*fries flung everywhere* "Different PLACES!" -- Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl

Due later this year, more soon, etc. etc.

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/taylor-swift-announces-album-the-life-of-a-showgirl-1236487135/

https://i.imgur.com/b6CQLfH.png

1. The Fate of Ophelia
2. Elizabeth Taylor
3. Opalite
4. Father Figure
5. Eldest(?) Daughter
6. Ruin the Friendship
7. Actually Romantic
8. Wi$h Li$t
9. Wood
10. CANCELLED!
11. Honey
12. The Life of a Showgirl

this is the apparently leaked tracklist

looks like a redditor might have gotten their wish from 2 years ago?

Anyone think an Ophelia (Hamlet) related Taylor Swift song would be a great idea?

Rhyming "Ophelia" with "I feel ya" would be a great rhyme, especially with the thematic similarities between this character and some experiences seen in Taylor Swift songs

Found that because i could've sworn TS already had a song about Ophelia. Guess it was inevitable.

Looking forward to the late-period Swift album where she's "just like Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf."

Those titles sound like they were created by an LLM trained on Taylor Swift songs.

apparently this marks her return to max martin and shellback as collaborators. *struggles to be optimistic* idk maybe it'll be good?

maybe that means this one will have some melodies

pre-covers?

someone please explain *fries flung everywhere*

someone please explain *fries flung everywhere*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikTo9F5wHAs

Eldest(?) Daughter

I really hope this is the title

tracklist reads like a Lana Del Rey fan-fic

pre-covers?

We've never repeated an artist, but I admit the temptation. (Then again after the effort that went into One More Tune I almost want to give things a little space first.)

Just release the last one again and change the track titles.

Roffle.

There's probably a 50/50 chance "Wood" was written after watching "Ed Wood"

Opalite- another installment in the shiny, sparkly things series?

There's probably a 50/50 chance "Wood" was written after watching "Ed Wood"

A tribute to late singer of Mother Love Bone

or an answer song to "Would?"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/The_Life_of_a_Showgirl_-_Taylor_Swift_album_artwork.png

Plus alternates:
https://preview.redd.it/taylor-swift-has-unveiled-alternate-covers-for-the-life-of-v0-bnytode6nvif1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=520ec5de82701203d009f5ca4c7175b2d6ce897e

https://preview.redd.it/taylor-swift-has-unveiled-alternate-covers-for-the-life-of-v0-yfesgbl6nvif1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=75d062cb17f1daa33f1a32a05c68b33753c2f202

https://preview.redd.it/taylor-swift-has-unveiled-alternate-covers-for-the-life-of-v0-7xl2d1r6nvif1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=14434c90c065e17a2c4f0f68221da0ddec4b7a3a

On the podcast, Swift explained, “This represents the end of my night. So when I’m on tour, I have the same day every single day. ... And my day ends with me in a bathtub, not usually in a bedazzled dress.”

She continued, “I wanted to sort of like glamorize all the different aspects of how that tour felt. And that’s how that felt to like be at the end of the night when all this has gone down. You won’t be able to get to bed till four in the morning after this. But you had to jump through 50 million hoops in this obstacle course that is your show. And you did it. You got two more in a row. But you did it tonight.

“And the reason I wanted to have sort of like an offstage moment as the main album cover is because this album isn’t really about what happened to me on stage. It’s about what I was going through offstage. So I didn’t want to have like the lights are bright, I’m on the stage is the main album cover. It’s just this. This, to me, tells more of what the actual content, lyrically, of the album are.”

graphic design is my passion

lol

every alternate cover is better than the standard one

I wish there was a fifth one with her just sitting on the couch in her jammies watching TV.

*updates tealandorange.xls*

apparently this marks her return to max martin and shellback as collaborators. *struggles to be optimistic* idk maybe it'll be good?

