I have now been in my Showgirl era for over a week, have listened to the whole album many, many times and have had countless deep conversations with my equally Swift-obsessed husband and Swiftie friends in which we have disected every single track and analysed it in minute detail. Having pretty much thought about little else for the last week, I wanted to give my thoughts a week on from my initial reaction.
I love this album. Is it my favourite? No, though it can take time for a new album to really settle into a groove and take it's rightful place in the pantheon of TS albums. I am also aware that shiny new songs can sometimes be a little dazzling at first but lose their lustre a little as you get used to them, so my opinion of the album could change for better or worse. I love every single one of TS' albums so even if it were to end up near the bottom of the rankings, that's no source of shame with a body of work like hers.
I don't mind that there isn't necessarily an over-arching theme to the album. Lover is one of my favourites and similarly lacked a coherent theme or sound, my husband describes its production as maximalist which makes sense. Not that I am saying that TLOAS is in the same league as Lover.
I am also not really sure that there is no real cohesion between the tracks on TLOAS. It is very much a love album, an album about her both being in love and, for the first time, actually on the verge of marriage and maybe kids, things she's been covertly hinting she's wanted in her songs for years. It therefore seems understandable to me that she'd be a bit giddy about entering this new stage of her life and would want to celebrate it and this might result in some soppy or unusually saucy songs on the subject. I know a lot of people who don't really know TS' work think of her as someone who predominantly writes bitter break-up songs but this is a very unfair statement. Some of her most beautiful and moving songs have been written about falling in or being in love. Reputation, for example, when all said and done, is mainly a gorgeous love letter to Joe, recounting the hesitant exciting beginning of their love affair. Lover similarly contains some of her most tender songs, listening to Cornelia Street, knowing how their relationship ended, is particularly heart-breaking.
I think it is also worth assessing TLOAS in relationship to TTPD. Thematically and sonically the two albums are very different. TTPD is an extraordinary piece of work and, in my opinion, is one of the finest things Taylor has ever done, in all its sprawling 31 song glory. However it is, by and large, a very sad album, an album about heartbreak, betrayal and shattered dreams. TLOAS sees her seemingly in a far more positive, loved-up space. Is the final result as good as TTPD? Absolutely not. Do I want TS to remain miserable so she can write more songs like TTPD? Also no. She has moved on and I am delighted to move on with her, especially into what seems like an exciting new era for her personally!
My favourite songs on the album remain unchanged, The Fate of Ophelia, Elizabeth Taylor, Father Figure, Ruin the Friendship, Cancelled Actually Romantic and Wi$hli$t are all utterly amazing. I love The Fate of Ophelia and this English literature graduate, who has studied Shakespeare extensively, is loving seeing Ophelia's story being re-written to have a happy ending in a pop song, to complain about that seems extraordinarily cheap and pedantic!
Elizabeth Taylor is just wonderful, the lyrics, the vocals, the production, just perfect.
I love Father Figure. As a huge fan of folklore and evermore I adore her character songs and this is a great one!
I love Actually Romantic, I know some people have a problem with diss tracks but I think this one is bratty and cheeky rather than personal or vindictive, it is also funny, which I am not sure I could say about the song to which it is apparently a response, Sympathy Is A Knife, which while a good song felt really quite mean-spirited.
Ruin the Friendship is just a really beautiful song about loss and regrets and both my husband and I agree it should have been track five.
I love Cancelled, both because it gives big Reputation vibes, always a good thing, and because I love the lyrics, it's a nice show of solidarity to her friends who have endured trial by media, I know it's strongly rumoured to be about Blake Lively and I'm sure she'll appreciate it if so!
I really don't get the criticism of Wi$hli$t, I just think it's a really sweet, blissed out love song. She's not criticising people for wanting those things, most of them are things she wants or has wanted for herself. It's just an admission that people's priorities change. I don't get the absurd 'tradwife' accusations. I don't see how wanting marriage and kids makes you a bad feminist. I know not everyone wants those things but I find being a wife and mum awesome, still consider myself a feminist though! Do these people really want TS perpetually heartbroken? Is she not allowed to want really quite commonplace things for herself?
Addressing the Wood controversy, honestly, the pearl-clutching seems a bit unnecessary. She is a thirty-five year old woman. Do people want her to pretend that she has no sex life? There is a clean version of the song if people are that bothered. It's a fun, catchy, silly and raunchy song. It's also a very cheery song and clearly a Sabrina Carpenter pastiche. Anyone horrified by Wood will want to avoid Sabrina like the plague! I thought Wood would be my husband's least favourite on the album as Guilty As Sin from TTPD gave him the ick. I think Guilty As Sin is vastly superior to Wood but my husband was disturbed by a song whose lyrics apparently alluded to fantasising about Matty Healy, who my husband finds pretty repellant. He's cool with Travis so fine with Wood, I had wrongly attributed his discomfort with Guilty As Sin as having a problem with Taylor singing honestly about sex, which would have been out of character for him, but it turns out he just didn't like the mental images of Matty Healy it conjured up!
Do I have a least favourite track on the album? Maybe Eldest Daughter which I find pretty but uninspiring and the title track. I want to love it, it has some great lyrics and I love Sabrina so was excited about the collaboration, but it just isn't quite the show and album stopper I'd envisaged.
I love Opalite too, very catchy, though it's my husband's least favourite on the album, largely because he says it has a slight whiff of Abba about it, which he is decidedly not in favour of!
Finally, I also think Honey is a really cute song, another sappy love song but it hits right for me!
Right, I feel better for having typed that out, sorry for the epic post!