According to the initial reviews of The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift had done it again. Rolling Stone awarded her five stars, as it did her past two albums, and dedicated its homepage to fawning Swift coverage. Variety gave Showgirl a score of 100: “Taylor Swift Has Made Such a Contagiously Joyful Record, Even Her Score-Settling Detours Sound Sunny.” I guess that is one way to put it. The BBC called it a “triumphant pop victory lap” where Swift “hits all her marks.” USA Today claims that “Taylor Swift ups her game again.”
Rolling Stone (Taylor's Version) 🧡
To celebrate #TSTheLifeofaShowgirl, we launched our first-ever homepage takeover. For 24 hours, Rolling Stone transforms its digital presence into an immersive experience complete with reviews, lists, takes, and more.https://t.co/TaxO73ksla pic.twitter.com/GCD19Ze9a5
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 3, 2025
And yet, this time, even the most devoted fans weren’t so certain the album was good. As one Swiftie on X put it, this release marks the “first time in the 18 years of being a fan …. i didn’t like a single song on the album.” Other listeners were even more bold: “The life of a showgirl is as if Dubai, matcha, pistachio chocolate, colleen hoover books, and labubus all had a baby with AI.”
i said taylor swift’s new album sucks and i didn’t even get a single death threat from a swiftie. that’s how bad it is.
— one bailey after another (@Baileymoon15) October 3, 2025
the entire album is a chop, it’s not giving SHOWGIRL at all, the music is so lifeless, the lyrics, the production, the vocal performance, everything about this album is mediocre, I’m sorry @taylorswift13 you can do better than this
— the life of a showgirl is coming for blood (@tscarletmaroon) October 2, 2025
Click here to preview your posts with PRO themes ››
As Showgirl’s release day went on, a few less friendly assessments emerged, including one from The New Yorker’s Amanda Petrusich, who asks, “Why does Taylor Swift think she’s cursed?” There’s also a review by longtime Guardian music critic Alexis Petridis, who points out Showgirl’s underwhelming production (what does it say that one of the album’s best-sounding songs is a Jackson 5 dupe?) and awkward metaphors, as well as the simple exhaustion of having to sit through yet another subpar record by someone who is allegedly one of our best songwriters. This feels significant. Around 2023, after the revelatory success of Folklore and Evermore and amid the smash spectacle of the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift underwent public reappraisal. Suddenly, everyone seemed to love her. News outlets tracked A-list attendance at her concerts; senators quoted her lyrics at congressional testimonies; universities padded their catalogues with Swift 101 courses. It became very difficult to push back lest you be accused of being a misogynist. Then she started dating Travis Kelce, and the pair became a media supernova. At the same time, Swift’s music has gotten notably worse.
Projects like The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift, an upcoming book by Harvard poetry professor Stephanie Burt, who taught a Swift class last year, are difficult to take seriously in light of who Taylor Swift is now. This is the supposed poetry that Showgirl has to offer: “He ah-matized me and opened my eyes” (she will not say “dickmatized”) and “Did you girlboss too close to the sun?” It’s too soon to determine the verdict on this album, but to me, the ambivalent reaction indicates people are ready to move on.
