An in-depth look at Taylor Swift’s new album: The Life of a Showgirl (2025)
Taylor Swift entered her newest era this past weekend, breaking records and exciting fans with new music from her 12th album.
Photo courtesy of Glenn Francis/Wikimedia Commons
On Oct. 3, 2025, Taylor Swift released her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl (2025). Produced by Max Martin and Shellback, the same producers behind many of Swift’s other hits, including tracks from her 2014 breakout pop album, 1989 (2014), and the beloved Reputation (2017), released in 2017. The new album features 12 tracks, with the title track, featuring fellow showgirl Sabrina Carpenter, as the last song on the album. The Life of a Showgirl (2025) opens with “The Fate of Ophelia,” which was also the central focus of a movie Swift created to accompany the release of the album, The Official Release Party of a Showgirl (2025).
Swift’s loyal fanbase wasted no time streaming the popstar’s new music. Popular music streaming platform, Spotify, announced that on its release day, The Life of a Showgirl (2025) became the most streamed album in a single day this year. The album broke another Spotify record before it was even released as most pre-saved album, surpassing the record previously set by another of Swift’s albums The Tortured Poets Department (2024).
Overall, The Life of a Showgirl (2025) is the biggest album release of her career, with over 2.7 million copies sold on the album’s release day. This number is only beaten by Adele’s album, 25 (2015), according to Billboard. The cinematic installation of the pop singer’s new era also brought in great numbers. The Official Release Party of a Showgirl (2025) earned over $30 million during its premiere weekend.
During the film, fans get to see exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage of the making for the music video of the album’s opening track, “The Fate of Ophelia.” The song is a play on Shakesphere’s Hamlet, where the character, Ophelia, goes mad and fatally drowns after facing criticism, even from her own father, for falling in love with Hamlet. Swift’s newest hit includes the lyrics: “no longer drowning and deceived / all because you came for me” and “late one night / you dug me out of my grave and / saved my heart from the fate of / Ophelia.” These lyrics directly reference the Shakespeare play, and tell of how her current relationship made her feel fulfilled, as Swift explained in the premiere-weekend movie.
The album’s second track, “Elizabeth Taylor,” is one of Taylor Swift’s favorite songs on her new album, as she admitted in The Official Release Party of a Showgirl (2025). She described the song as a testimony of the anxiety she has felt in regards to the public scrutiny surrounding her relationships. She referenced fellow “showgirl,” who also had public relationship struggles, actress Elizabeth Taylor, with the lyrics “I’d cry my eyes violet, Elizabeth Taylor / tell me for real, do you think it’s forever?”, referring to the actress’s famously violet-colored eyes.
In a radio interview for Capitol FM Radio, Swift confirmed that her fiancé, Travis Kelce’s, favorite track on the album is track three, “Opalite.” Describing the track, the songwriter explained, the song uses “kind of a cool metaphor that opalite is a man-made opal, and happiness can also be man-made,” to detail how she has worked to make her own happiness through ups and downs, both in her career and in romance.
Track four on The Life of a Showgirl (2025) samples music from another famous pop star, namely, George Michael. His estate confirmed that they “had no hesitation” letting Swift interpolate Michael’s 1987 hit, “Father Figure.” Swift’s track, by the same title, is rumored to be about music manager Scooter Braun and Big Machine Record Label owner Scott Borchetta.
Back in 2019, Borchetta, the owner of Swift’s former music label, sold her catalog of music to Scooter Braun, taking the ownership rights of the music away from Taylor Swift herself. Swift previously expressed her hurt stemming from this deal online, posting on Tumblr that she had “never [imagined] in [her] worst nightmares that” her records would be sold to Braun. Among the strongest evidence linking this track to Braun and Borchetta is Swift singing the line “I protect the family” six times throughout the song; Scott Borchetta sold Swift’s first six albums to Scooter Braun, which she has since been able to purchase back for $360 million.
Swifties have come to know that track five on Swift’s albums are some of her most emotional tracks; The Life of a Showgirl (2025)’s track five is titled “Eldest Daughter.” The track’s lyrics— “I have been afflicted by a terminal uniqueness” and “I’ve been dying just to seem cool” —dive deep into “eldest daughter syndrome.” The song essentially suggests that all eldest daughters struggle with perfectionism, something that has trended on the social media app, TikTok. Swift acknowledges this in footage from the album’s release party film, attributing this song’s lyrics to the pressure to be perfect.
The halfway point through the album, track six, is titled “Ruin the Friendship.” The subject of this song is suspected to be her high school friend, Jeff Lang, who passed away in 2010. After releasing her third album, Swift mentioned Lang publicly while accepting Songwriter of the Year at the 2010 BMI Country Awards. She said, “Yesterday I sang at the funeral of one of my best friends. He was 21, and I used to play my songs for him first. So I would like to thank Jeff Lang.” In The Official Release Party of a Showgirl (2025), Swift talked about “Ruin the Friendship,” describing it as a song that reflects on her high school years and on chances for love she never took. The third verse of the track includes the emotional lyrics: “when I left school, I lost track of you / Abigail called me with the bad news / goodbye / and we’ll never know why.”
