Taylor Swift revealed all the details of her 12th studio album, The Life Of A Showgirl, including the artwork, track list, release date and more.
On Wednesday evening (Aug. 13), the fourteen-time GRAMMY Award-winner and 35-year-old pop superstar unveiled everything fans need to know about her new project during an appearance on the New Heights Podcast with Jason and Travis Kelce, marking her first-ever podcast interview.
“So this is my brand-new album, The Life of a Showgirl. It comes out October 3rd,” Swift said as she pulled a vinyl of the project from a mint green briefcase, unveiling the cover art, a photo of her in a bathtub wearing a bedazzled silver burlesque dress, with only her face above the mint green–tinted water.
Swift, who is the most-awarded artist in American Music Awards history, then went on to explain the inspiration for the project. “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. And it just comes from like the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in my life and so that effervescence has come through on this record,” she detailed before adding that the album is full of “bangers.”
“I was so mentally stimulated and excited to be creating,” she gushed. “[The album is] a lot more upbeat, and it’s a lot more fun pop excitement. My main goals were melodies that were so infectious, you’re almost angry at it.”
Arriving October 3 via Republic Records, The Life Of A Showgirl features 12 tracks, including “Elizabeth Taylor,” “Wood,” “Wi$h Li$t,” “Ruin the Friendship,” “Honey,” “Actually Romantic,” “CANCELLED!,” “Eldest Daughter,” “Father Figure,” “Opalite,” “The Fate of Ophelia,” and the title track, a collaboration with her longtime friend Sabrina Carpenter.
For the project, she returned to her former producers Max Martin and Shellback, both of whom she worked with on Red (2012), 1989 (2014) and Reputation (2017).
“It’s a record I made with my mentor, Max Martin and Shellback. The three of us have made some of my favorite songs that I’ve done before,” Swift shared, referencing song such as “We Are Never Getting Back Together,” “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “22,” “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space,” “Style,” “Wildest Dreams,” “Ready For It?” and more. “We’ve made songs that I’m so proud of. So basically 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 where, I mean, it felt like catching lightning in a bottle, honestly.”
Taylor Swift is very proud of her forthcoming new album, The Life Of A Showgirl, and admitted that “this is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time.” The singer/songwriter from Pennsylvania continued, “Every single song is on this album for hundreds of reasons, you know, and you couldn’t take one out, and [it’d be] the same album. You couldn’t add one, and it be… it’s just right. And that focus and that kind of discipline with creating an album and keeping the bar really high is something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time. I tend to love to write lots and lots of music. So it’s a temptation to release lots of music.”
“Oftentimes, like I wanted to do an album that was so focused on quality and on the theme and everything fitting together, like a perfect puzzle that these 12 songs from my 12th album, it just, I feel like we achieved that, and I’m really happy about that,” Swift added.
The Life Of A Showgirl is available now for preorder on Taylor Swift’s official website in four different variants, including the “Sweat and Vanilla Perfume” edition, the “It’s Frightening” edition, the “It’s Rapturous” edition and the “It’s Beautiful” edition. Each edition includes unique artwork and photo cards, plus a jewelry box containing a different collectible charm bracelet. The project is available on a glittery orange cassette, a glittery orange vinyl, or a CD.
The Life Of A Showgirl follows Taylor Swift’s previous album, The Tortured Poets Department, produced by Swift, Jack Antonoff, Aaron Dessner and Patrik Berger.
