On October 3, 2025, Taylor Swift will release her 12th album (which has been referred to as “TS12”). Written with a Swedish collaborator while Swift was in Europe on her recent Eras tour, the album includes 12 songs that her celebrity podcaster/football player boyfriend, Travis Kelce, has praised as “bangers.” The album is entitled Life of a Showgirl. I have previously written about The Tortured Poets Department and Swift in general for KOM, and now share reflections in anticipation of the new album.
In one of the cover photos for her new album, Taylor Swift looks like a Vegas showgirl from the time I first saw them as a child, except that her nipples are covered. When I was a girl going to shows in Vegas with my parents (yes, I know that’s a part of my life that might sound weird to some people), there would be hundreds of young women stony-facedly marching down stairs in stilettos as some cheesy music played. That was how I learned to tell silicone breasts from real ones: by watching the Lido de Paris in Vegas in the seventies. Now, after two bouts with breast cancer (two separate cancers, in opposite breasts, seven years apart, one HER2-positive, one triple-negative, both necessitating chemo and radiation and both of whose side effects I mitigated with acupuncture and cannabis), I think differently about breasts in some regards. I realize how dangerous they can be to their possessors, for one thing! But I still like mine.
Anyhow, this is just the personal train of association that came up for me when I saw that particular image. I know the images and song titles Taylor’s released for TS12 probably trigger many other trains of thought for different fans, and that’s part of what we love about her. While outsiders sometimes mock Taylor’s penchant for Easter Eggs and numerology, fans understand that these are mnemonic devices, cluster- or anchor-points that listeners can organize their own experience around. Taylor kind of specializes in identifying resonant figures and ideas that evoke many feelings and ideas for a very broad audience, attracting them to her work. (Two examples from the TS12 songlist are Elizabeth Taylor, the glamorous 20th-century movie star, and Ophelia, the Shakespeare character who tragically dies by suicide.)
If anyone wants to post their own associations to the TS12 songlist or images, that could be a fun thing to do as we wait for October 3!!
