Taylor Swift has long divided the court of public opinion — and her new album does little to change that.
Following its midnight release on Friday, October 3, The Life of a Showgirl received mixed reviews from music critics. Some praised its razor-sharp songwriting, while others argued it pales in comparison to her most beloved records, including 2012’s Red, 2014’s 1989 and 2020’s Folklore.
Rolling Stone gave Swift’s 12th studio album a perfect score of five stars, with assistant editor Maya Georgi writing that the singer, 35, “shoots into a fresh echelon of superstardom — and hits all her marks.” Georgi praised Swift’s lyrics as “hilarious as ever” while also noting that she is “bolder than she has been.” (The song “Wood” contains multiple double entendres about Swift’s fiancé Travis Kelce‘s, ahem, “manhood,” while “Actually Romantic” is widely rumored to be a Charli XCX diss track.)
Variety also heaped praise on Swift, asserting that she is in a league of her own. “Nobody does it better, now or at any recent time, when it comes to delivering world-dominating pop that feels all the feels and doesn’t stint on the thoughts either,” chief music critic Chris Willman wrote, celebrating the album’s “sunny” disposition. Willman dubbed “Ruin the Friendship” one of the “prettiest songs Swift has ever written” and also applauded Max Martin and Shellback‘s “utterly pleasing” production.
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The New York Times, meanwhile, named The Life of a Showgirl a Critic’s Pick. Pop music critic Jon Caramanica called the project a “deceptively modest set of songs about the facade of fame, and what it takes to scrape it away and claw past it.” Caramanica opined that Showgirl is “a more cogent form of chaos than Swift’s prior two albums, Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department,” which she released in 2022 and 2024, respectively, though he admittedly yearned for a “hard pivot” like 2017’s Reputation.
Across the pond, the reviews were more unforgiving.
Britain’s The Guardian gave the album two out of five stars, with head rock and pop music critic Alexis Petridis commenting that it is “slight on tunes and still seethes with grievance.” He wrote in part, “Perhaps romantic contentment simply writes whiter than vengeful post-breakup bitterness, or perhaps it wobbles your judgment. Perhaps it was rushed. Or perhaps its author was just exhausted, which would be entirely understandable.”
The London Standard was the harshest of all with a one-star rating and a headline chastising Swift’s “penis metaphors and poor little rich girl tales.” At one point, deputy editor India Block even wondered whether she was “accidentally listening to a parody album,” lamenting that the 14-time Grammy winner’s “once-famed lyric-writing abilities … seem to be going backwards.”
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The mixed reviews didn’t stop Swifties — or casual fans — from tuning in, however.
Less than 11 hours after its release, Spotify announced that The Life of a Showgirl had broken the record for the most-streamed album in a single day in 2025 so far.
That’s show business for you.
