Feminist, or anti-Feminist? Activist or shameful bystander? Talented and unique or a dime-a-dozen? As Taylor Swift steadily rose to fame throughout the past decade, she garnered extensive debate and earned herself millions of die-hard fans and fervent haters. She also gained a reputation (no pun intended) for taking inspiration from her love life for her music. As such, the ins and outs of Swift’s relationships are subject to the public’s intense scrutiny. The fact that her most recent album was created by Swift-in-a-committed-relationship and not Swift-post-breakup has, for me and countless others, sparked a question: How does an artist known for their poignant heartbreak anthems write about things they aren’t experiencing? In Swift’s case, she appears to look to other inspirations, which range anywhere from literature to the state of the world. I wanted to explore these ideas by analyzing Swift’s (sometimes) poignant lyricism and providing my take on five of the tracks from her latest album, The Life of a Show Girl (TLOAS).
Fate of Ophelia–Track 1
Ophelia’s death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is widely regarded as one of the most tragic ever written. Driven mad by grief for her father, who was killed by the man for whom she possessed an unrequited love, Ophelia, who had consistently been depicted as exceptionally singular in her devotion, drowns. While it’s debated whether her death is an accident (potentially a result of her madness) or a purposeful suicide, most agree that her mistreatment and bad luck throughout the play contribute to a bitter end to a bitter time in her life. When I saw The Fate of Ophelia at the top of the TLOAS track list, I expected a slow, cry-able, balladlike song reminiscent of Taylor’s folklore/evermore days. I imagined lyrics about the pressures faced by women in society and the pain of wanting someone you can’t have. However, the song can only be described as, well, a bop. I can criticize the lyrics all I want, but no one can deny that it’s catchy. I’m clearly not the only one who thinks so, as The Fate of Ophelia has become the most popular song Taylor’s put out in a while, surpassing its peers on The Life of a Showgirl.
Is The Fate of Ophelia about Ophelia at all? Yes, but not in the narrative way one might think. Harper’s Bazaar points out that the cover art for TLOAS depicts Taylor engulfed in a bathtub, staring out at the viewer. This depiction is strikingly similar to the way in which Ophelia is typically shown in artwork. In The Fate of Ophelia, Taylor is in first person. She IS Ophelia, and her fate has been modified to be much less tragic–and more modernly told. Taylor creates a satisfying contrast between her Shakespearean source material and modern pop song from its very first verse.
Words like megaphone and pyro are used alongside phrases like “legend has it”, indicating this song is a new twist on an old story. She later mentioned she could’ve “drowned in the melancholy” if she hadn’t been saved from being “drowning and deceived”. While its reference is slightly on the nose, The Fate of Ophelia essentially poses: What if the unrequited love that contributed to Ophelia’s journey towards madness was…requited? If you ask me, that’s not exactly a groundbreaking concept. The song is fun to listen to and even dance to, but what it’s not is unique or, at least to me, emotionally impactful. The Fate of Ophelia kicks off what seems to be the theme of this album: Things were terrible until…something happened. Now, things are great!
Opalite–Track 3
The Life of A Showgirl, like all of Swift’s work, seems to appeal to as large an audience as it possibly can. However, no one can deny that die-hard Swifties see the 12 tracks and their lyrics differently than your average listener. Taylor makes her “easter-egg” nods to previous songs uncharacteristically blatant in Opalite. In doing so, she tells a larger story about how her lyricism and its inspirations have changed throughout her time in the music industry.
This is a likely reference to Swift’s hit song “Bad Blood”, in which she sings “You live like that, you live with ghosts” in reference to holding grudges. In Opalite’s chorus, she sings:
“But now the sky is opalite” reflects a similar sky-related sentiment from Taylor’s Midnights song, Maroon, where she sings that the sky was “so scarlet it was maroon”. Maroon is about someone’s previous relationship and the significance that such complex, deep love had in their past. By creating an image of Maroon turning into Opalite, Taylor conveys a sort of “new dawn”. She is no longer mourning lost relationships but is instead overjoyed with the positivity and simplicity of her new one.
The song’s verses discuss her past songwriting very openly. She sings that she “had a bad habit of missing lovers past”. I was surprised to hear the woman who built her career on writing songs with lyrics raw enough to bring people to tears, suddenly call the emotions that inspired these works “bad”. While someone staying hung up on their ex forever may not be seen as a positive thing, the uniqueness of Taylor Swift lied in her ability to feel unapologetically and empower others to do the same through her music. If this earned her a reputation for only singing breakup songs (however misogynistic and inaccurate it is), it’s one that I would’ve liked to see her wear as a badge of honor, not try and bury it in her past.
Eldest Daughter–Track 5
I’ll get it out of the way before even discussing what I think of the song.
