Taylor's Encore
When Taylor Swift released her 12th studio album “The Life of a Showgirl” last October, I listened to it in disappointed disbelief, wondering just where my beloved tortured poet had gone.
“The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore” is somehow more derivative and soulless than the critically maligned original.
If “Showgirl” is built on Swift’s extravagant backstage life, then the addendum’s first track, “Patient Zero,” is a cold scalpel straight through its heart.
The first track and brooding focal point of “The Encore,” the song is about emotional abuse and toxic relationships. It was originally announced as a single with an accompanying music video written and directed by Swift and starring Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell.
The song starts on a folk-inspired note with a heavy violin instrumental that sort of sounds like an “Outlander” theme song. As we transition into the chorus, it becomes clear that Swift is singing to the current significant other of her former lover.
It feels less like organic songwriting and more like a marketing hook. Conceptually, it's clinically detached and emotionless. Swift usually excels at portraying emotional betrayal in devastating detail, but these new lyrics are superficial, sloppy and sterile. They’re placed over a smooth but predictable synth pulse that’s boring at best and a complete shift in tone from the rest of the album.
Song two – “Cleveland!” – brought me to tears, and not in a good way. I actually cried because I’m tired of hearing half-baked odes to Travis Kelce and his redwood tree.
“Cleveland!” has Swift leaning into a performative domesticity that feels constructed less out of genuine romantic bliss and more out of defensive spite. She attempts to frame unbothered love as the ultimate victory over her critics, but by centering the entire narrative around proving the public wrong, she inadvertently reveals how much the discourse gets to her. The singer married her football beau in July and presumably has seen the social media posts begging her to write Matty Healy or Joe Alwyn-level love songs again.
The chorus alone – “My baby likes what he likes/He already took me to Cleveland/And showed me the Heights, so hate all you like/This is the love of my life” – proves she’s miles away from the sensitive, starry-eyed artist who wrote “You Are In Love,” “Call It What You Want” or even “Fresh Out The Slammer.”
Bright, percussive piano chords drive the hook, which sounds like a mix between a Christmas song and the sort of advertising jingle you’d hear blaring in a TJ Maxx. It’s apparently intentionally designed for stadium crowd chants. It leaves me hopeful that another tour could be on the horizon.
“Pink Clouding” tries to echo the pop brilliance of Swift’s previous collaboration with producers Max Martin and Shellback on the “1989” album, but fails to fully capture the magic. Borrowed from addiction terminology, the title refers to “pink cloud syndrome,” which is the psychological phenomenon where an individual experiences an intense, short-lived surge of optimism and invincibility after escaping a crisis.
Incredibly, Swift ties all of this to none other than British actor Tom Hiddleston, with whom the singer had a three-month whirlwind romance in 2016. In a pseudo-rap spoken bridge, she delivers him an apology: “I hope you realize my kind of trouble wasn’t worth it/And the way I treated you, you never deserved it.”
Musically, the production mirrors her inflated sense of euphoria. It's airy and it has a lighter beat that gives the song an ethereal quality. The synths thin out during the bridge, leaving her regret exposed. It’s the best yet, both lyrically and compositionally.
“Babylon,” the fourth and final track, is undoubtedly “The Encore’s” crown jewel, with none of the defensive posturing of the previous songs.
The song invokes the ancient Mesopotamian metropolis as a metaphor for not knowing what you have until it’s gone. It’s Swift at her most distilled: taking a personal anxiety and wrapping it up in a grandiose allegory over a pop beat.
Her vocals are enveloped by shadowy backing harmonies like an echo in an empty temple. Martin and Shellback make the song cinematic, pairing heavy drums with orchestral ups and downs.
I think if she reined in the beat and played the melody over an acoustic guitar, it could sound even better as a country pop song reminiscent of the “Fearless” era. But overall, it’s catchy, sweet and most importantly a genuinely good song.
Compared to anything else she has ever released – and I’ve listened to it all a million times over – “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore” is by far Taylor Swift’s worst project.
She’s desperately chasing after the beat in “Patient Zero,” and “Cleveland!” is a contender for worst song in her discography. But she manages to pick it up off the floor, thankfully, with the last two songs — and “Babylon” is already added to my Spotify playlists.
It’s disheartening to see such an incredible artist now release such low-caliber music. But these last two tracks give me hope that if she stops reacting to public opinion by rushing to the recording studio, maybe, just maybe, her next album won’t be another underwhelming disappointment. The same Taylor who wrote “Folklore” and “Evermore” is in there somewhere; she just needs to remember who she is.