― ivy., Tuesday, August 12, 2025 9:48 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Weren't we all complaining about Antonoff six months ago? Would be nice for her to go a different direction entirely, but I won't be mad if this sounds anything like Reputation.

i for one was not complaining about antonoff

i mean i do love reputation, it's just that her martin/shellback era coincides with her worst lyricism, and i think (to the staggered disbelief of many ppl here) the lyrics were one of ttpd's major strengths, particularly the "observing myself/my fame through a hall of mirrors" quality of "clara bow"

TTPD is the only Swift album I haven't played since the week after its release, so I'm looking forward to this.

i do love the recurring phenomenon of reading a leaked taylor swift tracklist and thinking "these are the worst song titles i've ever seen" and they're all real

I think these are going to be love songs written about her Masters.

Was hoping for a Fifteen sequel called Thirty-Five about how she went ahead and conquered the world and then got around to dating the boy on the football team.

I'm dreading hearing a song titled "CANCELLED!" for some reason

for some reason?

i appreciate her hitting pause on the dynamic she created where each release is her backing up a cement truck and burying the listener in a deluge of music. i barely gave TTPD a real listen because i just became alienated by the sheer amount of music she has released in the last five years, i lost my ability to have an entry point to her as a person and celebrity and thus to her music. she became more of a cult leader to me than an artist, so the framing of "these are 12 pop songs and there is nothing else" is like letting air into a stifling hot room, personally speaking

however, max martin isn't a producer who has ever helmed a great (or even good?) front to back album. just not his thing. ariana grande just did this and made her worst album, just a completely bland vision for what a break up album should be. so that aspect of it i'm like, idk girl. reputation has some stinkers that are somewhat buoyed by antonoff's contributions (tho some of his also stink... ok who is the common denominator... wait...)

i appreciate her hitting pause on the dynamic she created where each release is her backing up a cement truck and burying the listener in a deluge of music

girl, it's not even out yet, who knows what bonus tracks we're getting

midnights was 13 tracks 44 minutes!!! just a recent example

we're the old romantics

I'm dreading hearing a song titled "CANCELLED!" for some reason

It'll just be a skit with an old Scooter Braun voicemail.

girl, it's not even out yet, who knows what bonus tracks we're getting

― ivy., Thursday, August 14, 2025 12:04 PM (seven minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

midnights was 13 tracks 44 minutes!!! just a recent example

― ivy., Thursday, August 14, 2025 12:07 PM (five minutes ago)

am i hallucinating that she said there would be no bonus tracks? i thought she said that on the podcast (which i did not listen to). midnights has (at least?) three different deluxe editions w/ bonus tracks totaling like 25+ originals, so if that happens w/ this one then feel free to strike my statement from the record

There will be no bonus tracks because she'll release two more records next year.

And then she'll tour with King Gizzard.

It seems unlikely she's not going release different versions using all of those alternate album covers

oh yeah i did not listen to that podcast either. and won't be

xxxpost

"This new album is called 'Mornings of a Black Rose.' It's about how I wake up and eat breakfast and then get my make-up done."

It seems unlikely she's not going release different versions using all of those alternate album covers

― New Jack Cutie (President Keyes), Thursday, August 14, 2025 12:44 PM (thirty-seven seconds ago)

well, she's already selling "limited edition deluxe CDs" of each different cover but if you go on her store and look what the deluxe CDs contain, it's a bunch of extra musical shit but says nothing about new or extra tracks

the quote that i'm referencing is this. it seems pretty definitive but maybe there will be some rug pull, idk

“There’s no other songs coming,” she emphasized. “This is 12. There’s not a 13th … there’s not other songs coming. This is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time.”

can a wedding be a New Jersey?

lol

I don't know, I'm no fan, but she is clearly doing plenty of things "right" (for whatever she is trying to do). I think a lot of her act and actions are kinda lame and tacky, and I really wish she had an editor, and her brief foray into more "mature" chamber pop showed that it suited her well, which made her lazy turn back to Max Martin stuff a little disappointing, but it's not for me. And I'm not going to second guess her at this point. In fact, the first time she came close to a heel turn, on Reputation, people have come around to that being one of her best albums and tours.

