{"id":1053,"date":"2025-10-10T09:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/2025\/10\/10\/2025-10-10-the-price-of-showbiz\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T23:08:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T23:08:26","slug":"2025-10-10-the-price-of-showbiz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/2025\/10\/10\/2025-10-10-the-price-of-showbiz\/","title":{"rendered":"The price of\u00a0showbiz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Andrew Hutchinson<\/a> · Staff Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u2014 INSTAGRAM<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Through her Eras Tour, Taylor Swift has made it clear she is the ultimate American showgirl. However, a successful artist cannot rely on reputation or past successes, but must continue creating, and to a certain extent, must keep fans appeased. With her 12th studio album, Taylor Swift tries to recreate the happier pop albums of her past that fueled the Eras Tour, the most commercially successful tour in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of her popularity cooled after the apathetic response to \u201cThe Tortured Poets Department\u201d and its lack of memorable writing. \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl\u201d has a mixed relationship with fans and listeners thus far, but this new release is a good, if flawed, album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This marks Swift\u2019s first album since 2014\u2019s \u201c1989\u201d not produced by Jack Antonoff, with Max Martin returning to the helm. Despite this change, the production, choice of instrumentation and general sound create the same vintage-pop atmosphere of Antonoff\u2019s recent release \u201cMan\u2019s Best Friend.\u201d Tracks like \u201cActually Romantic,\u201d \u201cWood\u201d and the Sabrina Carpenter feature \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl\u201d could easily sit beside Carpenter\u2019s recent work. Despite this, all 12 tracks can be linked in sound to other \u201ceras\u201d of Swift\u2019s music. The guitar in \u201cWood\u201d recalls \u201c1989,\u201d \u201cCANCELLED!\u201d channels \u201cReputation\u201d and \u201cMidnights,\u201d \u201cEldest Daughter\u201d echoes the introspective tone of \u201cFolklore\u201d and \u201cWi$h Li$t\u201d could seamlessly integrate into \u201cLover.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While many critics have bashed the album for its lack of creativity, I found enough interest to justify adding a handful to my personal playlists, despite none of the tracks having the instant-hook brilliance of \u201cShake It Off\u201d or \u201cCruel Summer.\u201d It generally presents like an amalgamation of all her previous sounds and writing in a presentation like \u201cMidnights,\u201d fitting the tone Taylor curated in the lead-up to the album\u2019s release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it would be remiss to not cover the lyrical element of the album. Unlike the \u201cRed\u201d and \u201c1989\u201d albums that Swift claimed some similarity to, the profanity remains on par with \u201cThe Tortured Poets Department\u201d or \u201cMidnights,\u201d with a decent amount of strong profanity. More perplexing and frankly disappointing is the innuendo that Swift includes in a few of the songs, most prominently in \u201cFather Figure\u201d and \u201cWood.\u201d This has not been a prominent part of Swift\u2019s other writing and aligns more with Sabrina Carpenter\u2019s explicit metaphors. Furthermore, Swifties from the \u201cFolklore\u201d era may be disappointed by the lack of philosophic depth in the writing, as \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl\u201d has far simpler language. This isn\u2019t an innate problem, as grandiloquence is antithetical to pop songs, as proven by how \u201cThe Tortured Poets Department\u201d struggled to include catchy tunes. The writing in \u201cElizabeth Taylor\u201d and \u201cEldest Daughter\u201d is still more profound than that of typical popular music and even shows more depth than Swift\u2019s other pop albums. Collectively, the writing has some issues, especially for discerning listeners, but it is successful in writing memorable choruses and bridges and maintaining a good deal of the depth included in modern Taylor Swift albums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, there is an infinite amount of speculation regarding hidden meanings for the different tracks, from the perceived feuding with Charli XCX in \u201cActually Romantic\u201d to whether \u201cCANCELLED!\u201d was written about Brittney Mahomes or Blake Lively. What is clear is that Swift is devoted to her fianc\u00e9 Travis Kelce in a way she has not been with her previous lovers. She mentions a change of mind on the topic of marriage and wanting to potentially settle down and become a mother. This is an immense change of intent for the artist and certainly impacts the sound and writing of the album. Whatever future music Swift chooses to release will inevitably be a radical departure of subject matter, and a joyful side of Swift will be more visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the magic of the multi-platinum albums of her past may not have been captured in \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl,\u201d both in sound and writing, it will undoubtedly have great success. The showgirl has opened the curtain to her life, and the glitter hides most of the cracks in the window. .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through her Eras Tour, Taylor Swift has made it clear she is the ultimate American showgirl. However, a successful artist cannot rely on reputation or past successes, but must continue creating, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":2099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[221],"tags":[84,21,34],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-andrew-hutchinson","tag-entertainment","tag-issue-2025-10-10"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-16-the-price-of-showbiz-1-v2.jpg",1174,703,false],"thumbnail":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-16-the-price-of-showbiz-1-v2.jpg",150,90,false],"medium":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-16-the-price-of-showbiz-1-v2.jpg",300,180,false],"medium_large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-16-the-price-of-showbiz-1-v2.jpg",768,460,false],"large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-16-the-price-of-showbiz-1-v2.jpg",1024,613,false],"1536x1536":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-16-the-price-of-showbiz-1-v2.jpg",1174,703,false],"2048x2048":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-16-the-price-of-showbiz-1-v2.jpg",1174,703,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Ian Schartner","author_link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/author\/schartnerij23\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Through her Eras Tour, Taylor Swift has made it clear she is the ultimate American showgirl. However, a successful artist cannot rely on reputation or past successes, but must continue creating, and","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2219,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/2219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}