Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl (October 3, 2025) • Page 89

Really enjoyed the majority of this. “Wood” is probably my favourite. That vocal inflection she does after “the curse on me was broken by your magic wand” is just captivating. Love the soaring chorus too obviously.

 

Whenever I see randoms participate in all the speculation and opinions on Taylor or her album it's whatever. But as soon as it gets reported on by media and those internet "news" people and late night hosts and stuff it's just so annoying. Like we can be annoying online but as soon as the discourse is "official" it just becomes so much more annoying and I don't know why lol but I'm over it.

 

Jimmy Fallon is the absolute worst for that very reason. I hate when she’s on w him.

 

It is a bit weird how much coverage Taylor Swift’s albums get. Like I get it from a clicks/views perspective…but it is still a bit strange to me. No other pop artist gets nearly that kind of treatment.

 

Shes paying for PR. Nothing else explains the 5 star review from Rolling Stone.

 

No one’s paying Rolling Stone for those glowing reviews. They do that because they’re almost exclusively written by superfans and/or they use it as leverage so they can get coverage.

 

I could be wrong, but I don’t remember her doing a ton of press for TTPD or these track breakdowns, I assume because breaking down every track of that album would take like three days.

This seems way more conducive of an album for press because it’s short, has a concise set of songs and there’s more to her lore because of Travis.

 

I think Taylor is a unique case as well because she's always had hidden messages, Easter eggs, references, etc. she's made speculation part of her career which I think leads to a lot more conversation and discourse than there otherwise might be. It's like the same concept as conspiracy theories to me lol. She's just vague and cryptic but also obvious enough to keep people talking and going down rabbit holes. That combined with her unprecedented success and dedicated fans and all the other things celebs deal with and it's like a storm of constant conversation. Plus I think she was lying low with Joe because he wasn't very public but Travis does not have that hangup so she's like extra everywhere.

 

Taylor is also exponentially more famous than most other current pop stars, so coverage of her is bound to be more widely demanded and consumed. She’s one of the few active musical artists where an article or a talk show segment about her is not going to trigger the boomers’ favorite response to any modern music discourse, which is “Who?”

 

I bought one single vinyl grim

 

(lying)

 

can’t get away from this friggin guy man

 

I also bought 1 vinyl that I wished I could return upon spinning once. lol.

 

I haven’t bought it cuz I had a feeling I’d be disappointed

 

I basically don't preorder vinyl anymore. After an album sits with me for a while I decide if I need it or not.

 

Artists I trust get a preorder.

 

Insane intuition Brad. I should have done the same.

 

Returning to this thread on a whim after deciding to check out, and I’m surprised this post was seemingly overlooked. Definitely a better worded version of how I feel about the album (both on its own and in relation to past albums), and also how I feel about where Taylor Swift currently sits as a public figure & artist.

 

You know what rules actually? Father Figure

 

The acoustic versions of these songs are pretty great. I'm collecting all the bonus tracks, if anyone wants to DM me after they are all out

 

I've seen a lot of TikToks where people are like "if the album sounded like this!!!!" and like, yeah, that was the choice for it not to. Also saw a couple "I guess the lyrics weren't the problem" videos about them. This release is the weirdest rollout.

 

Yeah I've only listened to a few, but uhhhhhhhhh they aren't bad. Eldest Daughter is probably better

 

Man, I hadn't given this much time, but went back and listened to it today, and I really think the first three songs are the best here. My thoughts were, "Oh, maybe this is better than I thought" and it's really just that those songs are good, as well as Ruin the Friendship, and that's basically it for me. Also, I liked the music on Cancelled, but I'm so confused about this narrative she's trying to create of her being some queen of an underground club of cancelled people and she takes them under her wing and shows them how to live with their "scars" or whatever. When has Taylor ever come anywhere close to being viewed through that light in the public eye? It's just very unauthentic to me.

I felt like this was hit on a little, but it does seem like people can't wrap their brains around an album of hers that is aggressively fine, because albums like that don't enter the Zeitgeist. They either have to fully write it off and convince themself it's worse than it is, or run into a Stockholm Syndrome effect while listening to convince themselves that this thing that they didn't like is good if they just keep powering through and listening more and more.