No album this year has been quite as anticipated as Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl,” but releasing a full-length studio album was not the only thing Swift accomplished this year. She wrapped up the Eras Tour, regained the rights to her master recordings, got engaged to Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce and on top of that managed to record and release her twelfth album.

“The Life of a Showgirl,” written and produced by Swift, Max Martin and Shellback, was released at midnight on Oct. 3. The rollout for the album intrigued me; it was full of easter eggs, dazzling burlesque outfits and mature theatrical poses that seemed slightly somber. However, behind all the album’s glitz and glamour, I heard nothing but bland pop and a star losing her fuel.

When I heard that Swift was not working with Jack Antonoff, the producer responsible for the albums “Reputation” all the way to her most recent 2024 album “The Tortured Poets Department,” and had instead teamed up with Martin and Shellback, who had worked on the pop perfection that was her album “1989,” I felt excited. I had blamed Antonoff for some of her previous albums’ shortcomings, but after listening to “The Life of a Showgirl,” I think that much of the blame lies on Swift. Although her producers have been changing, her music retains the same unremarkable and self-plagiarized qualities.

Even though the lead single “The Fate of Ophelia” is strong and the vocal arrangements on all the songs are very well-done, it does not redeem the album’s incredibly boring and safe production or its lyrical and conceptual shortcomings. All throughout the album, it felt like each of the songs had something missing. If I liked the lyrics, I found something about the music to be unfavorable. And if I liked the music, there would be a lyric so cringeworthy (for example, “Did you girlboss too close to the sun?” from “CANCELLED!”), or uncreative that it would break the already thin ice.

I have always regarded Swift as somewhat of a lyrical mastermind. Even when her songs often sound simple in their melodies, her ability to tell such vivid stories through her lyrics makes up for it. However, this album not only fails to be interesting musically—its lyrics lack the profundity and maturity of her previous works.

Take the fifth song on the album: “Eldest Daughter.” Swift intends fifth tracks to be the most vulnerable, so it is fitting for the song to start with slow, tender piano chords. However, whatever seriousness I felt was shattered when she immediately started the verse with, “Everybody’s so punk on the internet” and “Every joke is just trolling and memes.”

The issue here is not the concept but the execution. Exploring the facades of people online in the verse and later contrasting it with the candor and vulnerability of the chorus could be effective, but Swift’s use of slang and, in the chorus, obscenity, takes the earnestness out of the song. These terms come from internet trends and are often used in a joking manner by teenagers and young adults, so when Swift, a 35-year-old billionaire, uses them, it is reminiscent of when teachers try to make “six-seven” jokes: awkward and cringeworthy.

Additionally, “The Life of a Showgirl” is the most explicitly raunchy and vulgar music we have seen from Swift. Many on TikTok have defended Swift’s departure from her signature lyrical genius, saying that she didn’t intend to write poetic lyrics; she wanted to make something fun. To that, I say there are so many pop albums that do not have the most eloquent lyrics but are still enjoyable. Take Swift’s own album, “1989,” for example: it says what it needs to say without using the most flowery language possible. Raunchy lyrics, too, can be done well as we have seen in recent music from Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and even Madonna. However, they sound juvenile and out of place on Swift’s album, just like how the internet slang sounded on “Eldest Daughter.” Similarly, with the song “Wood,” it sounds as if Swift saw the popularity of her collaborator Carpenter’s most recent work and tried to emulate it, but failed.

The biggest issue, though, besides the awkwardness of her lyrics, was their lack of depth. Based on the title, I initially thought this album would be a deeper exploration of what it was like to be at Swift’s level of stardom, similar to “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” from “The Tortured Poets Department.” The title, evidently misleading, is only acknowledged in the title track “The Life of a Showgirl” featuring Sabrina Carpenter, which unoriginally repeats the same “being famous is not as easy as you’d think” rhetoric she has (more successfully) leaned into on past songs like “The Lucky One” and “Clara Bow.” This new addition is also sonically uninteresting, with a stomp clap beat that sounds like it was made to be played through mall speakers.

The only other place the showgirl theme appears is in the track “CANCELLED!” where Swift addresses cancel culture. She says that it’s a good thing she likes her friends canceled, most likely referring to her controversial and very public friendships with actress Blake Lively and Britany Mahomes. Regardless of who Swift is singing about, it shows a clear shift in her writing. Swift is no longer relatable; rather, she is just sharing her thoughts and feelings—and extremely distasteful and out of touch ones, at that.

The songs about her now-fiancé Kelce are especially unenjoyable, and it is not about the fact that she is writing happy love songs, which again, she has done well many times before (e.g., “Paper Rings” and “Delicate”). It almost seems like Swift has run out of things to write about and is instead making worse versions of songs she has written before. “The Life of a Showgirl” demonstrated, if nothing else, that for Swift to make good music again, she needs to explore new sounds and genres and must surround herself with collaborators who will give her honest feedback about the quality of her art.

While her days of relatability might be gone, Swift’s songwriting genius is still indisputable, as we’ve seen it countless times before. “The Life of a Showgirl” may have been an uninspired, awkward and out-of-touch release, but I still have hope that Swift can return to the level of musical talent we know she possesses.