticeable trend of people embracing gritter dance pop production; the entire rollout for BRAT (particularly the remix album) and the handling of BRAT summer will forever leave an impact on marketing pop/dance music. Maybe it's something that is more noticeable in the realm of queer pop music, but I think the reverberations of BRAT are going to be felt for a very long time and if you can point to one Taylor Swift song since 2021 that has had the same impact on pop music right now, I will concede my point.

 

Coke

 

i liked honey

 

“Opalite”, “Wood” and “Honey” are probably the 3 keepers for me here.

 

When does the Jackson Five lawsuit hit for “Wood”?

 

this…charli ushered in a new aesthetic that bled over into queer/youth culture with brat and the entire rollout/promo around it. so many young artists have taken inspiration from just the visual aspect of that era.

taylor absolutely shifts culture too though, hers is just the ultimate career spanning show, 2 mile lines for crew neck sweatshirts and friendship bracelets. taylor is firmly in millennial core territory, thus why you see so many young children into her and at the shows.

just two different icons who operate at very opposite ends of the cultural spectrum.

 

Wait, so people really don’t think that she considered all the optics of attacking the most critically acclaimed artist of last year? Come on.

Oof that Rolling Stone review. More concerned with shoehorning in references and myth making than talking about the work.

 

Saw that that Rolling Stone review said this album has a "fresh sonic direction"? Where is this version of the album???

 

I told my sister in law she could pretty easily get her wedding band to learn that one, since they already do. Lyrics might be a bit awkward though.

 

Thanks for the response! I'm not dialed into most of what you're talking about here, so I appreciate the deep dive.

I agree that Taylor doesn't have a song or album since the pandemic records that can really claim to be culture-shifting. Her recent impacts are bigger-picture industry stuff, like the re-recording project and the tour.

 

Cancelled sucks shit. This is the exact song I fucking hate from her lol

 

The most frustrating thing to see in professional music writing, for me. You can be a big fan and still grapple with the work in interesting, critical, or nuanced ways. Don't just use your review as an opportunity to trot out overused lyrical references.

 

Absolute snoozefest

 

My boss, who is 38, has no idea who Charli XCX is (until I sang Boom Clap, lol) and was flabbergasted that it wasn't a song about an ex boyfriend. "It was my favorite song on first listen because we all have a man who has made us feel that way." So, all that to say...

 

Also, want to apologize for the tone I used here. Way too argumentative and it's clear that I've spent too much time arguing on Reddit, LMAO

 

There is so much post BRAT music if you look around in both exciting, rising pop circles (who are pushing it further) and the bigger stars of yesteryear (who mostly try to mesh it with their sound but don’t get why it works). The new Demi Lovato songs are a good example of the latter.

 

I understand the impulse, used to do that shit constantly when I was 23. It is kind of frustrating when Sheffield does it because he’s actually written some pretty entertaining, incisive stuff. (His Dreaming the Beatles book for example is a really easy read with some fun ideas in it.)

I know this wasn’t written by Sheffield, but maybe they got the assignment and felt like they had to conform to the house style for Taylor reviews lol.

 

The first thing I ever read from Sheffield was Love Is a Mix Tape, which is so, so devastating and so powerful. Hugely influential on the way I write about music. His writing about Taylor tests my patience, though. Feels aimed at the fan forums.

 

Waking up and thinking more about this, listening to this again at work, the whole promotion of this album feels so disingenuous to me, and maybe that is what is irking me the most. “The Life of a Showgirl”…a peek behind the curtain…Folklore meets 1989…it just does not feel like this meets any of those criteria.

There are some decent tracks on here…but everything feels so muted across the board comparing to their previous collaborations, it is just a really confusing juxtaposition.

Going back 11 albums there is always at least one song that jumps out musically or lyrically that really pops off the page and nothing feels that way yet for me as of yet.