Taylor Swift is back.
The superstar released her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, on Friday, ending a nearly two-month wait after she first revealed the project on Travis and Jason Kelce’s New Heights podcast back in August.
The album, which includes one guest feature from fellow pop star Sabrina Carpenter, marks Swift’s first new music since last year’s The Tortured Poets Department. The music video for the lead single, “The Fate of Ophelia,” the album’s first track, will be released on Sunday (Oct. 5) at 7 p.m. eastern time. It’s directed and written by Swift, according to a release.
The Life of a Showgirl comes following a time of significant change in Swift’s life. In May, Swift bought the rights to the masters on her first six albums, putting an end to one of the most infamous disputes in music industry history. Music executive Scooter Braun had purchased her catalog with the rest of her former record label, Big Machine Records, back in 2019. (Braun sold the catalog to Shamrock Capital a year later, with Swift purchasing her music from the company for an undisclosed price.)
Then at the end of August, just weeks after confirming the new record, Swift and Kelce revealed they’re engaged, two years after the power couple started dating.
Swift recorded The Life of a Showgirl in between show dates for her European leg of her record-breaking Eras tour, re-connecting with legendary hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback, who worked with Swift on some of her biggest pop hits, including “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space” and “22.” The Swedish writer-producers are regarded as two of the most accomplished hitmakers in pop music, and their reunion with the world’s biggest artist seems to signal a return toward a more commercial pop sound. This album marks the first time in years she hasn’t recorded with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff.
“We’ve never made an album before where it’s just the three of us, there’s no other collaborators,” Swift said of working with Martin and Shellback on her New Heights appearance. “It’s just the three of us making a focused album where it felt like catching lightning in a bottle, honestly. I essentially said to him ‘I want to be as proud of an album as I am of the Eras tour, and for the same reasons.”
Kelce said on the podcast The Life of a Showgirl is “a lot more upbeat and it’s a lot more, like, fun pop excitement” compared to Swift’s more recent albums.
Aside from the record itself, Swift seems poised to take over the box office once again this weekend for a special Album Release Party that will feature the world premiere of the music video for Showgirl single “The Fate of Ophelia” as well as other behind-the-scenes footage. The party will be in theaters through this weekend.
The Tortured Poets Department was the best-selling album of 2024, selling a massive 2 million copies in its first week alone. Between significant hype and several collectible physical versions shared already, The Life of a Showgirl is poised to boast similar figures. Hundreds of Target stores around the country also open their doors at midnight tonight to sell copies of Swift’s album. Just how jaw-dropping will the first week numbers be for this album? Stay tuned.
