Switched on Pop - Taylor Swift’s Showgirl Sound: How to actually listen to the album

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Taylor Swift's twelfth album has sparked endless speculation about who each song is "really about," but that might be the wrong question entirely. The Life of a Showgirl isn’t biography, it’s polyphonic auto-fiction, where Swift writes from multiple character perspectives while blurring the lines between autobiography and theatrical performance. The album's "showgirl sound" traces from Shakespearean tragedy (Ophelia's drowning rewritten as salvation) through Golden Age Hollywood orchestration to contemporary pop production with Max Martin and Shellback. Unusual musical choices like the jarring five-measure phrase in "Fate of Ophelia" reinforce the album's central theme: the tension between public performance and private reality. By treating the album as a theatrical show rather than a celebrity tell-all, listeners can finally hear what Swift is actually saying… or can they? Vote for Switched On Pop in this year's Signal Awards! We're nominated for ⁠Best Music Podcast⁠ and ⁠Best Original Score/Music⁠, linked here. Thank you! Songs Discussed Taylor Swift "Love Story" Taylor Swift "Blank Space" Taylor Swift "The Fate of Ophelia" Taylor Swift "Elizabeth Taylor" Irving Berlin "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" Fred Astaire "Puttin' on the Ritz" Taylor Swift "Opalite" George Michael "Father Figure" Taylor Swift "Father Figure" Taylor Swift "Eldest Daughter" Taylor Swift "Tim McGraw" Taylor Swift "Ruined the Friendship" Weezer "Beverly Hills" Pixies "Where Is My Mind" Charli XCX "Sympathy Is a Knife" Charli XCX "Everything Is Romantic" Taylor Swift "Actually Romantic" Mean Girls "Meet the Plastics" Taylor Swift "Wi$h Li$t" Stevie Wonder "Superstition" The Jackson 5 "I Want You Back" Taylor Swift "Wood" Nirvana "Lithium" Nirvana "Something in the Way" Taylor Swift "Canceled" Taylor Swift "Honey" Taylor Swift feat. Sabrina Carpenter "Life of a Showgirl" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to the Switched-on-pop Swiftuation Room. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. We are currently at SwiftCon 12th. Taylor Swift has dropped her 12th album. Her greatest sales debut ever. 2.7 million copies on day one.

It's got 12 songs. Dirty dozen. They were announced on her boyfriend, now fiancé, football player, Travis Kelsey's New Heights podcast. The songs are about old flames, grudges, new love, and a healthy dose of literary references. It was made on the European leg of the ERAs tour back in the summer of 2024, along with her earlier collaborators Max Martin and Shelbach, who helped bring Taylor Swift into the world of pop, last working with her on the Reputation album in 2017.

And Taylor Swift said that my main goals were melodies that were so infectious that you're almost angry at it. And lyrics that are just as vivid, but crisp and focused and completely intentional. Every brand, influencer, fan, and non-fan has come in and commented on this album. So now the question is, can we add anything to the discourse? Well, if you like chordal analysis, obscure references to classical music and a healthy dose of conspiratorial melodic thinking, then yes, yes, we do have something to. add to this conversation. Okay, Swiftuation Room, convened. Okay. Let's start from the top, track one, her lead single, The Fate of Ophelia. Pause it. That was my plan. Just play us that opening drum fill one more time. That drum fill is an announcement. It is the Herald on the wall of

the castle. We have a new Taylor Swift album and we have a new sound. Okay, interesting. Hold on. I think this is a fake out. Yes, there's a little drum fill, your little heralding moment, but then you have these very pensive, quiet piano chords played by Shelbach, and it feels like we're going back, continuing through the quiet era of records that she's had, the sort of folklore, Evermore, the tortured poets department, it feels like we're going to stay in that domain from the first couple measures. Okay, fair enough. Then is it a bit of foreshadowing in that case, a la the kind that we might find in Shakespeare who's being referenced in this song. You know, the ghost at the feast, as it

were, to reference another Shakespeare play other than Hamlet, but yes. Okay, so you think the drum fill is saying, hey, I'm doing something new. It's got those dry, dead, sort of 70 sound. And then I think that the piano is this little fake out. Let's hear what happens next. Sike, it's pop music. It's a pop song. We have the Lindreau. We have the Lindreau. drumming in the background, the sound of 80s pop, Prince, Michael Jackson, and many Taylor Records. You have this big chorist poppy bass driving the entire thing along. And you have personal, revealing lyrics about her new love. She says, I heard you calling on the megaphone.

You want to see me all alone. Now, so much discourse on this record we're going to get into is about figuring out what song is about who. Indeed, yeah. But it sounds like from the very beginning, she's calling out Travis Kelsey, who called her out on his podcast when he went to try to meet her at the Aeros Tour. I was disappointed that she doesn't talk before or after her shows because she has to save her voice for the 44 songs that she sings. So I was a little butt hurt. I didn't get to hand her one of the bracelets I made for her. He called her out on his podcast, New Heights, later got set up, and they are now engaged to be married.

That is the leadoff. And in the legend of this song, Taylor is like, hey, if you never called me out like that, I would not be saved from my woes. She was drowning in her mullingale. Taylor Swift famously talks about all of her past loves and her music and has gone through many heartbreaks over 11 albums. And then there's the literary metaphor of this song, the fate of Ophelia, because as you know well, Charlie, as a Hamlet expert, Ophelia in the play. dies. Yes, there's the Shakespeare of it all. This is the second major Shakespeare revision that Taylor Swift has done. Of course, love story rewrites the narrative of Romeo and Juliet, where at the end, they don't die, they fall in love and I think is great. happily ever after, yeah. Yes. Hamlet is a tragedy in which Ophelia dies, maybe a quick refresher, if you haven't been in high school for a minute.

