Taylor Swift Releases New Album “The Life of a Showgirl”
American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift released her twelfth studio album “The Life of a Showgirl” on October 3, 2025 via Republic Records.
It marks is her first album in over a year since the 2024 album “The Tortured Poets Department”.
The album comprises 12 tracks, featuring a guest appearance from American singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter.
Taylor Swift recorded the album with producers Max Martin and Shellback in Sweden.
The album artwork was photographed by Mert and Marcus. Taylor Swift adopted a provocative, showgirl-inspired theme for the album.
She told Greg James of BBC Radio 1 about the record, “The album is out, and I have such uncomplicated feelings of joy about it. I do not feel any twisty, tortured way about it, which is not how I felt about the last album, because there was such a lag time between when you make music and then you put it out. There's often times your life can make drastic changes in those times. With this album, my life isn't exactly the same spot as when I wrote the record. I used to kind of have this dark fear that if I ever were truly like, happy and free being myself and nurtured by a relationship and what happens if the writing just dries up, what if writing is directly tied to my torment and pain? And it turns out, that's not the case at all and we just were catching lightning in a bottle with this record.”
Taylor Swift told New Heights Podcast about the album, “This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant, and electric, and vibrant. This is the record I've been wanting to make for a long time. It's about what I was going through offstage. Max Martin, Shellback, and I have made some of my favorite songs that I've ever done before. They're just geniuses in different avenues, in different ways. We've never actually made an album before where it's just the three of us. There's no other collaborators. It's just the three of us making a focused album. By the time we came back together, I feel like we had so much more dexterity to what we do. It felt like all three of us in the room were carrying the same weight as creators.”
She shared on social media, “I can't tell you how proud I am to share this with you, an album that just feels so right. A forever thank you goes out to my mentors and friends Max and Shellback for helping me paint this self portrait.”
“The Fate of Ophelia” “'The Fate of Ophelia' is the first track off of my album The Life of a Showgirl
And I really love this song because it kind of combines sort of Shakespearean storytelling of you know, this legend of- of this tragic hero Ophelia and what happened to her blended with this kind of newer concept of escaping that fate and having more modern terminology used in the song too like, you know, 'Keep it one-hundred on the land, the sea, the sky / Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes.' I just love kind of, blending- the blending of old and new with lyrics and that's one of my favorite parts about this song, but it's also just kind of one of my favorite catchy melodies I've ever gotten to write.
“Elizabeth Taylor” “Track number two on The Life of a Showgirl is the song 'Elizabeth Taylor'.
Elizabeth Taylor is one of the most ultimate, quintessential showgirls I could ever imagine
You know, not in literal sense as much as she was under a microscope so, so intense and she handled it with humor and she got along with her life
She continued to make incredible art and so this is a love song kind of through the lens of the motif of what she had to go through in her life and sort of the parallels that I feel in my own life
You know, role models are pretty hard to come by, but I would absolutely say that she's one of mine.”
“Opalite” “'Opalite' is a song on my album that I think is just so infectiously contagiously happy and really a expression of how the song is itself about choosing happiness and getting through rough times, you know adversity, and really choosing your own joy and sort of path to joy and it didn't just happen accidentally for you
"Opalite" is actually a man-made opal and I kinda took that metaphor of a man-made gemstone and applied it to, well, you know, what if you make your own happiness and like, I really love that sort of comparison between the two and that analogy and it turned into one of the fairer songs on the album.”
“Father Figure” “I would say that lyrically I had such a blast writing this record because each song is like, it's own sort of choose your own adventure. Each song feels like an era of it's own, it's just a very dramatic, sweeping, epic record full of twelve songs, but each one really packs a punch and each one is really it's own kind of movie, but the 'Father Figure' lyrics are my favorite. I remember just writing the lyrics just like sitting there just being like, “Heheh, heheheh.” It's the stuff that I've always wanted to say. The first line of the second verse is like my favorite in terms of a visual, like, you think about what it means and then you realize it's just like, a very descriptive way to say something. And I love that line, and I also love the key-change chorus lyrics It's just, it was a blast to write, I, I love like, stepping into a character like that”
“Eldest Daughter” “Track five on my album is called 'Eldest Daughter,' and this is—it's a love song about kind of the roles that we play in our public life, because nowadays everyone has a public life. You have a life that you portray to other people or what you portray on social media, and then you have the you that everyone gets to know who has earned the right to be closest to you. And it's really hard to be sincere publicly because that's not really what our culture rewards. People reward you for being like tough and unbothered and like too busy to care. And you may be that about some things, but everyone has things that matter to them and people that matter to them. This song really kind of gets to the heart of when someone gets close enough to you to earn your trust, that's when you can admit to them that you actually really do care about some things.”
