Taylor Swift‘s first song off her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, has a storied literary history.
The first song on the LP, out Friday, October 3, is titled “The Fate of Ophelia,” which Swift, 35, noted during her August 13 “New Heights” appearance is based on the Hamlet character.
“He pretends he doesn’t know what these words mean, but he knows what these words mean,” Swift said of fiancé Travis Kelce understanding her lyrics. “He knows all the words, and he knows what they mean. He may not have read Hamlet, but I explained it to him.”
Kelce, also 35, chimed in, noting that he “watched The Lion King” instead. (The 1994 animated Disney film is an adaptation of Hamlet.)
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Swift’s song, however puts a fresh twist on the literary character.
“This song has some of my favorite moments in it, like, there’s a post-hook section that goes, ‘Keep it 100 on the land, the sea, the sky / pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes,’” she said on the UK’s “Magic” radio on the album’s release date. “When we wrote that, I was like, ‘Yes! This is why I do music.’ This is a song about feeling for a long time that you might have met a similar fate to Ophelia, who was driven mad over the years, slowly, by love.”
She continued, “Instead, we reference her fate, but we talk about someone saving you from that fate and how euphoric that feels to look at … and feel like you’ve been rescued by this fortuitous turn of events where you end up finding a person that changed that for you.”
Swift, specifically, found that type of love with fiancé Kelce, 35, who proposed in August.
“I heard you calling / On the megaphone / You wanna see me all alone,” she sings, referencing Kelce’s podcast shout-out asking for a date.
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Hamlet is one of playwright William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies and follows a young prince grappling with the death of his father and his mother’s subsequent whirlwind marriage to now-King Claudius (who is also Hamlet’s uncle). Another major player in the script is Ophelia, who is Hamlet’s love interest.
Ophelia’s story line, specifically, is famously a tragedy in itself. Throughout the play, she is often used as a pawn at the hands of the men in her life. After her father’s death, Hamlet ends their relationship over the false belief that others had been manipulating their romance, and Ophelia ultimately dies by drowning.
“There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds / Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke / When down her weedy trophies and herself / Fell in the weeping brook,” Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, says in the original text. “Her clothes spread wide / And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up / Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes / As one incapable of her own distress / Or like a creature native and endued unto that element.”
Gertrude continues, “But long it could not be / Till that her garments, heavy with their drink / Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay / To muddy death.”
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Swift even appeared to replicate Ophelia’s drowning with her Life of a Showgirl cover art, in which she poses in the bathtub partly underwater while wearing a bejeweled corset.
“This represents the end of my night, like, when I’m on tour, I have the same day every single day,” Swift explained of the cover. “My show days are the same every single day. I just happen to be in a different city, and my day ends with me in a bathtub — not usually in a bedazzled dress.”
She added, “I wanted to sort of, like, glamorize the different aspects of how that tour felt … to be at the end of the night when all this has gone down. You won’t be able to get to bed till 4 in the morning after this, but you had to jump through 50 million hoops in the obstacle course that is your show, and you did it. ‘You got two more in a row, but you did it tonight. That’s all that matters right now.’”
According to Swift, The Life of a Showgirl is about “what [she] was going through offstage” while on her two-year Eras Tour.
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While fans won’t hear “The Fate of Ophelia” until its fall release date, that hasn’t stopped them from theorizing about Swift’s potential lyrical allusions and parallels.
“Guys, the fate of Ophelia … Ophelia being Shakespeare’s girl, who went mad and drowned after loving and losing,” one X user wrote. “Like, imagine this conceptualized as the spotlight dragging you under.”
Another Swiftie pointed out that Ophelia dies in Act IV, Scene 7, which has a subtle connection to the pop star’s “New Heights” debut.
“Tay said 47 twice [on the episode],” the X user wrote, referring to Swift’s podcast numerology. “[Also,] Ophelia’s act is reclaiming her agency (Masters?) It’s giving, ‘When I was drowning, that’s when I could finally breathe’ [from her song, ‘Clean’].”
Swift, who was able to buy back the masters of her first six albums earlier this summer, has also called the project a dream to make.
“It meant the world to me to have this creative experience, where we knew that we had to bring the best ideas we’ve ever said,” Swift said on “New Heights” about collaborating with producers Max Martin and Shellback. “I also know the pressure I’m putting on this record by saying that, but I don’t care ’cause I love it that much, and I’m so proud of it. It just comes from the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in my life. So, that effervescence has come through on this record.”
The Life of a Showgirl is now available, and as a music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” premieres on YouTube Sunday, October 5.
