Taylor Swift has once again swept the music platforms and broken sales records with her new album ‘The Life of a Showgirl’, but not everything is euphoria: a part of her followers express disappointment on social networks, while critics are divided between praise and disapproval.
Rolling Stone music magazine gave Swift’s twelfth album five stars and said the material had catapulted Swift to “a whole new artistic and personal peak, higher and higher than the last.
For its part, The New York Times described the album as “catchy and substantial but unostentatious” and “a capstone to Swift’s career to date.”
However, other media such as the U.S. magazine Slate called ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ “a masterpiece of cringe,” whose virtues lie only on the surface, while Britain’s The Guardian called “brilliant and boring” an album that, “without being terrible,” does not live up to the singer-songwriter’s talent.
Among her fans the reactions are not very different, as while some praise Swift’s return to light pop, others criticize the superficiality of the lyrics and question the radical change in content.
“Taylor Swift’s new album looks like it was made with ChatGPT,” wrote Luis, an X user. This type of comment has been repeated since the release of her album as a show of discontent among her fans.
There are those who have uploaded videos and comments on networks mocking some of the lyrics, missing the celebrated lyrics of albums like ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’, or even criticizing the alleged “attacks” that the singer has made in her songs in reference to alleged rivalries with other artists.
“This album is literally an attack song with drugs and cheesy lyrics. As a fan since ‘Reputation,’ I’m disappointed. And for her to lash out at people like that is so low,” she wrote on X Benji.
Taylor Swift surrounded by negativity
Her comments come after her fans claimed that the track ‘Actually Romantic’ was a response to Charli XCX’s song ‘Sympathy is a Knife’, in which the Brit talks about the insecurities she feels because of the success of an unnamed superstar.
In her song, Swift ironically addresses the idea that a person’s obsession and envy of her is actually a form of romanticism.
“Instead of giving a complex response about comparisons between female artists and women’s experiences in the industry (…) she responded something like ‘well you did this to me,’ it felt like a backlash,” Nicky Reardon, a user, said in a video on Instagram that has garnered more than 31,000 likes.
For its part ‘WOODS’, which is supposedly inspired by her relationship with Travis Kelce, has been criticized for the way in which she talks about her sexuality, a subject rarely treated explicitly in her discography. For some, the treatment was forced and unnatural.
“It has a fun beat, but the lyrics made me cringe. It felt like a poorly written sex scene out of a romance novel,” wrote one user on a Reddit forum where fans of the singer commented on the album.
Critics have claimed that one of the album’s main problems is that the “white girl” formula, based on songs of romance and innocence, is coming to an end now that Taylor is in her mid-30s and about to get married.
“People want different things from women and ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ demonstrates Taylor’s inability to rise to the occasion,” explained Sotfog, a Tik Tok user in a video with more than 1 million likes, referring to new pop stars who have revamped the industry such as Sabrina Carpenter or Chapell Roan whose projects address issues such as identity, sexuality and empowerment with a contemporary and diverse approach, reported Agencia EFE.
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