“Ruin The Friendship” “'Ruin the Friendship' is a song that kind of wistfully goes back in time to moments that you hesitated, moments that you were too scared or anxious to do something that you were really curious about, you know, the idea of if you told this person you had feelings for them or if you kissed this person, you might ruin the friendship. And it kind of goes back in time and explores what really would have been so bad about that. So it's really kind of a beautiful story of taking chances when they present themselves and not letting them pass you by, not having to spend your life wondering what would have happened if you would have done it.”
“Actually Romantic” “'Actually Romantic' is a song about realizing that someone else has kind of had a one-sided adversarial relationship with you that you didn't know about
And all of a sudden they start like, doing too much, and they start letting you know that actually you've been living in their head rent-free and you had no idea and it's presenting itself as them sort of resenting you or having a problem with you, but, um, taking that and you just accepting it as love and you accepting it as attention and affection and how flattering that somebody has made you such a big part of their reality when you didn't even think about this
It's actually pretty romantic, if you if you really, really think about it.”
“Wi$h Li$t” “'Wi$h Li$t' is a song about all the different dreams people have. You know, we live in such a sort of visually curated moment where you get to see everybody's lives play out online and what vacations they have and what things they want and what items they want to buy. And it feels like everybody has different priorities. And it's kind of about exploring all those different lives that people want and all those different aspirations that people have, but knowing that you have your own set of wishes. and it doesn't have to be like everybody else's and theirs doesn't have to be like yours and everybody, you just hope everybody gets their wishes but these are yours.”
“Wood” “The song 'Wood' is about, it's a love story about, you know, kind of using as a plot device superstitions, popular superstitions, good luck charms, bad luck charms, all these different ways that we have decided things are good luck or bad luck, like knocking on wood and seeing a black cat. And that is kind of the way that I've decided to explore this very, very sentimental love song.”
“CANCELLED!” “The song 'CANCELLED!' is sort of about, you know, having had my own experiences with mass judgment and being at the center of many, you know, dramatic kind of scandalous moments in my career where people were all weighing in at once, or at least it felt like that. Having had those experiences, it makes me move through the world a little bit differently. And when other people go through it, you kind of find yourself thinking about how they're probably going to get smarter because of this. If they can get through it, if they can be tough enough, they can actually learn some things through this process. And how I don't naturally just cast people aside just because other people decide they don't like them. I make my own decisions about people based on how they treat me within my life and their actions. And so this is a song about all those themes. Here's 'CANCELLED!'”
“Honey” “'Honey' is a song about how words that have been meant to hurt you in the past can be repurposed by someone who loves you in a way that feels totally different. You know, if the only time you were called honey was when someone was like, that look is not working for you, honey. Like, that is very different than when somebody calls you honey in a sweet way, in a sincere way, in a lovely way. And it's kind of about sort of the idea of healing these old wounds that were caused by certain words that now feel totally lovely and sweet. So I also just love this song. It's such a bop. I just jump around to this song. This one's called 'Honey.'”
“The Life of a Showgirl” featuring Sabrina Carpenter “The last song on this album is the title track, 'The Life of a Showgirl.' It is the story of a fictional showgirl named Kitty and how my character in the song goes to see her perform and is completely inspired by her. But rather than responding with, like, fakeness, she tells it like it is. And she kind of warns me off of this lifestyle because it's much more than just the glitter and the glamour. There's a lot else that comes with it. so it's kind of an ode to show business and the women who move through those pitfalls and obstacle courses I thought who better to ask to be a part of this song than the ultimate show girl Sabrina Carpenter and thankfully she said yes and she's absolutely incredible on this song one thing that I really love about the ending of it is that we actually ended the song with actual crowd noise from my last Eras tour show in Vancouver so that always chokes me up because it transports me right back to that actual memory of standing on that stage for the last time on that tour that was so important to me, and the tour that really inspired this album. So it's the last track of the album and a really special one to me.”