I'm honestly shocked she didn't drop a bespoke mix album or EP as a wedding favor.

xpost In a sense

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Housewives_of_New_Jersey

to me it's just an ill-timed spectacle. in a time where her fans were already paying astronomical sums to see her tour, basic cost of living issues with most americans, an oligarch running the country, they decided to rent out maybe the most famous sports stadium in the country the day before the 250th 4th of July for a massive wedding with primarily the rich and famous. and they're certainly wealthy enough and allowed to make that call! but it's about the worst taking of the country's temperature outside of whatever dumb stuff our government keeps doing.

but but but they donated millions of dollars to charity or whatever. like a carbon offset for billionaires.

I guess I just don't understand why you rent an arena that can hold 20,000 people and then only invite 1000.

― wipes chooser (unperson), Sunday, July 5, 2026 3:20 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm assuming the wedding was not held in *the seats* of MSG but on the floor? Which would not, in fact, hold 20,000 people?

I can only imagine the logistical and security nightmare of trying to plan and execute an event of this nature. I seriously doubt anyone's dream wedding location is MSG, and I just assumed doing it there was a matter of practicality. Sure, they could have had a small, private ceremony in the south of France or a private island or whatever. I had over 200 people at my wedding and I'm an absolute nobody, so we had our reception at a fucking golf course -- the last place I'd have ever imagined the most important day of my life taking place. Negotiating with family members about who would be invited and who wouldn't was one of the absolute worst aspects of the affair. All that to say I guess I extend her a wide degree of grace in interpreting the motivations of the venue choice, guest list, etc. It's her wedding, not yours. Let her have her day.

the fact that there are no pictures (right?) might explain the choice.

It's premature to say this is the end of Taylor Swift's career or the beginning of an ebb, but then I don't follow fan chatter on social media.

corny taste has always been a badge of honor for her, in her conception of herself as the girl on the bleachers watching the cheer captain, that she was a bashful nerd in sneakers was inextricable from the idea that her tastes were kind of old fashioned. remember that on "begin again" she tells a story of a refreshing romance, meeting a prince charming figure who pulls out a chair for her on a first date and who makes her swoon by noting that he's never met a girl who owns as many james taylor records as he does. so like, having old fashioned corny taste was at one point treated as a secret code to unlock her heart. so i don't think that can ever be disentangled from her music, celebrity etc

i think what made her music thrilling in a lot of cases was the way in which that corniness buckled under the sheer power of her songcraft -- on fearless she chooses to honor colbie caillat and that kind of dentist waiting room adult contemporary muzak but does it w/ a song in "breathe" that is just simply far better and more tasteful than music of that ilk. the max martin EDM experimentations on 'red' already felt a bit late and unimaginative at the time and yet "i knew you were trouble" hits as hard as the best zedd songs, even on 'reputation' she's dipping back into that EDM pop bag 5+ years after the fact but songs like "don't blame me" are still majorly compelling in spite of themselves

at a certain point the balance of it all started to get really out of wack but i think you can go back to that very early music and see the threads of why a wedding would really heighten all of her worst impulses, it's all the same ball of yarn

" "music discussion" "

I'm just glad the wedding didn't end up like Swan and Phoenix at the Paradise

we're having a Madonna revival, a reminder of another person with quite silly personal tastes.

madonna is way more fun though, taylor would never put out an american life or madame x

― ufo, Tuesday, 7 July 2026 13:58 (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

when madonna gets silly she gets really silly and that's ultimately a strength

― ufo, Tuesday, 7 July 2026 13:58 (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This looks kinda true-ish from a distance but it doesn't really scan for me.

Madonna getting "really silly" is a function of what you could call her "post-songwriting" era.

When "American Life" (the song) came out it seemed like the furthest Madonna had gone in liberating herself from the constraints of "good songwriting" (the album though was much more traditional and comparatively strong in the songwriting department, at least compared to everything since - people's notion of that album in their heads doesn't really accord with the experience of properly listening to it), even further (though not worse) than the awful "Nobody's Perfect" (Music's worst song and its only true dud) - but it would sound pretty much like a fully fledged song in the context of Madame X or Confessions II. And I don't think it goes any further than Reputation - "Look What You Made Me Do" is broadly equivalent in fact.