Swift continues to write about friendships in track seven, but this time, about ones that have gone bad. This track is rumored to be about fellow pop star, Charli XCX. Charli opened for Swift on her Reputation Stadium Tour back in 2018, before she broke out with her hit album, Brat (2024). On this album, she released a track titled “Sympathy is a Knife,” in which she sings about feeling insecure compared to another woman. She wrote, “I don’t wanna share this space / I don’t wanna force a smile / this one girl taps my insecurities” and “don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show / fingers crossed behind my back / I hope they break up quick.” The singer was dating, and is now engaged to, George Daniel, the drummer in the band The 1975. Swift also had a relationship with The 1975’s lead singer, Matty Healy.
Swift herself explained the meaning behind “Actually Romantic,” track seven on her new album. She did not deny nor confirm that this song was about Charli XCX, but she explained, it is “about realizing someone has a one-sided adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about.” One line in Swift’s song seemingly claps back at Charli’s “Sympathy is a Knife” lyric, with the lines, “How many times has your boyfriend said / why are we always talking ‘bout her?”.
Swift offered some wisdom while discussing track eight during The Official Release Party of a Showgirl (2025), saying that your own set of wishes “doesn’t have to be like everybody else’s.” Track eight, “Wi$h Li$t”, demonstrates this idea, with lyrics like “They want that yacht life, under chopper blades / they want those bright lights and Balenci’ shades”, and “they should have what they want / they deserve what they want / hope they get what they want”, compared to Swift’s own wishes: “I just want you, huh / have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you”.
Swift described the following track as “a very sentimental love song” during its introduction in the release party film. “Wood,” the album’s ninth track, explores common superstitions, such as lucky pennies, picking petals off a daisy, and black cats. However, Swift seems to disregard these phenomena in her new relationship with star football player, Travis Kelce, by singing on this track, “all of that missin’, wishing on a fallen star / never did me any good, I ain’t gotta knock on wood / it’s you and me forever dancing in the dark / all over me, it’s understood, I ain’t gotta knock on wood.” Also in this track, Swift shows off her clever song writing, nodding to Kelce’s podcast, “New Heights,” on which she announced her 12th album over this past summer, with the lyric: “New Heights of manhood / I ain’t gotta knock on wood”.
Canceled: something Taylor Swift certainly is not after breaking records with her new album. However, track 10 on The Life of a Showgirl is titled “CANCELED!” Although Swift is in the middle of a prosperous career, she has been in the public eye ever since the release of her first album in 2006, which she reflects on throughout the song. In the release party film, Swift explained, the song is about “having had those experiences [in the public eye], it makes me move through the world a little bit differently… I don’t naturally just cast people aside just because other people decide they don’t like them.”
“Those experiences” could possibly be Swift reflecting back on her own struggles with fame, and her receiving public backlash, during a public feud between herself, rapper Kanye West, and his then-wife, Kim Kardashian, in 2016. Some fans have also speculated that track nine is about Swift’s newfound friendship with fellow Kansas City Chiefs' wife, Brittany Mahomes. The wife of Chiefs’ quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, has been a controversial figure for years, after she was caught liking a social media post from President Donald Trump, and in 2022, when she was seen spraying champagne on opposing teams’ fans at a Kansas City Chiefs game. Despite some “swifties” expecting Taylor Swift to distance herself from Brittany Mahomes, the two have continually been seen together.
“Honey is a song about how words that have been meant to hurt you in the past can be repurposed by someone who loves you in a way that feels totally different,” Swift said herself, about track eleven on The Life of a Showgirl (2025). Lyrics from this track include the singer reminiscing on times when she had been called “honey” or “sweetheart” passive aggressively at bars by other women, and hurtfully by critics before referring to her fiancé, with the lyrics “you can call me ‘honey’ if you want because I’m the one you want,” highlighting the overall theme of this album that Travis Kelce has given her a new outlook on love and life.
The life of a showgirl is certainly not a life that Taylor Swift is new to. This is her 12th album and 14th year under the stagelights. She has racked up 12 No. 1 hits and 59 top 10 hits, according to Billboard Hot100 statistics. The title, and final, track on her newest album explores this life of fame. Swift writes about a fictional showgirl, named Kitty. As Swift explains in “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl”, she uses the Kitty character to explain that stardom is “much more other than the glitter and glamour. There’s a lot more that comes with it.”
This is not the first time in her career that Swift has written about the less-glamorous parts of fame. Her 2012 song, “The Lucky One,” details the deception a life of fame can have. The first verse explains, “the camera flashes make it look like a dream.” By the end of the song, fans hear Swift sing, “you don’t feel pretty, you just feel used.” She admits through the lyrics, “it took some time, but I understand it now.” By it, she is referring to the mental effects of handling being a showgirl.
However, Swift, and her feature on this song, Sabrina Carpenter, seem to be taking a more optimistic look at fame now. They sing together, “and now I know the life of a showgirl, babe / wouldn’t have it any other way.” The song closes out the album with an audio clip of fans cheering at Swift’s Eras Tour. In this clip, fans can identify Swift’s voice thanking Sabrina Carpenter, marking this clip as audio from the Eras Tour show where Taylor Swift brought Carpenter out on stage with her to sing her hits “Espresso” and “Please, Please, Please,” as well as Swift’s “Is it over now?.” The Eras Tour, which concluded in December of last year, certainly solidified Swift’s showgirl-career by becoming the highest grossing tour ever.