Taylor Swift: The Life of a Showgirl review – dull razzle-dazzle from a star who seems frazzled

(Republic)
Far from the Max Martin-assisted pop juggernaut fans expected, this soft-rock paean to domestic bliss is slight on tunes and still seethes with grievance. And the less said about her fiance’s ‘magic wand’, the better

There are albums for which vast success seems preordained, and then there is The Life of a Showgirl. The podcast on which Taylor Swift announced the release of her 12th studio album – her fiance Travis Kelce’s ordinarily sports-focused New Heights – garnered half a billion views, breaking a record set by Donald Trump’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience in the process. A “launch event” film, featuring the kind of lyric videos and backstage footage that anyone else would release on YouTube, is instead set for a theatrical release in more than 100 countries: in the US alone, it sold $15m worth of tickets in 24 hours. The album itself has been pre-saved more than 5m times on Spotify, breaking another record in the process. “I’m immortal now,” Swift sings on the title track, which seems less like an extravagant boast than a statement of fact.

The excitement has been amplified because a new Taylor Swift album seemed unlikely. Even given her famously Stakhanovite work rate and her keen understanding of pop’s constant churn and unceasing clamour for content, you might have expected her to take a break after the Eras tour, which lasted nearly two years. But no: not 10 months since it wrapped, here is she again, bearing a new album trumpeted as an artistic handbrake turn.