Breaking Down Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl’

Popcast

The New York Times

Music Interviews, Music Commentary, Music

3.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For a rapid-response episode, Jon and Joe journey track-by-track through the pop star’s new album, assessing the highs, lows and hot gossip. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is our seventh Taylor Swift album together.
0:03.7	Is it?
0:04.2	As colleagues.
0:05.7	Seven as colleagues?
0:07.2	That's wild.
0:08.4	Here we are.
0:09.0	You're old.
0:09.7	And she just never stopped with that music.
0:14.3	Welcome to the New York Times Popcast.
0:17.4	You are everyone so punk on the internet of music music criticism. I'm John Caramonica.
0:23.5	I'm The Critic. I'm Joe Cascarelli, and I am the reporter. Taylor's most new album, The Life of a Showgirl, is out. It's out like literally right now.
0:32.6	This is as close to an emergency as Popcast has. We're here doing an instant reaction.
0:40.5	My review is out.
0:42.4	Your listening has happened.
0:45.1	And we're going to get into an album that, dare I say, is maybe slightly misadvertised.
0:51.7	Okay.
0:52.2	I feel like this is an album that was rolled out on New Heights. This is the
0:58.1	Kelsey Brothers podcast, Taylor's fiancee, Travis Kelsey, and you're thinking, oh, this is a love
1:04.3	album. She's engaged. There's the rock, the whole thing. It's not exactly that. So we're going to talk about which parts of the album seem to be on brand for that part of the rollout.
1:15.6	We're also going to talk about which parts of the album are very, very clearly focused in other directions.
1:22.1	And other humans.
1:23.2	At other people, not people who Taylor wishes to spend the rest of her life with. I did give this album
	...

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