Taylor has never done anything as insane as "God Control", sure. As disappointed as I was by her last album, and as much as I dislike her current vibes, I'm not ready to count that as a point against her. And for Taylor to seek to fully liberate herself from even the concept "good songwriting" (which I accept her last album mostly honoured in the breach) in that way would be to trash something so fundamental to her sense of self as an artist that I'm not sure what would be left.

"look what you made me do" is the closest taylor's gotten to endearingly silly yeah, the only time i've truly wondered what on earth she was doing. i'd be fonder of reputation if it was more like that - instead there's some decent tunes (and some not so decent ones) buried in some terribly clunky arrangements but it's not so clunky that it loops back around to being compelling

of course madonna has bad albums that are just kinda bland and uninteresting too though and the silliness doesn't have much to do with what makes most of her best work shine either

a more serious relative strength is that madonna consistently has better and more interesting taste in collaborators

i think she should do an album of pavement covers

this thread title makes me think of "bob dylan's 110th dream", after he orders the crepe suzette

tackiness of the actual wedding aside, I thought it was pretty much agreed among normal people that shutting down the streets around MSG for a private wedding attended by a select few millionaires was a Bad Thing but apparently not, got into a short argument with a Swiftie colleague during post-work drinks, she compared it to the World Cup shutting down the streets around the stadium here, I was about to argue that, while also bad, it's a tiny bit more justifiable just considering more than 1000 people will attend it, anyway didn't get to make the argument as other colleagues shut us down as we were getting heated

anyway, Swifties are on another planet etc.

one is so a select few piece of shit millionaires can get to MSG in peace while the other shutdown is so the streets don't get too congested by everyone making their way to the World Cup stadium at once alskfdasldfkjlasfjlsafjdf the person I was arguing with is a fucking lawyer too, you don't have to be too smart to go to law school huh

Given it is literally lawyers’ jobs to come up with justifications for people’s actions no matter how ridiculous and indefensible, they’re actually more susceptible to this kind of thing than most

Basically the breakdown I saw/read was that Swift fans were fully in support of the MSG nonsense, and everyone else (esp. drivers) was loudly against it. Which I assume is true for literally anything that shuts down the streets in NYC, except maybe the Ghostbusters. And even they had their detractors.

A huge difference between TS and Madonna is that Madonna was actively pushing buttons and pushing boundaries, ours and her own. She never felt like she was trying to game the system, or break records, or embrace a perpetually coy/victorious promotional cycle (a factor of our social media/streaming era), she was trying to be confrontational, and like Prince was too confrontational to be truly calculating, often at her own expense. I feel like Madonna wasn't really able to hit an over-exposure breaking point until she went too far and literally over-exposed herself.

Swift, though, every last thing she does (or doesn't do) seems to be for A Reason, from her music on up. Even renting out MSG, that's the ultimate symbolic victory. "I am so popular and so rich, I can sell out MSG myself." When they shut down Disney for Michael Jackson or Tom Cruise or whoever, it seems as much for the sake of safety or logistics, and at least in the case of the former there was more than a hint of sadness to it, someone so famous they were forced to isolate in the Happiest Place On Earth. But TS? She'd no doubt cryptically post a date on social media, allude to Disney princesses, and then announce she's rented Disney out for her and 1000 of her best friends to celebrate being rich. Which is, yeah, something your typical billionaire asshole would do. As they say, A Bad Look.

Swift increasingly reminds me of Garth Brooks. A talented songwriter with a MOR personality, very concerned with their place in the pantheon of performers.

That’s not the worst thing in the world and it’s true of a lot of acts, but it rubs against their image. Garth seems like a nice enough guy but then he keeps repackaging his music to beat the Beatles or whatever.

let me point out that two days ago, 26 years after ILM was founded and then quickly became a nest of poptimism, someone said "she isn't involved in the particulars of her music, her collaborators do the heavy lifting" and nobody said shit.