Prince Hamlet sees his father's ghosts, who asks him to avenge his death by the king's brother Claudius. Hamlet feigns madness to conceal his true intentions that he's going to murder Claudius. He stages a fake play within the play called The Mousetrap where he's going to catch Claudius's true intentions. One day thinking he is going to murder the hiding Claudius, he accidentally kills the father of Ophelia the object of his affection. She goes mad and dies of drowning. And then, of course, spoiler alert, a couple hundred years late, if you haven't paid attention. Everybody dies at the end of Hamlet, including the protagonist. And so in this song, we get a total about.

face of this narrative. Aphelia is saved. Their love is one for the ages. Now, this song, I think, is a lot like their engagement announcement. I don't know if you saw it, but Taylor Swift posts, your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married. That's pretty good. The English teacher, of course, being Taylor Swift, who loves poetry, literature.

Her lucky number is 13. Travis Kelsey, the football player slash gym teacher. His lucky number is 87. What do you get when you add 87 to 13, Nate? You get 100. Keep it 100. Oh, wow, you're deep in the numerology, Charles. She has confirmed it.

That is where she is getting her numbers. She confirmed to keep it 100. The numerology is real. That was her intent. And then, of course, she goes on to say that you pled allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes. Feels like we're in the middle of a stadium,

getting ready for a football game. This song is the marriage of the literature of Hamlet and her love of Shakespeare. She says that Shakespeare is not overrated in her film. She's a real fan and uniting it with, you know, Travis Kelsey, the football star. I think it might be worth getting to know Ophelia a little bit better.

After the famous to be or not to be seen in Hamlet, which he's contemplating life and death. Ophelia, the object of his affection, confronts him. He rejects her, and she has this Famous monologue. Get thee to a nunnery. Exactly. She begins,

Oh, what a noble mind here is our throne. Nate, will you play the rest of Ophelia for me? And I of ladies most deject and wretched that sucked the honey of his music vows. Ooh, music. Now see that noble and most sovereign reason like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh. That unmatched form and feature of bold. Blown youth blasted with ecstasy. Oh, woe is me.

To have seen what I have seen. See what I see. I'm waiting for your applause. Let's pipe in some. Some of the applause. Did that illuminate anything about the song for you, Charlie? Well, there are a few Easter eggs, the word honey, the musical vows, the passing of youth. Most importantly, I think all of the questions about appearances, because

this album, I think much like Hamlet, is about appearances of reality, ghosts of the past telling us what to do, feigning, playing different characters, maybe even diving into madness at times. And this is incredibly overt. The setup for this album has a cover image of Taylor and a showgirl outfit,

her head barely above water in the bath. This cover is a reference to a famous painting of a drowning Ophelia done by Sir John Everett Malay in 1851. It's supposed to reveal what happens at the end of the night of the Eros tour. What's happening backstage, a moment of Taylor to herself. She launched this album with an in-theater experience where you could watch the making of the music video, and she calls this art history for pop fans.

I love the idea of Hamlet as the skeleton key to unlock this album that really speaks to me. And I'm glad you had me read this soliloquy, Charles, because I'm looking at this couplet about sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh. And, you know, there's something a little out of tune in this song, Not in terms of like intonation or pitch, but the chords of the song are a little longer than they should be. The song has a five measure phrase in the verse, which is really unusual, kind of harsh and jangly. I hear you calling on the megaphone. You want to see me all alone.

Now it should go right back to the next chord. As legend has it, quite the pie you roll. but it doesn't do that, Charlie. It holds that last chord a little longer than it should. I hear you call in on the megaphone. You want to see me all alone. One, two, three, four. Oh, huh?

It's like drawn out. It's a little awkward, honestly. But I think it's intentionally that way. Because then when we get to the chorus, everything evens out into these nice four-bar phrases. So it's like that verse and pre-chorus is the harsh out of tune, jangly nature of Ophelia. And then the chorus is like her finding, you know, her savior, I guess. And everything kind of evens out and becomes right.

Okay. So I want to get into what this album is fundamentally about. Now, it has received very polarizing reactions. Yes. From the Rolling Stone perfect five-star review in which they say that it hits all the marks, to the Guardian's two stars, calling it dull and razzled dazzle. The primary response to the album

has been media outlets trying to figure out who is each song about. Yes. You can go to the New York Times where they will tell you how Taylor Swift fans are decoding the life of a showgirl. You can go to Entertainment Tonight where you can read about who is each song

about and of course the good old New York Post all of Taylor Swift's Easter eggs in every song from the Life of a Showgirl. I think in order to understand this album, we need to take Taylor at her word, or should we? It feels like kind of energetically how my life has felt, and this album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour. I would say it's everything that was going on behind the curtain.

So Taylor tells us that this is the album of what's happening behind the scenes after the era's tour. But she also says, I'm in the business of human emotion. And most importantly, what is the art of the Easter egg? The art of the Easter egg is that there's do's and don'ts, right? Like, I'm never going to plant an Easter egg that ties back to my personal life. It's always going to be towards music. So we're getting a backstage pass, but she's also not going to tie us back to her personal life,

that she's in the business of making songs that are about human emotion. And when we examine how she appears in public in the rare interviews, and public appearances that she makes, we realized that it's all part of the performance. When she gave the 2022 NYU commencement speech, it wasn't just a sincere send-off to the seniors. It was a mix of Easter eggs that would help launch her album Midnights. When we lose things, we gain things too.

