Art via Evan Solano
Lily Lady prefers the life of Starlets to showgirls.
The Regal North Hollywood theater is empty except for myself and my husband, Ash. He’s a diehard Swiftie (with a tattoo to prove it), so I guess you could call it a mixed marriage.
To be fair, there are some TS tracks I can get down to. Throw on “I Know Places”–Taylor’s version, I’m not a total monster–and I’ll hit every line.
Much like swine flu in 2009, the Swiftie epidemic has gotten dangerously close to me. Thus far, I’ve managed to avoid it and consider myself inoculated. So here I am, at the The life of a Showgirl screening, decked out in a Folklore-era hoodie stuffed with snacks. Ash and I take our seats as the lights go down. I whoop loudly as the show starts.
Onscreen, Taylor Swift croons, “We tell the world to leave us thе fuck alone…”
If a pop star tells the world to leave her alone and then sings with no one around to hear it… does she make a sound?
Fortunately (or unfortunately) for both myself and Swift, I can hear all the sounds. And despite our specific screening’s meager turnout, the three-day “Official Release Party” of Swift’s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl played 3,702 theaters, grossed $15.8 million on opening night, and reached No. 1 at the box office.
Here’s what you got for the price of admission ($12 per ticket, a nod to this being Swift’s 12th studio album): “The Fate of Ophelia” music video, twice. It plays at the start and the end of the film. Then, behind-the-scenes footage from said music video. Finally, lyric videos for the other 11 tracks (fan-account production level, which are now streaming on YouTube).
Each of these songs features a two-minute intro from Swift, describing what each song means to her (insights range from, “I love this song so much,” to “I’m really proud of this one”).
Regal’s website advised a timely arrival, since the screening would not include commercials or trailers. Instead, the screening itself was an 89-minute commercial for Taylor Swift. A hubristic approach, but one encouraged by plenty of demand-sided economies. And although most artists market themselves as a brand in some form or another, what’s grating about The Life of a Showgirl both as a film and as an album is that it’s a corporatized product desperate to sell you on its own authenticity.
“I’m so excited…this is my bread!” Swift exclaims at one point on “The Fate of Ophelia” music video set. Indeed, a loaf of Swift’s ostensibly homemade bread glistens onscreen. It makes the video’s final cut, visible at 0:25 seconds. Throughout the film, Swift does funny accents (all vaguely European, of course) and talks about her mom. She praises her staff and thanks the audience for coming to “hang out.” It’s quirky. It’s nice. It’s fine.
The Life of a Showgirl, from the screening to the record itself, presents Swift as eminently approachable. Whereas other pop stars rule from afar, Swift is in the ‘burbs with her fans. The front door is open. Come on in–she’s made bread!
The only thing that could make Swift more within reach was if the Regal Theater Hollywood had a 3D screen. Swift successfully traffics in the notion that she’s concerned with the same regular-degular dramas as her variegated audience (Don’t make it awkward in second period…have fun, it’s prom from “Ruin The Friendship). While others may seek material excess (yacht life…those bright lights and Balenci’ shades) or vanity (a fat ass with a baby face), Taylor’s a simple gal who wants simple things: Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you from Wi$h Li$t.
Just one problem: presenting as the girl-next-door within a gated neighborhood is a strange conceit. Sure, most people are riddled by contradictions; it’s understandable and very human. Swift–by all accounts a human herself–is just an ordinary country music fan from Tennessee. At the same time, she has ascended to a level of fame known by only a handful of other living people on Earth. Rather than grapple directly with those conditions, Showgirl wants to have its cake and profit off of it, too.
But we should expect nothing less of Swift, or anyone else in her position. We made her this way! The Taylor Swift Corporate Machine (TSCM) and its hyper-capitalist tentacles scooped up a 16-year-old Taylor on the precipice of her first album release. Almost two decades later, it spit her out as a fully-formed Product, Billionaire, and Symbol. Who can blame her for reminiscing about prom while also growing increasingly out of touch with “normal” life?
Even on tracks that traverse the perils of fame, Swift still generalizes the experience to one her massive core audience can identify with: Did you girl-boss too close to the sun?/ Did they catch you having far too much fun?… Good thing I like my friends cancelled.
These lines are from “CANCELLED!” about which, Swift says, “It’s not just like a public figure type [who can get cancelled], it’s like people gossiping about you in your town, negative comments you read on your Instagram.”
To some degree, the tension between Swift’s hyper-specific circumstances and her ostensible desire for relatability is endearing. For better or for worse, though, usually someone is cancelled for… doing or saying something. Swift is so media-trained and middle-of-the-road that her 2024 Kamala Harris endorsement hit the news like a radical political act. As Michael Jordan said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too,” and it makes financial sense for artists to keep their alienating views private. Yet, to simultaneously colonize the cancellation space for its cultural cache while appearing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon that same week rings laughably hollow.
The swirl of Product versus Human makes it near impossible to figure out how much of Showgirl features Swift herself, and how much of the record is another win for TSCM’s overdriven marketing department. What I mean is: Swift’s mass appeal says nothing definitive about her as a person and everything about us as an audience. Swift is a mirror, reflecting back the American experiment’s cultural desires. Which is inextricably tied to whiteness. And inextricably tied to white mediocrity.
In his 2008 special, Kill the Messenger, Chris Rock talks about the affluent New Jersey neighborhood he lives in: “In my neighborhood, there are four Black people. Hundreds of houses, four Black people. Who are these Black people? Well, there’s me, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z and Eddie Murphy. Only Black people in the whole neighborhood. So let’s break it down, let’s break it down: me, I’m a decent comedian. I’m aight. Mary J. Blige, one of the greatest R&B singers to ever walk the Earth. Jay-Z, one of the greatest rappers to ever live. Eddie Murphy, one of the funniest actors to ever, ever do it. Do you know what the white man who lives next door to me does for a living? He’s a fucking dentist!”
I’m not here to say Taylor Swift is the dentist of pop music. Sure, The Life of a Showgirl is filling a lot of American ear cavities right now, but think about a song that moves you. When it comes on, it commands your full attention. You play it to feel something. It fucks your shit up because that’s what good art does.
The Showgirl screening was passably enjoyable, but did not warrant such resource-intensive pageantry. The album itself is like the Spotify slop meant to run as background: never rising to the surface of active consciousness, thereby preventing its potential to offend.
Just as Showgirl doesn’t readily offend, it doesn’t wow either. Much as the Spotify algorithm is trained on the logic of forever-listening, musicians and visual artists that achieve cultural pervasiveness often provide a diluted experience. Swift’s particular brand of passably-nice tracks might make you feel some vague something, but then you’ll keep filling your shopping cart at Target and your mind will be elsewhere.
I keep coming back to A$AP Rocky’s release of a certain music video.
The song–ironically, called “Tailor Swif”–is a masterpiece. It’s like if Harmony Korine and Thomas Pynchon had a love child. It’s like the best part of an acid trip. It’s like if an artist didn’t take their audience’s attention for granted for a single nanosecond.
Rocky is certainly no less of a brand than Swift. But the freakiness on display in “Tailor Swif,” and the YouTube drop of the song (after it was leaked) rather than a whole film dedicated to playing it twice is a totally different model than the TSCM. At Regal North Hollywood, my mind kept wandering to Rocky’s video while I gazed into a seemingly interminable scroll of Showgirl lyrics.
While it’s a futile endeavor to speculate about the “realness” of any prominent artist, the TSCM hinges on the unassailable principle of authenticity. The album shouts, this is real, this is Taylor, over and over again. It has to, because the machine demands you hear that messaging until those words melt away and the generic songwriting grips you. Until that same middling songcraft feels incredible by proxy. Think of Showgirl as the pinnacle of stature by ubiquity.
I was in a sour mood leaving the theater. All the aforementioned swill was swilling around my brain. In the weeks to come, however, I couldn’t turn the album off. I danced around my living room to the banger chorus of “Elizabeth Taylor.” I sang “Opalite” in the car. I listened to the album so much that the lyrics appeared in my dreams. I learned them through osmosis as if I’d spent my whole life studying them. I wrote this piece. I edited this piece. And then? I played the album over and over and over and over and over and over.
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