Doesn't "classic poptimism" privilege "industrial production of music" (like Motown, etc.) over individual genius, though? "Vulgar poptimism" became rockism with different people.

In Taylor's case, she is often posited as an auteur genius who is sometimes hampered by her collaborators (mostly Antonoff.)

also, you guys seem so scarred by the trump era, and perhaps the reality of all of american and global life prior, that when a normie blonde woman with indeed very basic taste turns out to be extremely talented (and with touches of idiosyncracy; the Tortured Poets record, which I don't like, has lots of odd shit that is the result of no one being able to say "no, that's going to suck" to her), she's okay, but when she does a basic thing like getting railed by and then married to a football dude, you can't handle it. Would you rather she marry Jute Gyte?

a more detailed way to put 'swift doesn't really seem to care about her arrangements' is 'swift doesn't seem to be very discerning at all with her arrangements because the quality control is all over the place and she often has terrible taste'

but i thought that was pretty clear from the context idk

Her taste reminds me of that of 70s musicians in the 80s who just wanted to keep up with the trends and stay popular.

like she's talked about how her creative process these days (though this was a few albums ago now so maybe this has changed again) is mostly writing to instrumentals that her collaborators bring her and i don't think she has any real taste in choosing what to write to

Would you rather she marry Jute Gyte?

― veronica moser, Thursday, July 9, 2026 9:41 AM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

at this point i think this is the only solution

What happened to Liz Rose? She was a formative collaborator, but given the pedigree doesn't seem to be up to much.

xp or at least collaborate

i think the last time one of her songs was tied to a chord progression she wrote herself was the title track of "lover"?

Be pretty funny if she honeymooned in MSG, too.

i think the last time one of her songs was tied to a chord progression she wrote herself was the title track of "lover"?

― ivy., Thursday, July 9, 2026 10:34 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Is this true?

as true as you want it to be, friend.

just my conjecture but my impression is that most of the production since has been given to her wholesale by antonoff, dessner etc.

even on reputation she wasn't entirely ceding this to her collaborators, there's a video of her coming up with the progression for "king of my heart" iirc, but it shifted really significantly on lover and thereafter

What happened to Liz Rose? She was a formative collaborator, but given the pedigree doesn't seem to be up to much.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, July 9, 2026 10:17 AM (forty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

She is 68 and iirc stopped collaborating with Swift after her first couple of albums.

just my conjecture but my impression is that most of the production since has been given to her wholesale by antonoff, dessner etc.

― ivy., Thursday, July 9, 2026 11:10 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The Folkmore albums were 100% Dessner writing the baseline track but I didn't really think that was how Antonoff and Swift operated.

You think Antonoff wrote the "Anti-Hero" chord progression? It's the same four chords she's used over and over on everything from "Love Story" to "Blank Space".

What's the Angus Young quote? "I'm sick to death of talking about how we've released 11 identical albums. In fact, we have released 12 completely identical albums."

i could be wrong about her process with antonoff!

nah just keep making stuff up. you're definitely a real journalist.

hey, austin, please stop posting out of nowhere hostilities here, i don’t think i’m doing anything that merits it

nah just keep making stuff up. you're definitely a real journalist.

― austinato (Austin), Thursday, July 9, 2026

Everyone needs masturbatory fantasies, even those who carpetbomb threads.

JUST IN: Piles of garbage from Taylor Swift’s wedding have sold out, after being listed for $25/bag. pic.twitter.com/DlcgNRjCU9

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) July 10, 2026

Just realized the other day that "Tim McGraw" was released 20 years ago, in June 2006. 20 years of Taylor Swift! Seems like we should do a poll one of these days. Also, "Tim McGraw" remains perfect — what a way to introduce yourself.

I’m not sure what it means that an artist who introduced herself to the world with a song that seemed preternaturally self-aware most recently released an album so astonishingly lacking in any real self—awareness.

too much fame and money turns people into weirdos basically