And polishing it all up in the end. Breathe through. Breathe deep and breathe out. How do I give advice to this many people about their life choices? I won't. You're on your own now. But the cool news is you're on your own now. Wow.

For Taylor Swift, everything is a performance, even when she's not performing. Her literary references evoking Shakespeare tell us that this is not autobiography. Even from the way that she writes music, we know that it's not like a planned, journalistic, factual kind of song. Like, she tells us in this launch movie that she has concepts for songs saved on her phone that she can scroll through. They're like 20 minutes long of scrolling. That she grabs from those when she's trying to find something to write about. that she loves embracing characters and playing different roles. This is not biography.

I think the NPR music critic and powers put it really well in her review of the Torture Poets Department. This is auto fiction. Writing is a performance where, yes, the author is the narrator as the protagonist, but also that the story can be altered, reimagined, and completely invented, where facts are not nearly as important as truth that comes through emotion and sentiment. And Taylor doesn't only write about herself from her perspective. She also loves to write about other characters, which she does on Showgirl. In literature, there is this idea of polyphonic writing where you write from many voices.

This is Mikhail Bactin's theory of the problems of Dostoevsky's poetics, where many of the characters come together to tell the larger story, that is the dialogue of all these characters that come together to give you meaning. And so perhaps a bit of what she's doing is polyphonic auto fiction. Yes, polyphonic because this is a music podcast. You know, she's the teenager, she's the villain, she's the mirror, she's the lover, she's the showgirl. Sometimes she's other characters, Betty, James, Kitty, Alanaheim, Clara Bow, Dylan Thomas, Patty Smith, all these characters that appear in her songs. And I think that that tells us that we need to listen to this album a little bit differently than who is each song about. I think we need to treat this like a show. A showgirl show.

The showgirl was a fixture of 19th and 20th century Parisian music halls, became a standard of Las Vegas. Think about, you know, scantily clad, rhinestone choreographed dance. The showgirl sound, I think, is best captured by many of the works of Irving Berlin, like his 1919, a pretty girl. It's like a melody written, which became the theme song of the Ziegfield Follies, which was one of the first American institutions to really introduce the idea of the show. girl from Europe and like mainstream it for American audiences. So yeah. Thank you, Dr. Sloan. A pretty girl is like a melody that haunts you night and... Who's that, Ethel Merman? That is Ethel Merman. How did you know? Because I, because I live the life of a showgirl, man. What can I tell you? Okay, if you really live the life

of a showgirl. And now we're going to play one other classic showgirl song. What would it be? The other classic showgirl song from this era or something more recent? Give me a little hint. Let's go to 1929, a decade later. 1929, a decade later, the big showgirl song. Still Irving Berlin.

Another Irving Berlin? I don't know. Is it putting on the writs or no? Ding, ding, ding. Is it really? Your favorite cracker, the best hotel putting on the ritz. strings, orchestration, upright bass, and a lot of showmanship. And that's sung by Rudy Valley.

Am I right? No. It's Eddie Cantor. It's a young Bing Crosby. I don't know. Important Hollywood actor and singer and dancer. It's Fred Astaire. Duh.

It's Fred Astaire. Oh my God. That was humiliating. Okay. This is one of the densest episodes of our podcast we've ever done. And let me remind you, Charles, we've listened to exactly one song off this album. You know, her last album had like two hours of music. So here we just have 41 minutes and 12 tracks where one in, should we go through the rest?

I mean, yeah, it's interesting. I see what you mean. This is in some ways already more thematically satisfying than the last one, even though there was maybe a sort of loftier theme. This one feels a little tighter. And with my Ophelia showgirl primer that you've just given me, I'm excited to listen to the rest of the album through that lens. let's enter the rest of this new era of the life of a showgirl with track two Elizabeth Taylor Right, so let's get into the Elizabeth Taylor of it all Golden Hollywood era mega star whose art was often less important to the media than her scandalous relationships

She famously had violet eyes and Elizabeth Taylor though never having played a showgirl in a film did portray Cleopatra which inspired many of the costumes in Taylor's world rollout of this album. You have the New York versus Hollywood narrative. Once you get thrown out of Hollywood, maybe New York will accept you. Nate, you're always welcome back here whenever Hollywood is done with you. And I love just the old adage of show business. You're only as hot as your last hit baby. Yeah. She's had number ones, but she hasn't had a successful relationship. A lot going on in this course. When I think Elizabeth Taylor, I also think of her star turn in the film adaptation of the Edward Alby play who's afraid of Virginia Woolf with her then-husband,

Richard Burton, where they were, many people saw them sort of working out their own real-life relationship issues through the film itself. I feel like that might be something that Taylor relates to as well. You know, like how are you describing it, where does art end and your life begin blurring those lines to some degree? And then musically, I mean, this song continues a lot of the textures that we heard in Ophelia and marks this as a new world or perhaps a return to the world of 1989. The record that really blew her up

that she worked on primarily with Max and Shelbach. Yes, that announced her debut into the world of pop. We've got this propulsive, programmed beats. We have these rich synths. We have some kind of string section. I don't know whether it's an actual orchestra or some kind of synthetic strings, But there's a lot happening in this song.

