They were bops, but they weren’t special
When Taylor Swift released The Life of a Showgirl last year, I had high hopes it would be a turnaround from the messy manuscript that was The Tortured Poets Department. While it didn’t achieve everything I had been hoping for, it did seem to be feeling its way back to the Swift I was familiar with. Namely, the tighter writing with “Opalite,” “The Fate of Ophelia” and “The Life of a Showgirl.” Given the monumental year Swift has had, I would have rather she had taken a breather and creative reset, coming back in her usual two years to give us something fresh and different. Thus, I have been looking forward to The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore with tepid anticipation. It dropped today, and I think, politely, we could have skipped the curtain call.
As someone who both critiques art and creates it, I have come to believe that great creative output must always be evolving. In the same way that we open a book or watch a movie or binge a TV show expecting to journey through a story, we also expect that of public-facing artists and creators. While I do respect the creative process and effort that goes into each project, at the end of the day, if you don’t evolve, your body of work just starts blending together. Recently, I was chatting with a fellow bookworm about the latest novel from a revered and established author. My friend’s observation? “Lovely but forgettable.” That shocked me, as the novel is also a Booker Prize finalist. So my friend followed up: The book was great, it’s just that it wasn’t at all different from the author’s previously brilliant books.
Such is what I believe is happening with Swift.
Swift is a great writer, undisputedly. She is, also, a great commercial success. But this lack of evolution, which I have been charting since 2022’s Midnights, is causing her brilliance to be lost in the sea of her other brilliant work. In fact, calling the addendum The Encore is rather fitting, because the whole concept of the encore is an additional performance harkening back to whatever the performer has just played. The audience loves it so much, they want it again.
In the case of Showgirl, the encore is Swift’s M.O. to a T. It plays the victim (“Cleveland!”), makes a very late apology (“Pink Clouding”) and, of course, every song has a great bridge. But that’s the thing. It’s static.
Whenever I talk about folklore and evermore with fellow Swift fans, the opinions are divided. But whether or not you think they’re good, per se, isn’t really the point. It’s proof that Swift knows how to evolve, how to dare, how to do things differently—and do them extraordinarily well. And I’m really hoping that her foray back into country for Toy Story 5 is an indication that maybe an evolution is coming. But for now, it’s time to put away the feather boas and dim the spotlight.
