I think my gripes with The Life of a Showgirl come down to a few overarching things that annoyed me throughout all the songs.
The primary issue with it is immaturity, I think. Taylor's giving that she wants to live out this high school fantasy so badly that she's aging herself down from a 36 year old woman to someone fresh into college, and it's a really bad look. I already thought this what with her general vibe recently, but the album has confirmed to me that this attitude will seep into all of her work henceforth. It feels like she got Youth-FOMO-TikTok-Brainrot and rolled with it.
Spinning off that, I specifically think she's trying and failing to be Sabrina. I love Sabrina, and I adore her music. I think she could have gotten away with a similar album to this one because a) she knows how to be cheeky, and b) her humor is extremely tongue-in-cheek and doesn't come across as flat and immature. I don't mind Taylor's raunchiness, but I also don't think it's coming across in the mature, sex-positive woman way that Sabrina's music does. It comes across as someone who doesn't do a great job with lyrical irony trying way, way, way too hard to emulate a much-younger artist so she can stay hip.
Speaking of Sabrina, as an aside, I loved her vocals in the title track. Didn't love the track itself, but damn she sounded good.
I've also never understood the "all Taylor's songs sound the same" criticism, and still think it's a load of bullshit when looking at any/all of her past music. But this entire album did, in fact, feel same-y. The only songs that felt unique or original in any way were Life of Ophelia, Eldest Daughter, and Ruin the Friendship. The others all felt like the same poppy, try-too-hard rhythm with different lyrics that honestly were nothing special. They were, in a word, 100% soulless.
I think the album also vibed super misogynistic, which was jarring coming from Miss Americana herself. Yes, misogyny isn't an isolated instance in the music industry, but based on her past willingness to stand up for other women I expected more of her. I guess I shouldn't have considering her recent "I wanna be a football tradwife Wi$h Li$t" behaviour, but I did. And the calling women bitches in every other track and constant glorification of men with the dick imagery (and literal ode to her fiance's penis) was so male-gazey that it was tone deaf as fuck.
There have in the past been albums that didn't immediately hit for me. Midnights comes to mind. But there was never a moment where I thought Midnights was absolute slop that should have stayed in the drafts. When TLOAS ended, my first thought was 'who the fuck wrote this,' and I stand by that. She got drunk or high or something, wrote an album, and somehow still thought it was good after sobering up.