It's very maximalist, which maybe is appropriate for one of the biggest stars of the silver screen. Yeah, this song definitely both harkens back to some of the pop qualities in 1989. It also continues the sounds of the fate of aphelia. I think the drum sounds are what are most consistent across this record. That dry, dead 1970s sound, many of the drums are actually loops by a, Jake Reed, who has a sample pack called Super Dead Drums. So they're performed by a real drummer,

but you or I could perform those same loops. No way. I've seen that guy on Instagram. His beats are sick to quote another Taylor Swift's sign. And then, on the other hand, there actually is a live orchestra playing in this track. Matias Byland

is a conductor and arranger and plays a bunch of instruments on the album. He previously worked on 1989. He is now back. This album is mostly Swedes because it was written and recorded in Sweden. And so we have tons of violins, flutes, clarinet, tenor, saxophone, alto flute, bass clarinet, all kinds of orchestral elements. And I think it comes through most clearly in the bridge. Harp Lasandos.

Very old Hollywood. Harkening to the days when every movie had a score with a massive symphony orchestra. Very cool. And hearkening back to the rich orchestrations of those Irving Berlin showgirl tracks that we heard earlier. There's a nice moment at the very end of the bridge. Up till now, we've been hearing this E minor chord over and over again. All my white diamonds. White diamonds, by the way, a perfume line that Liz Taylor had.

All my white diamonds and lovers are forever. So that's the E minor. Don't you ever end up any. There's an E major thing, but mine. I'm not exactly sure the value is there, but I'm definitely sure that's an E major chord, which is this nice little moment of suspense before we return to the final chorus,

bring us back to that A minor. Very nice. Very nice. I also realize that we have the All My White Diamonds and Lovers are forever, sort of a James Bond callback, yet another sort of classic Hollywood throwback sound, also a soundtrack that would have had, not just these rich orchestrations, but some of the electric guitar sounds

that are throughout the rest of this album. Okay, so I think that is the sound of the showgirl quality of this album. It's something which isn't in the foreground. It's something that happens in the bridges, in the background. This is primarily a Taylor Swift album with Max Martin and Shelbach. It is a contemporary pop record

which continues all of the lyrical, literary ideas that Taylor loves, the melodic math and melodies that we know from Taylor working with Max and Shelback, and of course the production sounds of things like 1989, but with this extra little something, the showgirlness that we get in the bridge of Elizabeth Taylor, let's see if we hear it through other parts of the record. Let's listen to the next track, Opelite. I love how this song begins. It starts on moored, just as she is in her relationships, Though the song is in the key of G, she starts on the four-core, the C. Goes to the five, it just keeps going.

No resolution. Of course that is, until we get to the chorus. We've got those dead drums. We've got that weird kind of surf guitar a la James Bond, and we have a chord progression, which is so throwback, right? we've got the resolution that we're looking for we begin on our home chord G

go down to the sixth go the two and then this nice five suss oh it's a classic pop 101 this is going to be the big single off of the record

I feel quite certain of that I think you're right it's a bop and there's some nice touches as well what happens after she sings I thought my house was haunted Charlie

I feel like it's instant classic. It's built around a very simple but nice metaphor of opalite. Opalite is man-made opal. Which is confirmed the birthstone of Travis Kelsey.

She compares. She compares with resignation. This is auto fiction, right? This is the thing where it's like she's pulling from her life, but also just building these classic throwback songs. She, of course, balances the opalite with the

contrast of the dark onyx night. This is a song about finding hope in a relationship. If that positive message of the chorus coinciding with this move towards the one chord, the tonic, the home chord, if that all feels a little too on the nose, I feel like there's some fun touches in this song that make it a little more intriguing and increase the levity. Like, what about this line? I thought my house was haunted. I used to live with ghosts. Can we hear that, Charles? There's some haunting rhythmic device that almost sounds like, you know, a ghost knocking at the door, rattling in the hallways.

Totally. When I first heard that, I was like, what is going on? Is there some glitch in this? No, it's obviously intentional. It's just this funny little haunted sound that pops up in the track. And it just, it's a little. Silly, but also keeps the track from being to Sackeren or something. Well, it's going to get a very theatrical.

I mean, maybe one throwback. I don't know if Taylor, Max, and Shelbach were listening to Irving Berlin, but do you recall the lead line of A Pretty Girl as a melody? A Pretty Girl is like a melody. That haunts you night and day. Wow. Deep. Just like the strain of a haunting refrain.

This might be a reach, but that showgirl theatrical sound that we heard in Elizabeth Taylor, that comes back in Opelight. And I can bring you... Oh. Come on, shake it up, baby now. Don't you sweat, baby. Yeah, it's very throwback. It's Beatlesy there. Some of the orchestration and these tuned bells that come in as well sound like the girl groups of Philist.

Specter era. You know, we're mixing our throwback references, but for Taylor Swift, if you've watched the video of the Fat of Ophelia, the idea of the showgirl is not just the one image of the sort of Vegas showgirl. It's the idea that there have been women asked to perform throughout the ages from Shakespeare and before all the way to today. And so I think certainly like the girl groups of the Motown era fit in there as well, and I think are an appropriate reference. that we're hearing at the end of Opelite. All right, Charles, we're picking up the pace. We're cruising through the various showgirls.

Where are we at now? Track four, I believe. Track four, father figure, which for Taylor, she said, came from a creative writing prompt about a story that was about power where a young ingenue has a mentor, and it's all about the relationship and how that can change over time. But who's going to, she says, outfox the other. She really is an English teacher. And she says that she really loves that she can relate to both characters.

