Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and Despair!
- Oct 4, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 1
The Life of a Showgirl; the Death of an Era
TL;DR: Eww With a Sprinkle of Ahh.
What I loved most about Taylor Swift was how she wielded language like a magic wand ("don't think I'll say that word again") that turned sound waves into bioluminescent surf. In glitter gel pen, quill, or ballpoint, she crafted the most exquisite lyrics on a canvas made of sonic starry nights. Now it's all Red Dwarfs of embarrassment and Black Holes of grossness. The stars in my eyes have been dulled by the chlamydial conjunctivitis that is WOOD. Yet there are still some shiny gold nuggets if you dig through the manure.
Mixed metaphors are necessary here to wrap my brain around the dichotomy between Showgirl's heavenly sound and its tsunami of moral bankruptcy.
WOOD. I have no words (that I can say, and even the ones I do say turn almost unspeakable even as I type).
Actually Romantic is Actually Public Sexual Assault on young female artist Charli XCX, during which Swift forces the listening public into witnessing it.
Three songs—for only one of which credit is given (Father Figure)—are too similar to other artists' work to not give them credit, yet she initiated a bitter copyright dispute over Olivia Rodrigo doing the same to her with Deja Vu, an interpolation of Cruel Summer. (Other artists = The Jonas Brothers and The Jackson Five.)
The heavihandedness with which Swift drops references to status symbols like Gucci, Cartier, and Balenciaga. We get it; you're a billionaire and you love it.
I feel gross that I can't stop listening to the songs I actually love—The Fate of Ophelia, Elizabeth Taylor, the clean version of Father Figure, and The Life of a Showgirl.
What was I saying the other day about Pride being the worst of the mortal sins? There is no other explanation for this album than Swift thinking she can do the musical equivalent of stating “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters" (remember that time Donald Trump accidentally told the truth?). [Edit: I take that back. Almost no one deserves to be put in the same sentence as DJT, especially now, post–Alex Pretti and Renee Good.]
In my mind, I go back and forth between feeling like I'm being compli¢it by continuing to li$ten to her, and feeling like I'm not going to let her take away from me the joy I've gotten from most of her work. As a former healthcare professional, I want to be able to listen to Epiphany; I've earned it.
It turns out, Swift was actually being serious when she wrote about putting narcotics into her songs and sang:
Who's afraid of little old me? Well you should be. You should be. You should be.
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