Buy Now
| Buy on |
|
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Oct 7, 2025There’s some of that familiar production magic [of Max Martin and Shellback] in the instantaneous disco-pop hooks of “Wood” or the classic Swiftie melodic sensibilities and sonic detailing of “Opalite,” but nothing comes close to the poreless candyshell immediacy of “Bad Blood” or the undeniable catchiness of “We Are Never Getting Back Together.” Instead, these songs choose a more refined approach that’s slower to take hold but makes an impact nonetheless.
-
Oct 3, 2025The Live of a Showgirl promises vulnerability and occasionally delivers. But Swift can’t quite commit to the bit. She’s too famous, too successful, too Taylor Swift to either disappear into the character or let us hear her own dark thoughts. Too often, it’s only skin deep.
-
Oct 5, 2025While it lacks the immediacy of Swift’s other productions with Martin and Shellback, it’s inaccurate to cast The Life of a Showgirl as a total flop. There’s no such thing in the world of Taylor Swift. It’s another star in the twinkling sky dreamed up by the most popular, and increasingly prolific, artist in the world, and like every record she’s made since “Tim McGraw,” its story is more complicated than a Metacritic number or the sales of a Target-exclusive vinyl variant.
-
Oct 7, 2025Overall, Swift’s writing holds up. The bridge of “Eldest Daughter” is a cinematic reverie of youthful indiscretions and natural imagery. .... Taylor Swift can capture the zeitgeist because she understands the concept of one: a battle between tension and freedom, and the knowledge that conflict is necessary to sustain the things we want.
-
Oct 2, 2025With her twelfth studio album, the musician shoots into a fresh echelon of superstardom — and hits all her marks.
-
Oct 5, 2025Part of me wishes that Swift would do a bit more soul-searching. The Life of a Showgirl is good entertainment, but I'm still trying to figure out how any of it matters on a deeper level. If you’re not fully invested in all aspects of her life, and whatever drama stems from it, then it’s tough to get emotionally on board. That makes this a glossy, surface level pop record for the majority of listeners. It’s arguably her most infectious, energetic, and fun release in several years, which will buy this LP some instant mileage in terms of streams, but I wonder how its replay value will hold up once the novelty wears off.
-
Oct 2, 2025The Life of a Showgirl might be one of her most uneven records, but she’s as compelling as she’s ever been – the showgirl, the ringmaster and the circus all in one.
-
Oct 2, 2025A catchy and substantive but unflashy album, it takes the songwriting intimacy of her “Folklore”/“Evermore” era and renders it with more clarity and oomph.
-
Oct 3, 2025This feels like the Album of the Summer — the calendar be damned. It’s giddy, funny, touching, silly, haughty and moving in about equal measure, but most of all, it’s got a sunstruck kind of love that besottedly seeps through the orange LP grooves and might even make you believe in romance again, too.