The show(girl) must go on! If your router’s been down for 48 hours, let me be the first to share that tortured poet Taylor Swift has announced her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, coming out in October. On the back of a 21-month, billion-dollar Eras Tour and her first-ever podcast interview, the album is promised to be a “rapid-fire,” “upbeat” miscellany that also includes a cover of George Michael’s “Father Figure.”
TLOAS has been teased with a theatrical, behind-the-Broadway-curtain shoot, our showgirl found offstage—befeathered, boa-ed, and bejeweled bralette-ed—after her audience has filed out into the night. In the weeks before release, we can only guess at the type of showgirl Taylor will be—though it is difficult, without lyrical clues, not to draw a through line from this showgirl to Cristal “You are a whore, darlin’” Conners in the just-grotty-enough camp classic Showgirls; or Pamela The Last Showgirl Anderson.
Of course, there’s a certain gloss to Swift’s afterhours showgirl-ism, Taylor’s version leaning into sumptuous pink ostrich and vintage cabaret opulence over store-bought “Ver-sayce.” And as Swifite sleuths decode the album teaser’s orange hues, and the Internet ironically memes showgirls eternal—shoutout to Samantha Jones, Alison Hammond, and the long-suffering songstress Marnie from Girls—there’s an ebbing sense of film noir, of bias-cut diamond desire, of silver-screen sexuality.
For about as long as she’s been working, part of Taylor’s appeal has been that unlike so many modern popstars—and no shade to them—she doesn’t sell sexual availability or rudimentary male-gazing titillation. Taylor Swift is a hot comrade, a buxom BFF, a girls’ girl rather than an adversary, and despite her billionaire lifestyle (the PJ milage!), she’s more personably relatable than materially aspirational. Where the album art lightly evokes erotic thrillers and the illicit, shadowy thrill of a dingy cabaret, it manages to also remain true to Taylor’s brand of sexual inexplicitness: it’s sensual but not graphic; sexy, but in a safe way. (The feature from Sabrina Carpenter—the reigning queen of cartoonish carnality—on the album’s title song feels, in a word, perfect.)
There is, of course, something to be said about girls and being on show. To be a woman is to perform—to have your visage assessed as it moves though the world—and to calibrate what’s transmitted with what’s recieved. The Life of a Showgirl is bound to tackle what it is to be perceived—from Taylor’s klieg-lit perspective, sure, but also one that will inevitably strike a more universal chord. Swift is a professional performer, observed by millions on the world’s biggest stages—but don’t we all stage performances of self, putting on our own little shows? Taylor Swift may be the one in the rhinestone bralette, but aren’t we all showgirls at heart?