Here's Father Figure. I'm hearing some of that perfect melodic math that she learned from her mentor, Max Martin. She calls Max one of her mentors in the New Heights podcast. But this song is not that kind of mentorship. This is a song of a mentor taking advantage of the younger mentee. And then that relationship sort of flipping around. And it's an inversion of another song because this song interpolate. George Michael's father figure.

Very light interpolation. Father figure has the same rhythmic cadence. Yes. It is the hook, but it, you know, George Michael's version of father figure is the good version of the father figure, not the sort of dark version that she is interpreting on her track, which, by the way, continues that showgirl sound. Once again, when you get to the bridge.

We shift from an electric base to an upright base, The orchestra comes in. We get these lush chorusing vocals that feels, again, very throwback to this sort of showgirl idea. The harp lasando's return. Yes. There's a harp. It's all very pretty girls like a melody all of a sudden. And there's a killer modulation.

Charles, I was really hoping we were going to get a modulation on this album. That's one of my favorite hallmarks of Taylor's songwriting, going back to the aforementioned love story, which ends with a modulation of the hash step just as this track does. And it's something I feel like we haven't heard as much from her lately on, you know, midnight. You have to earn a modulation, you know? And I think the song deserves the modulation because she's going from being the mentee to being the mentor. She becomes the father figure. And so there is an ascendance into this role of being the mentor. And so we need that modulation.

And one that sort of has a happy glean to it as well. It's a good payoff. This is a cool track, even if it makes me uncomfortable to hear say the word dick. There are a lot of cringy lyrics. And we're going to get into that right after the break. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different.

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Try O-D-O-D-4-Free at O-D-O-D-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-com Okay, so now the album, I think, takes a turn. I think that this showgirl musical sound, we don't hold on to it quite as tightly, but holding on to some of the Shakespearean literature that we talked about in the first half, we're going to visit old characters,

we're going to look at some ghosts, we're going to invite new people into the scene, we're going to get some drama. And it begins with the song, Eldist Daughter. Starts as a nice piano ballad. It's about humanizing the terrible culture of the internet. Everybody's so punk on the internet. Everyone's unbothered till they're not.

Every joke's just trolling in memes. Sad as it seems. Epathy is hot. Everybody's cut throat in the corner. Yeah, this piano feels like a new sound. it's sparse, it's acoustic. I feel like it's establishing a contradiction, right? This slow piano ballad, you expect maybe like non-specific lyrics about how great my love is,

but instead it's a discourse on internet culture. And we get all of this internet slang that really becomes apparent in the chorus. That's a sweet. sweet song about how I love you. I'm going to always be with you and all of the distraction of what happens on the internet's not going to bother me. Taylor in interviews for this rollout has talked about how she doesn't have the apps on her phone. She doesn't look at the comments. Perhaps that's why it does feel a little cringy when she goes into this internet slang. It doesn't feel natural to her. I think that that cringy quality is something that she leans into, that she knows that she

is this kind of awkward figure. She has played awkward a lot in her songs. And she's very comfortable saying, I'm not the cool girl. I'm just want to like settle down. I think the song achieves that. I agree. I think it's a bold choice to have that romantic of a melody line in the chorus. Da da da da da da da da.

Beautiful line on its own. Totally. Like gorgeous. And then the lyrics. Yeah, some of her best melodies. I'm not a bad bitch. You're like, oh. I don't know if I like it or not, but I admire the chutzpah of it.

To put that lyric to that soaring melodic line is pretty wild. It's that contradiction that makes it uncomfortable. I think that we are made to feel that discomfort of the melody, that gentle piano, that discordant lyric. She's saying, I'm kind of an awkward girl I want to settle down in the song. Now, I don't know what Taylor really wants. Once again, auto fiction, she might want to have another Eros tour in 10 years. Maybe she's not going to just settle down. But the song, I think, is achieving what it's setting out to do.

The next song is Ruin the Friendship. I think it's a little bit of an outlier on this album. On the one hand, it begins with those dry, dead drums. It's got that 70s electric bass, Kousa guitar. That's all fitting. In the song, our narrator is looking back at a past missed connection from high school. And it really feels like a more mature, maybe even darker version of a song like Love Story, something that she regrets missing out on rather than a love fulfilled.

There's a lot of Taylor Swift lore in this song. Yeah. It's prom. There's a disco ball. She's the mirror ball. And then the pre-chorus. And then the pre-chorus. And then the pre-chorus.

So then in the second chorus, we get a little bit of a shift where it's not just we should have kissed, but we should have kissed at the prom when the 50-cent song played, which feels both like a throwback to her song, Tim McGraw, and maybe also a little bit party in the USA. Right. And a JC song was on. And speaking of awesome. awkward. But the payoff to this song is, of course, that not only is there this misconnection, but

this person who she formerly loved passes away in adult life and has to go and go to the funeral. When I left school, I lost track of you. Abigail called me with the bad news. Goodbye. And we'll never know. This is such a striking moment. I think it's very moving. And it's also very much a three.

throwback to classic Taylor songwriting. Charlie, you may recall that I published an article on the contemporary music review back in 2021 called the work of Taylor, wait, what was it called? Taylor Swift in the work of, it was called Taylor Swift in the work of songwriting. And I cited this wonderful article by Jocelyn Neal about how a lot of country music does something she calls the time shift paradigm, where, you kind of move forward in time over the course of the song, and that's what we do here. You know, we fast forward from these memories of the past to the present, where we have this

dramatic twist and we learn what happened to this person. And it gives the song this kind of emotional payoff that you weren't expecting. And it's something that Taylor used to do back in the day in songs like Tim McGraw. You know, the final chorus would have this twist and you would hear it in a new way. And I love that we're getting that. in this song. Even though it doesn't sound like a country song, you know,

in terms of the texture, I feel like the narrative, the construction of it is very country. Okay, so this is like very classic songwriter, Taylor Swift. The next track,

the claws come out. Taylor loves cats. The song, actually romantic, is getting the most attention. We recently talked about how all pop music is rap beef in a past interview.

