To be, is to be CANCELLED!
October is known to be the month of music artists dropping their latest album. Miss Swift has been known to do so in this very specific month for a lot of her works. Even now for her 12th album The Life of a Showgirl, probably her biggest album to come out so far, she is back with 12 brand new tracks. How fitting? Or was it her, the mastermind who already signaled us to look ahead to 12/12 aka 12 December when the last The Eras Tour show and documentary starts streaming? Will we ever know? Honestly, being a Swiftie is being a fan and detective all in one, but never knowing which clues are real until the mastermind spells it out after she decoded the numerology for us.
The Fate of Orange
There are well over a hundred easter eggs in The Fate of Ophelia music video, however the orange bird must be my favourite. The bird is an American Singer Canary originated in the 1930’s. The manmade canary breed were held in captivity for their beauty and singing abilities. We see the bird during the first scenes of the music video and come back for the last scene when it flies out of the window right before Taylor takes a dive in the bath. The bath scene is the cover art and holds a lot of significance, because it is her story of what happened during The Eras Tour. A tour that is even more dear, because she reclaimed her musical works by rerecording her albums and went on tour with those works to celebrate what exists instead of living in spite. And later down the line, thanks to the tour, she was able to raise the funds to buy back her masters.
Having the bird fly out of the window during that particular scene signals so many things, but also reminds us of the birdcage in Taylor’s Look What You Made Me Do music video. No surprise here that Taylor was wearing an orange suit in that music video. When recording The Life of a Showgirl she wasn’t even sure yet that she would ever own her earlier works but before shooting the music video for the title track of the album Taylor finally got to buy her masters. The orange bird is no longer in the cage, she has broken free.
The storyteller quits writing and starts participating
She is still of course an incredible storyteller. However, during this album she is actively participating in her own life, celebrating and finding her voice in more ways than one. She even experimented with her voice, musically speaking, something she hasn’t done before. This is her first album that doesn’t feel like life is happening to her, she’s living it in every way possible. And it comes down to feeling confidence in her new found security rather than in a place of anxiety we have heard in her other works.
With that said, I do have to say that this album also feels reminiscent of her past works. I can see so many things from other songs and also other parts of her like in Ruin the Friendship. That one really stopped me in my tracks when I was listening to it because it’s most likely about the same person she wrote Forever Winter about on the Red album. At the same time, it is about her high school life. So it also feels very reminiscent of her debut album. But this time it is written with this new found confidence that she has.
Rerecording thoughts
How nostalgic must rerecording the albums have been for Taylor? What was she feeling, thinking? How does she look back with the knowledge she has now? I have the feeling this album partly answers that particular question. During the rollout of this album Taylor seems to be the most her, she has ever been in her life. Even though I think her past works are also very significant, they describe her character so well. I mean, she is a craftsman with words, but this album feels like an answer to a lot of her other works. It feels like the end of something. I’m wondering if Taylor knew that that was going to happen right before she hit album 13. Was she even thinking that a new book of her life is starting with her 13th album? I think even though she, as a mastermind, didn’t think that this was going to happen to her.
In multiple interviews Taylor mentioned that The Life of a Showgirl has been the first album that she’s ever put out that she is still in the same mind space as when she recorded it.
To be, is to be CANCELLED!
When the cover was announced for this album I was wondering why it looked a particular way until I heard CANCELLED!. Talor laying in the bathtub makes sense because the album is about her backstage life as a showgirl. But why do the edges of the cover look so cut up?
Can’t you see my infamy loves company?
Now they’ve broken you like they’ve broken me
But a shattered glass is a lot more sharp
And now you know exactly who your friends are
You know who we are
We’re the ones with matching scars
To me this says: okay, well, everything has broken me, but now I’m a lot more sharp. And that’s literally this album, right? She is confident. She has lived her life and she is in her I don’t give a [ __ ] era. And now we got this shattered glass and she’s like, “Well, I’m ready for it because I’ve lived this showgirl life”. Having the song The Life of a Showgirl ending this album is brilliant for so many reasons, but it is simply Taylor’s answer of “I understand now and I will be sharp as glass for it”.
The spotlight follows the showgirl, always
In general I think this album is one of the most coherent works of Taylor. From top to bottom, each song has their own vibes and concept, but they all go hand in hand with the personal growth that she has gone through during The Eras Tour.
Although, at first I was wondering if maybe an intro song is missing. You know the one, when showgirls go off stage as a soundtrack, so no singing but you hear the trumpets. Maybe even that musical part of the tour when she was doing the TTPD set. You hear that sound in the background, but the main sounds are all the heels clacking off the wooden stairs when the showgirls go off stage. How cool would that be?
After quite a few listens to the album I actually started to realise it wouldn’t work. The album in itself might have been about backstage life, but the thing is, you’re only human, you will take those feelings with you on stage and even if Taylor is not on stage the paparazzi will follow her. So her life offstage is almost performative, this is not negative it’s rather the role(s) she gets pushed in by society. Hence why I think that’s one of the reasons why all the songs on this album have their own concept but are derived from the same bottled up emotions.
During the last song The Life of a Showgirl we hear the crowds of the very last stop that she did on The Eras Tour. That kind of ending of the album signals exactly my thoughts. The showgirl might step away from the stage, the spotlight will follow her no matter what.
13
To be honest I have so many thoughts on this album, but in this blog I wanted to highlight the thoughts that are most important to me and show some of the reasons why I believe that this is a very strong piece of artistic work by Taylor. Her confidence is radiating through this album, the way she gave every song their own stage, their own concept, but it’s still very personal. She dared to look back and write a different perspective and I think that is incredibly interesting. I loved so many of her albums but this one truly hits different and I can’t compare it with her other works. In general you can’t compare other works with each other from one artist, because those albums are the different chapters of their life when writing them.
It actually makes me wonder how Taylor’s writing will grow with her next album, since she got that taste of living her life. The next album would likely be about living that kind of future she sings about on this album. How will the most Taylor-like, confident version of her sound like? Someone who got her masters back, got engaged and who knows by then she already found her way down the aisle. And oh dear, it will be album 13! What an accomplishment. Let’s enjoy album 12 for now and wait till the last The Eras Tour show and documentary gets published.
Love,
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