Taylor Swift releases 4 new songs for ‘Life of a Showgirl: The Encore.’ What do critics say?

Taylor Swift has added a final act to her record-breaking albumThe Life of a Showgirl.

Almost a year after the album’s release, Swift dropped The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore on Friday, featuring four new songs: “Patient Zero,” “Cleveland!,” “Pink Clouding” and “Babylon.”

The new songs extend what was already a historic run for The Life of a Showgirl. The album debuted last October with 4.002 million equivalent album units in the U.S. — the biggest week for an album since modern tracking began in 1991 — and became the first album to occupy all of the top 12 spots on the Billboard Hot 100.

Despite its success, a deluxe edition wasn’t part of the plan. 

Swift appeared to rule out more songs last year, telling the New Heights podcast, “There are no other songs coming… This is 12. There’s not a 13th, there’s not other ones coming.”

Swifties kept looking for clues anyway. Seven months before The Encore arrived, her “Opalite” video included a poster reading “Patient for the Encore” and four judges holding up zeroes. This week, Swift swapped the Os in her social media bios for zeroes and started a countdown that revealed the title of “Patient Zero.”

Despite arriving as an add-on to an album released nearly a year ago, the new tracks are getting plenty of attention in their own right. But are the surprise additions worth the encore?

What are critics saying about ‘The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore’?

Music critics have been deeply divided by The Encore.

USA Today‘s Melissa Ruggieri said the four new songs “deserve an ovation.” Of “Patient Zero” itself, she writes, “Her staccato vocal delivery glides over a smooth groove that is augmented by strings in the background, but it’s the bridge — it’s always the bridge — that shines.”

Variety‘s Chris Willman said it was “refreshing to get something fast and easily digestible” from Swift, adding, “three of the four new tracks on The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore prove she has no intention of turning in her Tortured Poets membership card any time soon.”

The Globe and Mail‘s Aisling Murphy said the new tracks were “markedly better” than the rest of The Life of a Showgirl, adding, “A showgirl knows to save her best tricks for the grand finale.”

Much of the praise has focused on Swift’s songwriting. Ruggieri said the lyrics on “Babylon,” the closing track, were “captivating,” while Willman called the writing on “Pink Clouding” “shockingly tender.”

Others questioned whether the new material adds much to The Life of a Showgirl. The Telegraph‘s Poppie Platt gave The Encore one star, calling the songs “derivative and flat” and arguing that Swift’s enormous commercial success means she “no longer has the incentive to take creative risks.”

The Independent‘s Roisin O’Connor was also unimpressed, arguing that the songwriting feels recycled from Swift’s older, better work. In her two-star review, she added, “Where is Swift, artistically, now? Because it sounds like she’s flailing.”

Slate‘s Carl Wilson said the tracks “sound fairly similar” to the ones on The Life of a Showgirl, “and similarly are at best a couple of notches above half-successful.” He described “Patient Zero” as “perfectly passable, with lilting cadences you’ll hum along with when it’s playing and likely forget until it plays again,” adding, “Maybe we’ve gotten all the growth from Swift we’ll ever get.”

Laura Snapes of The Guardian argued that the new material lacked cohesion, saying: “It’s hard to tell what any of this has to do with Showgirl (other than pushing the album back to No 1 until Christmas). Every song sounds as though it could have been appended to a different record.”

“Cleveland!” has been the most divisive song on The Encore. Many reviewers believed the love song references Swift’s husband, Travis Kelce, with the line “He already took me to Cleveland / And showed me The Heights.” Kelce grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and Swift has appeared as a guest on his podcast, New Heights.

Ruggieri called the track the catchiest of the four, but O’Connor felt it contained “some of her worst writing,” while Wilson said that the song “sucks,” as do “all her big love songs about Travis Kelce so far.”

Willman said he couldn’t decide whether it would “grow on me or gnaw at me,” and Business Insider‘s Callie Ahlgrim predicted it would “go down as one of the worst songs in Swift’s discography.”

Why did Taylor Swift release ‘The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore’?

The four songs weren’t leftovers from the original album. Swift wrote them after The Life of a Showgirl was released in October 2025, when she traveled to Sweden with longtime collaborators Max Martin and Shellback to celebrate its success.

“Really, we just wanted to reflect and take in how grateful we were for the moment we were in, but there was a studio there, and we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs,” Swift said when announcing The Encore.

The musician said the songs were “born out of pure gratitude” for fans’ response to the album.

The release comes just days before Swift returns to the MTV Video Music Awards, where the music video for “Patient Zero,” starring Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell, will premiere Sunday.

Swift will also receive the inaugural Artist Director Honors award at the ceremony. The new award recognizes music artists whose work behind the camera has pushed creative boundaries and advanced visual storytelling.

The honor will also break Swift’s tie with Beyoncé as the most decorated artist in VMAs history. The two entered this year with 30 Moon Person awards apiece; the Artist Director award will bring Swift’s total to 31.