And this is, the rap beef portion of showgirl. Actually, a romantic is if you took the song Beverly Hills by Weezer, mashed it up with the core progression of the Pixies, Where Is My Mind? And you formerly had invited Charlie XX to open for the reputation tour, which I saw, and are now in some kind of larger celebrity feud with, supposedly. I heard you call me boring Barbie When the Coke's got you brave

High fived my ex And then you said you're glad he ghosted me So this is the part where we do the thing that everybody else does And it says that Charlie XX had a song called Sympathy as a Knife on her album, Brat And she also had a song off of Brat called Everything is Romantic And if you're Charlie XXX, you recently married George Daniel of the band

of 1975, of which Maddie Healy, the lead singer, previously dated Taylor Swift, and everyone believes that this is, big quotes around everyone, that this is a clapback at the song, Sympathy as a knife, sealing sort of the idea of everything is romantic,

and responding to the insecurities that Charlie expresses about some kind of celebrity that maybe made her feel insignificant backstage, and Taylor is here saying, well, your infatuation with me doesn't sound just critical, but perhaps romantic. I think this is all funny. I think it's a tough concept to pull off and she executed it really well.

I will not opine on whether this is actually about Charlie X, C, X, X, or not. I will say there is an incredible opportunity for these two to work it out on the remix, you know, if that is the case. What does this have to do with showgirlness? Well, I'm not entirely sure. Yeah, you got me there, but here's my extreme far reach. There was a musical based off of the film Mean Girls. Yes.

Called Mean Girls. I'm familiar. And in it, there's a song called Meet the Plastics. We call those three the plastics. They're shiny, fake and hard. They play their little mind games all around the schoolyard. That's a good line. So not only does it have the same sort of pop-punk-y vibe as Taylor is actually romantic,

but Taylor's actually romantic also has a Chihuahua line. I think it comes off vicious, but it's precious like a toy chihuahua balking at me from a tiny purse. That's how much it hurts. I don't know if it's related, but they're both great lines. Yeah. I wouldn't want to have written this song. I would not want to stand by this song. I just don't like feuding in that kind of way.

It's not on my wish list, the next song on the album. I think this is the anti-showgirl song. This is about how, you know, being a billionaire entertainer with all the trappings of fame are completely insufficient and insignificant in comparison to true love. Similar themes to Opelite, this celebration of where she is in her life, having found this love that makes her want to settle down in a suburban house with a white picket fence and a basketball hoop and a bunch of kids. And I find it all very unappealing, if I'm honest.

This is a tough listen for me, this one. There's a couple of things here that rankle me. The inclusion of the dollar sign in the title of the song, not once but twice in both words, wish, and list is pretty rough. Again, I guess I have this thing with Taylor Swift where I find it uncomfortable when she uses a certain language, like fat ass. Why does it, it doesn't sound right. I don't believe her when she says certain things, because as you have already described,

She's the English teacher. She's like the goofy aunt. She shouldn't, I don't know. It doesn't sound authentic to me when she rattles off certain phrases like this. My read is that she's leaning into that awkwardness. Like, I think she knows that it doesn't sound right when it's in her song. And it leads to that discomfort and really that conflict that she's trying to resolve with a simple settled down life. That's how I read it.

Okay. Okay. That's a more generous interpretation. And I'm here for it, Charles. I hear a little bit of the showgirl sound in the second verse. Some saxophone. Some subtle orchestration. And then a harmonic change right here.

Those are showgirl chords. There's like a lot of harmonic change, right? And again, it's not the thing which is like on the nose. Like the drums, the production, these melodies are much more the things that are for sure driving the album. But there is a sound that continues here. They want that freedom living off. They want those three dogs The Cubs sit

All that good sir No hypocrites they want it all That's a cool That's a cool mom Yeah A flat major 7 In the key of C major That's

A little borrowing from the minor That's That's pretty slick Yeah very showgirl Very showgirl moment indeed Slick as wood Here we go Ah, we've arrived.

Classic Max Martin joint right here. So this is a song that's all about innuendo about her boyfriend's member. It's... And whether you like it or not, this song is in conversation with a lot of classic pop. Stevie Wonder's superstition. A song about how following superstitions will never guide you in the right to And a song that also features a clavinet keyboard. Boom.

Okay. Which is of course featured in wood. Wow, wow, bowam, wow, wow, wow. There might also be some references to another Motown group here, the Jackson Five. I want you back. Oh, yeah, definitely. Which begins with a similar kind of pedal point and a guitar playing an octave in this super percussive way.

At least I think that's the case. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, there's that. Can you play us an octave like that on the guitar? And then Wood is down here. Yeah. Such a great sound.

It is a good sound. You know, I don't hear it that copy. This feels like another outlier on the album, both because of the incredibly cheeky innuendo and the amount that it maybe calls on its influences so obviously. That said, every time I hear it, it's really fun. You know, as you might imagine at this point, I'm coming to grips with hearing Taylor whisper the word thighs.

But I'll get there. I'm incorporating what you're saying and trying to read this as auto fiction, and that makes it more digestible. So it's a journey. It's my journey with this album. Let's go further into our journey and get canceled. All right, I can't play anymore yet because I'm sorry, but this is if you took the guitar sound of lithium by Nirvana. Yeah, totally, totally, yeah.

