The first footage from Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl has arrived.
Hours after Swift’s website teased the completion a mysterious, glittery progress bar, the results brought fans to a seven-second video on the album’s Spotify page.
The footage was shared late on Friday, September 12, and did not have any sound. In the clip, the 35-year-old pop star was dressed in the same outfit from her “The Life of a Showgirl: The Tiny Bubbles in Champagne” cover shoot and adorned in red feathers topped off with a star-shaped diamond headpiece.
In the video, Swift coyly looked over her shoulder at the camera and struck a pose with her chin raised in the air.
Taylor Swift Reveals Release Date, Tracklist for 12th Album ‘The Life of a Showgirl’
The Life of a Showgirl, Swift’s 12th album, will be released early next month. She recorded the album in between shows on her record-breaking Eras Tour in 2024.
“I would do three shows in a row, [and then] I’d have three days off. I’d fly to Sweden, [then] go back to the tour,” Swift recalled to fiancé Travis Kelce and his brother, Jason Kelce, on an August episode of their joint “New Heights” podcast. “I was physically exhausted at this point in the tour, but I was so mentally stimulated and so excited to be creating.”
She continued, “It meant the world to me to have this creative experience, where [Max Martin, Shellback and I] knew that we had to bring the best ideas we’ve ever said. 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.”
According to Swift, The Life of a Showgirl is about “everything that was going on behind the curtain” during the tour.
Taylor Swift’s ‘Life of a Showgirl’ Breaks Spotify Record Before Release
“My main goals [were to create] melodies that were so infectious that you’re almost angry at it,” she said at the time. “And lyrics that are just as vivid but crisp and focused and completely intentional. I feel like we actually came together in a really beautiful way.”
Not only do Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl songs mirror her life, but the album artwork does as well.
“This represents the end of my night, like, when I’m on tour, I have the same day every single day,” Swift explained on “New Heights” of the cover, in which she sat in a bathtub wearing a diamond-studded corset. “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.”
Swift continued, “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.’”
The Life of a Showgirl will be available Friday, October 3.
