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After the mess, the mop-up.

That’s one way to understand Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” on which music’s biggest star offers up a dozen precision-cut pop songs just 18 months removed from last year’s sprawling and emotionally unstable “ The Tortured Poets Department .”

That earlier LP, which contained 16 tracks before Swift expanded it with 15 more, was perhaps the most divisive of the singer’s two-decade-long career; it racked up bonkers sales and streaming numbers, of course — at this point, she’s truly too big to fail — but its mixed reception among tastemakers and even some fans seemed to rattle Swift, who for all her alertness to the brutality of being a

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