That chorusy guitar? Yeah, power chords, no thirds. But you were playing something in the way. And that's how you get canceled. Did you get you having far tuned? So there's all kinds of things going on here. Who's getting canceled? Is it Blake lively?

Taylor's a friend who's ending ongoing lawsuits? Is it Taylor herself who may have borrowed this line from a comedian influencer Caroline Timone, who originated it on TikTok back in 2021? I can't give any more information. But I fear I may have girl boss a bit too close to the sun. Who's getting canceled? I don't know. We've gotten this song, another Shakespearean reference.

to Macbeth. Something wicked this way comes. And we have a bit of the showgirl sound, but it's much darker. So we've got bodies in the attic or took somebody's man. We'll take you by the hand. And soon you'll learn the art of never getting caught. So we've got that big, dark brass and then the swelling orchestra. Certainly, I feel like in the final third of this album, we get back to where we were in the beginning with those classic showgirl kind of sounds

that we established from Irving Berlin, which make a very unusual appearance as well in the song, Honey, the penultimate track on the album, which was one of the first songs they recorded, and one that Taylor said was where she knew that they had found the sound, which is surprising to me because it starts kind of as like a trap beat with a gentle piano and acoustic guitar. So Honey is inverting the passive aggressiveness of language like honey and sweetheart and saying that, oh, it's actually kind of sweet that when you call me honey, I didn't realize it could be so meaningful. And the aggressiveness of that beat is contrasted with the showgirl sound later on in the song.

The upright bass. there's that upright bass again we get that little jazzy piano we get some clarinet some really nice since it's a really lovely moment so my favorite moments

on the whole album is right there is that contrast I'm so glad you pointed it out I did not clock the clarinet or the upright bass that's those are some really nice and surprising textures

are we at the Carlisle where are we what's going on it is very vampy as it were Yeah, which is a nice setup for the final track, our title track. The Life of a Showgirl.

The Life of a Showgirl featuring Sabrina Carpenter. Sabrina Carpenter. Hmm. Sounds like blank space drums. We start with a character. Kitty. She's the showgirl. They gave her the keys to this city.

Then they said she didn't do it legitimately. I bought a tip. So this is dancing in her garters and fish nuts. 50 in the cast, zero missteps. So this is about a young aspiring star seeing a showgirl named Kitty who's dressed up, ready to go out on stage with a cast of 50 in this beautiful get-up. And she approaches her and says, hey, can I get an autograph? I want to be you one day.

And the advice is that I'm not sure you do want to be me someday. This takes us back to that clip you play at the very beginning of the episode, right? It's the peak behind the curtain and everything is not as rosy as it seems. But there's also something cool about this track coming at the very end of the album, which is not, don't trust what you see. This was your whole thesis, Charlie, in fact. Don't trust what you see. don't trust the picture I'm putting out to the world.

This is a polyphonic spree or whatever you called it. The polyponic auto fiction, yeah. The polyphonic auto fiction? Yeah. Or maybe like in art history, we call it the Trump Loy, something which deceives the eye. We trick ourselves into thinking we're seeing something real, but instead what we're seeing is a fictional character

that maybe like a young Taylor Swift is approaching and being like, I want to be like you. And she's like, no, you don't want to be like, be like me, but is Taylor Swift actually the person she's talking to? But no, it can't be because Taylor's not actually a showgirl and a showgirl kind of review, except in the music video where she plays one. And you're realizing that this whole thing is certainly incredibly decorated, if not fictional. So you might expect we would hear some more of that showgirl sound, some more of that Irving Berlin, Ziegfield Follies, lush orchestration, old Hollywood. Boy, howdy, do we get it?

I took her pearls of wisdom hung them from my neck I paid my dues with every bruise I knew what to expect Do you want to take a skate On the ice inside my veins They ripped me off like false lashes And then threw me away

And all I couldn't If I tried One giant line cliche Like don't dumb dumb dumb dumb Don't doum dumb to Don't don't don't do dum That's just so musical theater It's so showy

You know She's singing about I'm immortal now. And people are going to throw me this bouquet. It's been a great show. The entire album ends with Taylor and Sabrina saying, thank you. This was wonderful. That's our show.

A verite clip from when they actually performed together at the Erez tour. And you're like, oh, I was there. I saw the whole thing. It was real. Or was it? So, Nate, have we gotten what we want out of Life of a Showgirl? What do you think? You know, on one hand, I think when I first listened, I was kind of expecting.

some more anthemic choruses, you know, you're out of the woods, you're welcome to New York, your style, et cetera, like these big sing-along, like simple in-your-face choruses. We don't really have those. It's still very wordy. It's very right early. Yeah. In line with tortured poets department, midnights, this kind of turn towards this hyperverbal aesthetic. But maybe that's actually why it's cool because it fuses those two things. It's still like often stream of consciousness, often giving you a lot of like catchphrases and metaphors and turns of phrase. But at the same time, it's got that pop sensibility. It's got the big hooks. It's got the builds and the little ear candy. And I think this makes it a listen where the more you dig into it, the more you're going

to get out of it. Yeah. You mentioned sort of expectations going in. I think that this is a difficult kind of release to make. I mean, the expectations for her couldn't be higher. And it's not just music. Like, she's one of the biggest celebrities in the world. She has wealth on the scale of billionaires now. And I feel like in the attention economy, we live in this era where everything is so fragmented, where consciousness is just being collapsed into a single feed all at once, where we see every

single day, fascism and face creams, genocide and Gucci bags, artificial intelligence and astrology apps. And right there, along with all of that, is Taylor Swift. And sometimes, I've heard people say, you know, I want more of her. I want her to make political statements. And here she is saying, I'm just in show business. I'm just a showgirl. I just want to, you know, be in the business of emotions.

