The Life of a Showgirl Isn’t

I have never been a fan, but I gotta say that Taylor Swift’s new album is just terrible. I kept saying, “Ah, come on!” while listening.

Idioms, clichés, overused phrases, no original ideas, expository, feels rushed. I couldn’t connect the songs to the theme. Her pop, white rapper song, “Wood,” is raunchy but in a creepy, cringy, prescriptive, dishonest, and homogenized way. Will the same mothers and daughters chanting at her last concert be there for this one?

I suppose in the music industry world of today, one redeeming value of The Life of a Showgirl is that an album this desperate to please her mother, her boyfriend and his family, and to lecture others about how she’s found the way, has opened the possibility of retribution by Beyoncé and Cardi B, for example. (A satirical video of the suburbs where all three are neighbors came to mind. The possibilities are endless. I can’t imagine this album will do well at the award ceremonies, but I have been wrong before.)

Swift likes to diss, and well, no one that I know has said anything about Taylor’s career being driven by white people who either don’t know anything about great music, or would prefer to follow her around the country so they could be in her company and her fans because they look like them. Like the publishing world, I dislike it when more talented people are overlooked. I know for sure that Black and Brown artists are not treated fairly.