“Born out of pure gratitude” — Swift’s own description of the songs she wrote with collaborators Max Martin and Shellback in Sweden following The Life of a Showgirl — is one way of describing, to the best of my knowledge, an encore nobody asked for.
Showgirl was both a smash commercial success and a critical failure, dividing the Swifties, with most (myself included) siding with the critics that it is her weakest album to date. Swift had promised it would be a purposefully concise album, with twelve tracks and no deluxe or bonus songs, to maintain a high standard. She then released 34 different variants and, subsequently, the four-song deluxe, The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore, perhaps as a last-ditch attempt to push the album back into the conversation ahead of the imminent Grammy voting period. The problem is not that The Encore lacks ideas; it is that it has nothing new to say. All four songs repeat the original album’s themes while sounding like they could have been part of previous albums, undermining the sonic cohesion Swift was so adamant she had created.
When ‘Patient Zero’ was announced as a single, I, like many fans, hoped it was the start of a new era. Boy, were we disappointed. The Celtic fiddle hook creates a sense of yearning, and the vocal melody is hypnotic and deceptively catchy, but the fiddle serves no purpose once Swift starts singing, and the mundane verses convey no narrative. The premise of warning an ex’s new partner comes across as more of an “I told you so” than genuine concern.
‘Pink Clouding’ is by far the best song on the deluxe. It is a mature apology set to an airy and punchy synth-pop sound, which feels similar to ‘Lavender Haze’, and the modulations in the pre-chorus are sonically interesting. However, the writing feels like Swift on autopilot. Unlike the use of colours in her song ‘Red’, the shades of pink listed carry no lyrical depth, and the song offers no new angle on the story told in ‘Getaway Car’, which is a much better written song.
‘Cleveland!’ is framed as a love song to now-husband Travis Kelce, yet it is predominantly directed at Swift’s haters. On ‘Honey’ she has no issue calling other women “bitch[es]” and yet here she stops short of calling herself a “whore” and a “bitch”, with the words replaced by irritating gasps. The production, characterised by a cacophony of Christmas-like bells, sounds like The Office theme song crossed with the background music from a 2016 YouTube video, messily contradicting the bitter lyricism.
Much of the criticism Swift receives is gendered, so some defensiveness is understandable, but the song answers only surface level criticism and implicitly dismisses the critique that her quality of songwriting has declined significantly as she increasingly chases commercial success.
‘Babylon’ tries to conjure a bittersweet small-town narrative explored in both folklore and evermore; however, it lacks specificity, leading to a hazy narrative that doesn’t allow for the desired melancholy to resonate with the listener. “Twenty watches in the safe ‘cause your time is money” is a cliché, lacking the depth and uncompromising eye for detail Swift has shown through motifs like the scarf in ‘All Too Well’. The boring, watery, and overly layered arrangement lacks acoustic intimacy, coming across as cluttered and missing the refined magic of previous records.
Swift is still one of the greatest songwriters of all time, and no one can take that away from her, no matter how hard The Encore tries.
“Taylor Swift Eras Tour” by Ronald Woan is licensed under CC BY SA-2.0.
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