Taylor Swift's 'Showgirl' Media-Blitz Had A Downfall

If you’re just talking numbers, Taylor Swift’s new album The Life of a Showgirl is an unqualified success. When it dropped Friday at the stroke of midnight, it shattered single-day streaming records on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon. Its companion film, The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, topped the theatrical charts for the weekend as well, bringing in $33 million and besting films from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Dwayne Johnson.

But the critical reception to Showgirl has been a bit more complicated. While legacy outlets have mostly raved, online reactions have been decidedly mixed — even for a Taylor Swift album. Considering its resounding financial success, when it comes to negative reviews, she may well shake it off. But if she’s concerned about continuing to evolve her sound without alienating her audience, it might be time for her to rethink her strategy for releasing new music. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the reactions to Showgirl have been polarized — after all, we’re talking about one of the biggest musical acts in the world (and an opinionated young woman to boot), so Super-fan Swifites and (for lack of a better word) haters were expected to have hot takes. Neither of these is a pliable party; they were going to love or hate this new project regardless.

What’s more striking is the muted or critical responses from those not on the extremes — casual listeners or even admirers who have found Life of a Showgirl’s lyrics or production lacking, or who felt it didn’t deliver on the expectations set by its promotion. The criticism is understandable, because this album finds the singer/songwriter at a moment of transition: coming off the phenomenon of her Eras Tour, she has become a billionaire, taken back ownership of her entire music catalog, and found love — even getting engaged along the way. She seems to be figuring out where to go from here, both as a person and an artist.

That uncertainty may account for the shift in personnel for Life of a Showgirl. It marks her first collaboration in eight years with producers Max Martin and Shellback, who helped engineer her crossover from country to pop on Red and 1989. On her last five projects, produced by Jack Antonoff, Swift focused on more introspective storytelling and ornate lyrics; reuniting with her earlier hit-makers feels like an effort to fuse her pop instincts with the reflective songwriting of her recent work into a lasting, sustainable style.

From an artistic standpoint, The Life of a Showgirl might have benefited from a more traditional rollout. Most artists release a lead single and video in advance — not only to build anticipation but also to acquaint listeners to the record’s sound and themes. HAIM, for example, dropped several singles from I Quit before its June debut, a move that helped prepare the group’s audience for a shift in sound. With Showgirl such a clear departure from the Antonoff era, that approach might have served Swift better.

She hasn’t followed this model since 2019’s Lover, though, and frankly hasn’t needed to; her albums come with a built-in audience and automatic cultural ubiquity. And she could not have released Showgirl in this fashion and seen the same financial windfall; part of the draw of The Official Release Party of a Showgirl was that it premiered the “The Fate of Ophelia” music video before it was available on YouTube 48 hours later.

But with a transitional work like this, an early release of “The Fate of Ophelia” and its video — arguably the best of her career —  along with a second single, perhaps of one of the more atypical tracks, could have prepared listeners for its variety.Instead, Swift and her label, Republic Records, built up a massive worldwide event, and dropped everything at once — good songs and bad — for fans and non-fans to ingest like a firehose at midnight. It’s the musical version of streaming services’ full-season drops, where the binge model ultimately emphasizes the show’s flaws.

Such is the case with The Life of a Showgirl. I’d argue that the album is quite good, particularly “The Fate of Ophelia,” which I think is an inarguably top-tier pop song, and “Ruin the Friendship,” a heartbreaker that sneaks up on you. But there are songs that don’t work at all. For example, what has been described as her raunchiest track yet, “Wood,” is an unsuccessful attempt to do a Sabrina Carpenter song when only Sabrina Carpenter can do Sabrina Carpenter songs, and “Actually Romantic” is punching down in a rather ugly way.

These are tracks that could be placed in the “filler” category — a fate that befalls most, if not all, recording artists at one time or another. But Swift is expected to transcend that tradition, and the trouble with her level of fame is that every song is judged by whether it lives up to the hype surrounding her. 

So the smartest move may be to better manage that buzz and the expectations that it creates. The traditional release strategy is still effective at doing just that, and it might be worth Swift revisiting in the future. Is it old-fashioned? Sure. But sometimes the old ways still work best, even for a superstar.