I wish I had a fresh opinion on that line, but I unfortunately didn’t like it any more than everyone else all over my For You page did. The fact that this came from the same woman who once wrote she’d “feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe” (Last Kiss) seems to have shocked both Swifties and casual listeners. Eldest Daughter is track five on TLOAS, a place usually reserved for Swift’s most soul-crushing tunes. Examples include folklore’s my tears ricochet and, one of my personal favorites, The Archer from Lover. If it was aiming to approach the bar of sheer listenability set by previous track fives, Eldest Daughter fails spectacularly for its lyrics’ grating quality. However, art isn’t judged simply by what people (including someone writing a review) think of it. Taylor’s usage of social media buzzwords throughout the song, “trolling”, “hot take”, “savage”, while not necessarily the most palatable in juxtaposition with the acoustic guitar, do make a statement. She’s communicating the erosion of sensitization that comes with the dawn of the new age of media. In her second verse, she sings that she wasn’t being honest when she said “I don’t believe in marriage”. Swift continues the theme of wholesome dreams for the future in her bridge, singing:
Swift communicates her dissatisfaction with the way social media seems to have robbed people of traditional experiences and youthful innocence. “Eldest Daughter” represents the act of presenting as cooler or tougher than one is or wants to be, similar to how eldest siblings often try to present a controlled persona or “dress(ed) up as wolves” in front of their siblings (and, in many cases, the world).
Would I listen to Eldest Daughter of my own free will? No. However, I can’t deny that the message it sends is delivered perfectly. I don’t think I’m supposed to like it. But maybe that’s the point?
CANCELLED!–Track 10
CANCELLED! is the second song on this album that employs social media slang in a manner that irks people, which I think is by design. However, unlike in Oldest Daughter, Swift makes it abundantly clear that her use of such terminology on this song is overtly sarcastic. In the singers own words, CANCELLED! is about how through the trials everyone seems to face about being cancelled or even just disliked, people can “become wiser for it and you can become sharper” (Cubit 25).
When I first heard this song, I was in stark disagreement with the anti-cancelling message of the lyrics. In many cases, I consider examples of supposedly “big, bad cancel culture” to be important callouts of harmful rhetoric peddled by people with influential platforms. However, based on her interview about the song, Taylor didn’t write CANCELLED! ,about politically motivated unfollowing or boycotts. Instead, the song is more about the intense scrutiny exerted on the lives of people in a public spotlight. This goes twofold for women, and she even addresses the gendered expectations of the public and the media, singing:
Her key refrain throughout the song is that her true friends are those who have “matching scars”. AKA those who have been “cancelled” or unfairly criticized as a byproduct of their life in the public eye. Privacy is something that a lot of us take for granted, and while she is far from the first to do it, I admire Swift for calling out the unfairly high expectations often imposed on women in pop culture.
The Life of a Showgirl–Track 12
I’ve heard this song a million times. In fact, I heard this song before the album even came out. In fairness, I don’t mean this exact song. I hadn’t heard Taylor feature Sabrina Carpenter and sing about someone who’s “sweeter than a peach”, but the song about the pains of fame and stardom has been present on almost every single one of Swift’s albums. On The Tortured Poets Department, it was I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, reflecting on performing despite personal hardship. On Evermore there was Dorthea, lamenting the loss of a once-intimate friendship to the inescapable throes of fame and fortune. We hear it again in The Lucky One, from Red, in which Taylor sings about the experience in the first person. On The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor tells this story from both 3rd and 1st person. The song begins telling the story of Kitty, a “showgirl” herself who shares with the song’s singer:
Later, the song switches into first person. Taylor sings about her own journey and how she’s been hardened by fame. It’s turned her cold-blooded and wary of rejection after all her experience being used and discarded when she lost her novelty.
Like many of the songs on The Life of a Showgirl, there was nothing wrong with the title track…but there was nothing right with it either. The lyrics don’t feel nearly as unique or engaging as Swift’s past tracks. However, my favorite thing about this song is Swift’s collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter. In an industry that too often tries to pit successful female musicians against one another for no reason other than to diminish their power and public perception, I was excited to see two of the biggest (female) names in pop music right now collaborating on such a project.
If I had to group all the songs on this album into two categories, they would easily be Songs About How Life Is Better Than It Used To Be and Songs About How Fame Has Changed Taylor Swift. While most songs on The Life of a Showgirl weren’t outright bad or unlistenable, I oftentimes felt like I was hearing the same song on repeat (lyrically), especially when listening to The Fate of Ophelia, Opalite, and Eldest Daughter. The Life of a Showgirl and CANCELLED! focus less on Swift’s romantic life than the aforementioned songs and make statements about the negative consequences of fame, but again, they felt repeated. While I heard a lot of fun, catchy beats on this album, I missed the emotional, unique lyricism I’ve come to expect from Taylor Swift. That being said, I greatly respect the impact she has had and continues to have on the music industry and hope to see more work from her in the future.
Sources:
A Full Breakdown of Taylor Swift’s Song “The Fate of Ophelia”
The Meaning Behind Taylor Swift’s Track 5 Songs | TIME
Taylor Swift’s ‘Opalite’ Lyrics, Explained
Taylor Swift – Eldest Daughter Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
Is TLOAS ‘Eldest Daughter’ as Bad as People Make It Seem?
Who Taylor Swift’s ‘Cancelled’ Lyrics Are About
Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
Images:
Taylor Swift Has Officially Set A Release Date For ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’
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