Taylor Swift is deeply in love and not afraid to sing about it on "The Life of a Showgirl," her 12th album out Oct. 3, 2025.
Taylor Swift announced her 12th studio album, "The Life of a Showgirl," will drop Oct. 3.
Taylor Swift announced her 12th studio album, "The Life of a Showgirl," will drop Oct. 3.

Five songs into her new album, Taylor Swift makes a bold admission.  

“I have been afflicted by a terminal uniqueness. I’ve been dying just from trying to seem cool,” she sings over piano chords in “Eldest Daughter.” 

Of course Swift’s legion of devotees would scoff at the notion that their heroine was anything but a pop goddess, their very own Glinda the Good Witch sent to comfort with lyrical poetry and aid crumpled hearts. 

On “The Life of a Showgirl,” out Friday, Oct. 3, Swift does not abandon the relatable big sister vibes that propelled her into rarified billionaire air. But she’s also a 35-year-old woman in love who proudly flaunts the physical and emotional attributes of her man, Travis Kelce. 

For her 12th album, Swift shakes off the melancholy of 2024’s “The Tortured Poets Department” for a dozen brisk songs infused with the playfulness of “1989” and the velvet-sheathed-knife lyrics of “Reputation.” 

But even though she’s still tossing out delicious snark such as, “Like a toy Chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse, that’s how much it hurts” (“Actually Romantic,” a bullseye smackdown that will incite internet sleuths), Swift is floating more than she’s punching. 

She’s returned to the polished imprint of producers Max Martin and Shellback, her first album with the Swedish pop maestros since 2017. And not since “1989” has Swift crafted an album where every song is a potential smash. 

Taylor Swift is both dreamy and defiant on new album

She recorded “Showgirl” in 2024, in the midst of the European leg of her records-shattering Eras Tour, as she revealed in her candid appearance with Kelce on his New Heights podcast. Swift’s 149-show, five-continent expedition encapsulated a tsunami of emotions not just among her fans, but her own journey through a very public breakup, a fling and, as indicated by her engagement to Kelce, knee-buckling love.  

Though the song order is Easter egg intentional – as with everything Swift – it’s bookended by a declaration of romantic salvation and a narrative from the perspective of a weary, yet defiant showgirl.

“No longer drowning and deceived,” Swift whispers in between the soaring swirls of album opener “The Fate of Ophelia,” embracing her predilection for all things literature. Swift named the song after the character in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” who is driven to madness and death, an implication of Swift’s state of mind before Kelce arrived as her knight in a shining helmet (or, as she references him, “Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes”). 

Which Taylor Swift songs are about Travis Kelce?

The theme of emotional rescue is threaded throughout “Showgirl.” 

In “Honey,” which lopes with a clip-clop beat, piano and a dusting of flute, Swift explains, “When anyone called me lovely, they were finding ways not to praise me/you say it like you’re in awe of me.” She also dreams of idyllic suburban life in “Wi$h Li$t.” As the song progresses over chiming synths, she reaches into her upper register to sing, “I thought I had it right once, twice, but I did not. You caught me off my guard.” 

One of the standout tracks, “Wood,” is clearly directed at the groom-to-be with the giveaway lyric “New Heights of manhood.” Swift bakes sly innuendo into the song, which glistens like a ‘70s mirror ball and grooves with her funkiest guitar riff ever as she friskily tosses out lines such as, “Redwood tree it ain’t hard to see/his love was the key that opened my thighs.” 

Musically, Swift stitches the organic sounds (banjo, pedal steel guitar) of her earliest records with the staccato catchiness of programmed keyboards. The results swerve from the ridiculously infectious “Opalite” with its ’60s girl group DNA to the majestic sweep of “Father Figure,” a cinematic mobster tale of loyalty and ambition that lightly interpolates George Michael’s sultry 1987 hit of the same name (he receives a posthumous writing credit).   

Unsurprisingly, she aces both. 

Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter offer a poignant duet

Only two of the songs on the efficient album clock in at slightly more than four minutes. “Eldest Daughter” spotlights Swift at her most introspective as she sings quietly over piano, while the title track captivates because of her deft touch with vivid imagery. Trading verses and sharing perfectly balanced harmonizing with Sabrina Carpenter, who is experiencing her own escalation into pop royalty, Swift unwraps the ballad of Kitty, “who made her money being pretty and witty.” 

The song pushes with a deliberate boom clap and acoustic guitar before veering into one of Swift’s patented bridges, a rapid burst of strings as she and Carpenter recite the inner monologue of Kitty, a showgirl used to people taking a “skate on the ice inside my veins.” 

The story-within-a-story wraps with an appropriate zinger (“Hey Kitty, now I make my money being pretty and witty”) before concert audio of Swift and Carpenter saying goodnight to a screaming crowd from the Eras Tour reverberates as the song fades out. 

It’s a fitting final bow and another triumph for the ultimate showgirl. 

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Taylor Swift ups her game again on playful 'Life of a Showgirl'

Reporting by Melissa Ruggieri, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect