The Life of a Certified Lover Boy

    In the breaths of autumn in the now distant past of 2021, Canadian R&B artist Aubrey Graham, better known as Drake, released Certified Lover Boy. Of course the album was a hyped up release—Drake was the biggest artist in the world, and his previous 2LP Scorpion album had become one of the 2010s biggest successes—but the record dropped with a thud. Fans were willing to defend it, of course, but the general consensus was that Drake had gotten too comfortable with himself. Things were almost certainly not helped by the fact that Certified Lover Boy had the unfortunate distinction of dropping less than a week after the similarly hyped up DONDA by Kanye West—this was back when Kanye had some semblance of a reputation, mind you. The sales were in Drake's favor, but DONDA was considered an artistically superior project in nearly every way. The most embarrassing elements of Certified Lover Boy, however, was not any perceived loss to an artistic elder or poor critical scores—it was Drake himself. Throughout CLB, the material presented showcased the most successful musician in the world as whiny, paranoid, and generally pathetic. From paying for a stripper's college tuition in "TSU" to trying to pick up lesbians in "Girls Want Girls" to embarrassing proclamations of being "Way 2 Sexy," Drake revealed that he was a deeply insecure person on Certified Lover Boy. In some ways, it marked a serious demarcation line in his career—the sales kept coming, but Drake began to look like a has-been, and the competition began to look very exciting by comparison.

    Here we are, four years removed from Certified Lover Boy, and the new biggest star in the world has released a deeply-insecure and embarrassing album of her own. Taylor Swift has dominated the 2020s, for better or for worse: her Eras Tour has been a record-setter, her albums have consistently broken first-day streaming records, and for a short while she even managed to win the general acclaim of the public on records like folklore and evermore. Even her rerecorded "Taylor's Version" albums were supported, seen as a means of taking ownership of her music, which I think we can all root for—stick it to the man, am I right? Well, when you have nothing to play for and everything to lose, where do you go from there? It seems for Swift, the only answer was "backwards." That's how we end up here, dear readers, with 2025's The Life of a Showgirl, quite possibly Swift's worst recording to date.

    But of course, what makes it her worst? The better question is, what exactly makes it any worse than her previous records? Indeed, I went in thinking that there was no possible way we could get worse than 2024's The Tortured Poets Department, an album that remains an overly-indulgent, repetitive affair by my estimation. Dare I say that some elements of The Life of a Showgirl even intrigued me initially: an aesthetic that was distinctly unlike Swift, her decision to once again work with Max Martin and Shellback (the same production team that helped yield her pop transformation with 1989), and her choice to collaborate with fellow pop artist Sabrina Carpenter. It's worth noting that it sounds like Swift has been taking notes from Carpenter throughout this album, as more than a few songs bare the mark of her disco-leaning take on pop music, but I digress. Then there's the fact that Swift has seemingly taken some of the criticism of The Tortured Poets Department to heart: at 41 minutes and 12 songs, it's a marked departure away from the hour-long engagements of folklore and Poets, and sits as one of her shortest records to date. Part of me is tempted to joke that that is The Life of a Showgirl's number one redeeming element, but Swift's effort to cut the fat has left the listener with a mouthful of gristle. I can admire the fact that Swift took the effort to edit herself, but when the material at its core is such duldrum, trimming can only get you so far. First, you have to be good.

    And let it be known, The Life of a Showgirl is not good, and I don't just mean it's not good because it's radio-friendly pop music. There are plenty of artists making radio-friendly pop music that bare more substance, higher production, and appeal than most of the material on The Life of a Showgirl, but that's besides the point. No, The Life of a Showgirl is a record that fails on its own merits, and one of the less obvious means of this is aesthetically. Really ask yourself, what does the 1920s prohibition-era showgirl aesthetic have anything to do with the music enclosed on this record? What's the intention of this specific aesthetic? Would this record have been any different if she simply continued in a similar moody aesthetic to her previous releases? My instincts tell me no. This choice of half-realized aesthetic seems more like a half-assed effort to just be "different" from her previous releases, as there's little indicator to me that there was any deep thought into how this aesthetic fits with the music in question. You can't just name a song after Elizabeth Taylor and say it fits. I've seen a few people say that this is meant to be some sort of meta-commentary about show business, and while I think that's interesting, the actual substance of the material tells me that it was either poorly developed commentary or there is no commentary at all.

    Still, you don't need great meta-commentary to make a great album. Hell, you don't even need particularly deep lyrics to make a great pop record, but Swift's defenders often perpetuate that her lyrics do attain a deeper meaning beneath the surface. This insistence is often conditioned with the claim that those who do not enjoy Swift's lyrics are going in with bad faith, that there is no genuine effort to engage with the lyrics. These are the same kind of talking points that Rolling Stone writer and professional hack Rob Sheffield perpetuates. Sheffield, who's writing catalog is about as illustrious as that of a dollar store smut writer, has claimed that Swift's own success has made it "impossible to process her music in any kind of rational manner" for most listeners, while also clarifying that "people turn off certain parts of their brain" when her music comes on. Unlike some of Sheffield's more bullshit claims, which includes comparing the reaction to Tortured Poets and Showgirl to that of The Beatles' self-titled album and Abbey Road, I felt that this was worth humoring just for a minute. Sure, there are people that are going to refuse this album simply because it is Taylor Swift, but Rob Sheffield and fellow Rolling Stone writer living in La La Land Brian Hiatt seem to have imagined a world that does not exist. The especially divisive reaction to The Life of a Showgirl is not inherently because people don't have the ability to engage with her art, or not even that they don't want to. This mixed reaction is because Swift has made a work that, even by her own fan's estimation, is lacking. Instead of taking a more nuanced look, Sheffield, Hiatt, and the rest of what little grey matter remains in the Rolling Stone office choose to perpetuate a strange conspiracy that most people don't want to "get" Swift. I suppose it's easier than trying to do some real writing.

    So how about we do that, then? Actually engaging with The Life of a Showgirl, I mean. For the record, in spite of my many, many criticisms of this album, it is not a complete failure. Really, what saves the experience is two genuinely great pop songs. The opening track, "The Fate of Ophelia," comes off as a clean and confident pop song, with some actually clever turns of phrase and literary callbacks. Some might call it low-hanging to reference Shakespeare, but I see no reason to cast it aside, especially when Swift clearly does it so effectively. Then there's "Opalite," generally another strong number, albeit not quite the blockbuster that the opening track was. Looking at this track I think reveals a few interesting things, both from a lyrical and musical perspective: it's very direct lyrically, and her symbolism doesn't leave a whole lot to the imagination. This isn't really a problem to me, especially because it doesn't seem to aspire to anything more than being good pop lyrics, but it's definitely a shift away from the illusion of substance that we saw with The Tortured Poets Department. Musically, the track is also very peppy, even disco-leaning. To my ears, it sounds like Swift is taking notes from Sabrina Carpenter, which could reveal some attempt to sound like she's part of the zeitgeist, but that's all on your own interpretation. I think it's more likely that she was organically inspired by Carpenter, especially since she was opening for Swift on her Eras Tour. Then, there are the songs with inklings of good ideas: there's "Elizabeth Taylor," which has the bones of something good, "Actually Romantic" has a decent melody even if it gets derailed by Taylor's own ego (more on that later), and the closing track has a solid hook and a decent Sabrina Carpenter feature (huh). Just because I don't like this record means that I think there is nothing redeeming about it. There are some good elements among the sludge.

    And when it comes to the sludge, Showgirl has it in droves. The real sin here is the lyrics, which are amongst the worst Swift's ever penned in her entire career. Say what you will about her work prior: whether it be that it's shallow, obtuse, boring, whatever. Any and all criticism of her lyrical ability is applicable here and then some, but what surprised me the most is how Swift comes across as genuinely egotistical, insecure, and frankly embarrassing throughout this entire album. This is where we get the payoff of me mentioning Drake at the start of this little write-up, because this is Taylor Swift's "Drake Era" album. The three biggest offenders, in no particular order, are "CANCELLED!," "Actually Romantic," and "Wood," and we'll start with the latter. Clearly, Taylor Swift is very happy in her newfound relationship with Travis Kelce, and this is not something I intend to make fun of. Good for her, right? Admittedly, I'm just not that interested in her relationships, and I can't imagine many people were so interested in their relationship that they needed to hear Swift talking up the size her husband's pecker. I get that "Wood" is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but it's still trying to wax poetic at the same time, and there's a bizarre juxtaposition with attempts at clever wordplay being immediately followed by her shamelessly talking about how great Kelce's knobber feels when it enters her tight end. This is all without mentioning how the song blatantly lifts from the Jackson Five, but that's neither here nor there.

    Then there's "CANCELLED!," possibly the worst song of Taylor's entire career. An accomplishment in and of itself, no doubt, but why is it so awful? First off, the melody leaves plenty to be desired, which isn't exactly what you want from a pop song. Then, there's the embarrassing lyrical content which has Swift posturing herself as a cancelled public figure, whining on and on about how easy it is for people to gang up on you and for you to be made a target of the mob. There is something condescending about the way that Swift wants to parade about as some martyr on this song, pontificating about friends with "matching scars" and "girlbossing too close to the sun" or whatever awful lyrical snippet she came up with that afternoon. This is without even bringing up the fact that it's ridiculous that Taylor Fucking Swift of all people is complaining about being canceled: she's the most successful musician of the last fucking decade. Circling back to "Actually Romantic," we see Taylor poorly interpreting Charli XCX's "Sympathy is a knife" as some kind of personal attack, which has now lead to this suck-fucker of a response. Proudly looking over any meaning of Charli's work, she then talks about how it's actually really cool that Charli is talking about her. It's actually sweet and amusing and she definitely does not care that Charli thinks all that about her. This song not only shows Taylor's own insecurity ironically enough, but it also comes off as petty and, again, embarrassing. There's also the fact that the song lifts shamelessly from the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind," which certainly doesn't help anything. All in all, though, this track is just baffling. Taking shots at other contemporary artists and acting like you're unphased is the kind of shit that Drake does and gets made fun of for. Oh wait...

     There's plenty more to go on from there, but admittedly, so much of the album leaves little to talk about. At its core, The Life of a Showgirl is a repetitive album that showcases some of Swift's most embarrassing work to date, to the point that some people have taken it as satire. It's the kind of milquetoast, cringe-inducing work that, to me, marks a serious demarcation line in her career. I can't help but think that Swift is off the wagon for the first time in her career, and I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see an overall decline in her work's reception and success. Looking back at Drake's Certified Lover Boy, are there not any comparisons we can draw? An artist at the top of their game, dropping a work of deep insecurity and egotism that reveals to the public what was suddenly apparent: they were becoming a has-been. Swift is no longer a monolith in pop music, and we can thank our lucky stars for people like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo, and Billi Eilish for that. While it seems she's willing to engage with these artists, I think the reality of the situation is that they have begun to surpass Swift, if not in sales than certainly in reception and critical respect. This new wave of women in pop is artsy, dynamic, and earnest in a way that Swift's work hasn't been for a while. Maybe I'll be wrong with my own prognosis on Swift's career, but only time will tell if Showgirl truly is a curtain call.

RATING: ✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