And, you know, I have to say in some ways, I can't falter. You know, here we are, a podcast about pop music, a self, an escape, a place to get into our feelings and listen closely to things. I somewhat understand that desire. She says it herself. Because that's what entertainment is, really. It's just giving people something to escape, to sink their teeth into, to, like, we're world-building. She's a world builder. It's just show business.

There's one more reason why we might be disappointed by this album, though. No T-drops. Yes, the thing we didn't hear. But maybe we should be very excited. Maybe Taylor and Max and Shelbach are listening to the podcast because over a decade, we have theorized about the Taylor Swift's sound, this melodic device that she uses everywhere. Can you sing it for me? Me. Not once on this album. There are some great melodies. This is an album that the more I hear it, the more these songs just lodge into my mind. And that is the sound of what happens when these

three people unite and make a major pop smash. Nate, you might not have realized that during this entire recording, I've had a number of Easter eggs of my own behind me. No. No, say it ain't so, Charlie. Oh, yes, it's so. Yes. Just as Taylor did on the New Heights podcast.

No, the thing is, I just am trying to get to the bottom of, has Taylor Swift been leaving me personal Easter eggs throughout my entire adult life? You may or may not know that I'm one of my very first dates with my now wife, that we sang in karaoke the song, Love Story. That's just the beginning, man. Throughout my early adult life, people will start giving me Taylor Swift stuff all the time. How about the Taylor Swift official ukulele music? Of course, you know, I get red in 1989 as holiday presents. People just are like, you love Taylor, don't you? Taylor's going to be important in your life.

Charlie, I got you those as holiday presents. Don't write me out of the narrative. As I was going to say, we might not have a podcast, if not for Taylor. This show blew up when we first covered blank space. Appropriate gift. Thank you, Nate. I cherish it. You know, friends start giving me tickets.

I told you I saw Charlie X, X, X, X, open for Taylor Swift on the reputation tour because good friends, Michael and Mara, were just like, oh, you love Taylor. You would like tickets to the tour, right? Like, yeah, of course. Of course, things really take a turn when in 2020, I bought a synthesizer. on the internet. Right? It's right behind me. This guy.

The all white profit 12. Yeah, the all white profit 12. Okay. With the white edges. Uh-huh. Taylor's synthesizer. Literally, I have heard this tale that you're convinced this is from the Nashville studio of Taylor Swift.

No, not Nashville studio, but rather her touring act. Because when I was trying to haggle with the person on reverb.com where I bought it, This one was like a few hundred dollars more than the rest of them, but it was the only one that was all in this white color way. And I thought, oh, it would look good in the studio. So I'm like, all right, I'll just haggle him down. He's like, I can't haggle down. This used to be Taylor's synthesizer.

And I'm like, that's bogus. I don't believe you. And he's like, no, you know, a lot of tours dumped their gear here afterwards. This came from her tour. And I'm like, sure. Of course, I'm a music journalist. So they say, and I go online, I find pictures of Dave Smith, who's the producer of said Prophet 12 synthesizer.

There's a picture of him handing Taylor Swift this all-white synthesizer. And so he's now deceased, but I called him for a show years ago when he was living, and I asked him about this. Taylor Swift. At one point, they had one song that they wanted Taylor to play the synth on. So they contacted us and said, can you build us a custom white unit that she could use to play on this song? And in the concert tour video for 1989, when she plays the song Love Story, she walks up onto this balcony, plays by herself this beautiful all-white prophet 12 synthesizer. Wow. Singing the song Love Story that began my own romance.

Wow. But nobody has confirmed for sure that this is Taylor's synth, which is to say, if Taylor, Max, Shelbach, you're listening and you are in. intentionally avoiding the T-drop. Maybe you can also tell me for sure, is this Taylor synthesizer? By the way, I tried calling someone on her team and they were like, I can't talk to you. Nope, sorry. Like, she's ND8 around everything. So, Taylor, please let me know.

Is this your synthesizer? Do you want it back? We'd love to invite you onto the pod. Started a little deranged, but ended in a very sweet and kind of intriguing sort of space. So, yeah, well done. And the invitation is out there. There's a blank space in my heart right here. I need to know.

Have these little breadcrumbs been left for me personally, including said synthesizer? Okay, moving on. Switched on Pop is produced by Raina Cruz, edited by Lissa Soap, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb. Our theme music is by Jossi Adams and Zach Tenario of Arciris. We're a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. You can subscribe to NYMag, which Volture, which vulture is a part of, at NYMag.com slash pod. Find us on social media at SwitchDump Hop and tell us what are your favorite tracks from Life of a Showgirl. What are your least favorite tracks?

What are your Easter eggs that we missed? We want to hear it all. Yeah, we're going further back in time, right? Further back than a pretty girl is a melody, is like a melody? Well, I guess we're kind of going, we're going to stay in that area. We're going to stay in the sort of the showgirl era, the great American songbook era. We're going to be chatting with the comedian, actor, and musician, John C. Riley about the great American songbook.

It's going to be a lot of fun. Until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. Attention Spotify. Has arrived on the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Carolina Herrera. A fragrance intense with character gourmet and addicive. Imagine a jasmine emvolventy,

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