Taylor Swift will release her 12th studio album "The Life of a Showgirl" on Oct. 3, 2025.

Taylor Swift dropped her new album "The Life of a Showgirl" on Oct. 3 after nearly two months of anticipation.

Its earliest reviews came from Swift's fiancé, Travis Kelce.

"This album is going to make you dance," Kelce said when Swift announced the album on his podcast Aug. 13. He said it was filled with "banger after banger."

Now other critics have had a chance to weigh in on the 12 tracks, produced with longtime producers Max Martin and Shellback who she worked with on her "1989" and "Reputation" albums along with some "Red" songs.

Swift recorded the album during her behemoth Eras Tour, flying in and out of Sweden between stops to lay down tracks. She has said the album is inspired by the behind the scenes experience of that tour, which overlapped with the beginning of her relationship with Kelce. Songs reveal more about that relationship and her hopes for their future. One song, "Wood," gets particularly detailed about the intimate side of their relationship, and nearly every critic had something to say about the track. Swift also delves into some feuds, old and new.

Here's what reviewers are saying about "The Life of a Showgirl."

USA TODAY

For her 12th album, Swift shakes off the melancholy of 2024’s “The Tortured Poets Department” for a dozen brisk songs infused with the playfulness of “1989” and the velvet-sheathed-knife lyrics of “Reputation.”

But even though she’s still tossing out delicious snark such as, “Like a toy Chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse, that’s how much it hurts” (“Actually Romantic,” a bullseye smackdown that will incite internet sleuths), Swift is floating more than she’s punching. 

Read the full review by Melissa Ruggieri.

The New York Times

Swift is hungry — hungry to move on from the battles of her past and into the embraces of her future.That sentiment is all over her 12th original album, a deceptively modest set of songs about the facade of fame, and what it takes to scrape it away and claw past it. Swift has been pop’s alpha figure for more than a decade, a spot she’s clung to ruthlessly. “Showgirl” isn’t precisely a goodbye to all that, but it does cast a wary eye on her past while greeting her future with a glee that verges on the unbridled.

Read the full review by Jon Caramanica.

NPR

Despite these Darth Vader moments, "Showgirl" is generally a sunny album, its pleasure rooted in its basic motivations: Swift's happiness with Kelce and her joy in flexing in the studio with Martin and Shellback. The love songs that set its mood are unreservedly sexy and most of all funny — including that dirty "Wood" — expressing genuine affection and delight.

Read the full review by Ann Powers.

The Guardian

In fairness, "Wood" is one clanging misstep on an album that isn’t terrible: it’s just nowhere near as good as it should be given Swift’s talents, and it leaves you wondering why. 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. Even the immortal, it seems, sometimes need to take a break from pop’s constant churn and unceasing clamour for content.

Read the full review by Alexis Petridis.

Billboard

And while "The Life of a Showgirl" is composed of classically designed pop tracks, with standard verse-chorus arrangements and rarely exceeding four minutes in run time, Swift’s eagerly anticipated Return to Bangers is not, say, "1989" Pt. II. Instead of coming back with party tracks, Swift has synthesized the commitment to pristine hooks that she shares with Martin and Shellback, an increasingly idiosyncratic lyrical slant, and the mid-thirties perspective of her past few albums. The result is a collection of songs that are immediately engrossing and among the most affecting of Swift’s career, while also focusing on topics like Hamlet and suburban bliss. Call it Bangers for Adults.

Read the full review by Jason Lipshutz.

Variety

He’s flirted with writing an album focused on a love that is actually realized before — most notably on the half of “Reputation” that was about her then-burgeoning relationship and not about Kimye-gate. But on that record, even the happiest songs had a kind of love-among-the-ruins feel, where the romanticism seemed hard-fought. On “The Life of a Showgirl,” though, love seems easy-fought. And the belief that it might actually be a breeze, instead of, like, the eye of a hurricane, makes for an album that stands as close to being an uncomplicated good time as anything she’s ever done.

Read the full review by Chris Willman.

People

(Swift, Max Martin and Shellback) co-wrote and produced all 12 tracks on "TLOAS," her most radio-friendly collection of pure pop songs since her 2014 crossover album "1989." Reunited, and it sounds so, so good. Thematically, the record is the spiritual sister of "Reputation."

Like that 2017 masterpiece, there’s some score settling, but at the heart of "TLOAS,"it’s a love story. Not since 2019’s "Lover" has Swift — who got engaged to Chiefs tight end Kelce in August after two years together — sounded so head over heels.

Read the full review by Jeff Nelson.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Reviewers weigh in on Taylor Swift's 'Life of a Showgirl,' and one track in particular

Reporting by Liz Schubauer, USA TODAY NETWORK / Nashville Tennessean

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