“Life is more upbeat,” Taylor Swift responded when her fiancé, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, described the sound of her 12th album as such. Yet as the pop titan is wont to do, The Life of a Showgirl still contains plenty of surprises that will wrongfoot any Swifties expecting sunshine and rainbows.
Having completed Eras, the biggest tour in music in history, and shattered a few more industry records, Swift has seemingly raised the bar higher than any other artist can hope to reach – at least this decade. So what next? In the case of this album, her answer seems to be to go as rogue as she fancies. Sonically, this is one of Swift’s most experimental albums, one where she flits between Stevie Nicks-indebted pop-rock (“Opalite”), the Folklore-meets-Reputation backdrop of “Honey” – with its stuttery beats, fuzzy Hammond organs and cascading piano notes – and even Jackson 5 funk on the innuendo-ridden “Wood”, the most outrageous song she’s ever released. In theme, too, she is giddy and in love one moment, pen sharpened and ready to draw blood the next.
