Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl (October 3, 2025) • Page 98

The production on this album is just so... dull. There's nothing interesting, exciting, clever, or even notable. I miss when Taylor's production had great moments

 

lol i think the production is far and away the best part of this album

 

It was a rush job

 

Now I'm trying to remember the last time I found the production on a Taylor album to be exciting.

 

a lot of disrespect to the clarinet solo in honey right now

 

Oh jeeze, I mean look at I Can Do It With A Broken Heart for starters, there is SO MUCH detail and layers and musical shifts, it's a perfect example of her production elevating the song. Lots of examples on the main disc of TTPD

 

I do like that weird musical shift that happens for no reason in the second verse of “Wish List.”

 

Meh, so much of TTPD felt like retreads of the Midnights and/or 1989 TV production to me. This album at least throws some new things into the stew.

 

Wild wild take, Craig!!! New things??? I don't think I could disagree more lol. What's your favorite thing about this albums production?

 

The production on this has grown on me a lot. I do think it is very polished, maybe too polished in places, but the bass and guitar tones, and Taylor’s vocals are real highlights for me.

 

There are so many classic rock or throwback pop reference points on this album, production wise, that I haven't heard on previous Taylor Swift albums, and they're all the obvious ones. The ABBA-meets-Fleetwood Mac vibe of "Opalite"; grafting that Lenny Kravitz bassline onto a Fearless-style country song on "Ruin the Friendship"; that Weezer-meets-Pixies crunch on "Actually Romantic"; that bald-faced Jackson 5 lift on "Wood."

So many people criticized these things as "a ha, she stole!" moments, but I hear all of them as fun genre exercises that she hasn't really tried before, and the production is a huge, huge part of making them as in-your-face and (IMO) enjoyable as they are. I'll take those things any day over the "this just sounds like 'Mastermind' but more upbeat!" play of "I Can Do It with a Broken Heart," or the "This is what an indie guy and a pop producer think a country song should sound like" approach of "But Daddy I Love Him." Both songs I like, both songs that still contributed to me "she needs to fire Jack and Aaron" feeling.

 

I do really like the low end on this album, btw. Some cool bass stuff going on, on pretty much every track.

 

Crazy, yeah we're not going to see eye to eye here

 

For the record, I agree that the production work on "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart" sounds great, in a vacuum. I was just so worn out on hearing the Jack sound on Taylor records at that point that hearing Taylor's voice with pretty much any other producer behind the boards would have been exciting to me.

My breaking point with "Jack-produces-Taylor" was the vault tracks on 1989, which just sound like Midnights: The 4am Version.

 

1989 vault absolutely sound like Midnights tracks, completely agree.

 

So this kind of stat actually kinda surprises me and maybe minimizes how much of an effect the endless variants have.

Pure streaming numbers were off the charts, and streaming didn't have any variants, just simply people listening to the songs.

 

The people yearn for 45 minutes or less albums

 

I’ve tried to explain on other threads/forums that the number of variants people (even big fans) are buying is probably about 1-2 on average. Not many fans (relatively) are buying more than 1-2 variants of the release.

I have no data to prove this.

 

Yeah, I think this album is just inexplicably huge. The variants obviously helped, but it's outperforming what I expected on pretty much every level. I do think this year's relatively quiet pop landscape is probably a factor.

 

C'mon, these are the people who complained about how short Olivia and Sabrina's records were and called them EPs. Pop stans LOVE bloated albums.

 

I think it's because woman whose husbands watch football was the last group of Swifties she needed to conquer

 

Maybe it’s just as simple as people like Taylor Swift and this is just a solid but not spectacular Taylor album? we always look for hot takes or deeper reasons why, whether it’s variants or the swifty army or whatever, but it is probably as easy as she’s the biggest pop star of all time.

 

For the third or fourth time, to reiterate.