Is this thing on?

Taylor Swift released a series of voice memos around the making of The Life of A Showgirl but they might end up revealing more than she wants

In 2017, Taylor Swift released reputation with the tagline “there will be no explanation, there will just be reputation.” It was clever, if a little coy; while the era did feel bare of Taylor Swift appearances, she still promoted quite a bit, especially with her AT&T partnership to release a series of short videos around “The Making of a Song.” These video diaries took us through the songwriting process for almost every track. From day one, to studio time, and sometimes the final recording. You can see her working out “gorgeous” by herself on the piano or experimenting with with Max Martin and Shellback on the chords for “I did something bad” or, of course, the instantly iconic bridge session for “getaway car” with Jack Antonoff. It remains to this day one of my favorite things she’s done.

I revisited them this week. Sort of as a palette cleanser. Also as reassurance that they were actually, you know, as good as I remember. Which they are.

She’s brought us behind the curtain for awhile now (1989 had a deluxe edition that had three recordings I can almost recite by memory; Tortured Poets Department had at least one variant with early first drafts of songs highlighting changed). So it wasn’t a surprise when she started pushing a series of voice memos for The Life of a Showgirl.

In an instagram post shortly after her release date, she wrote, “Being in the studio and creating these songs was an unforgettable experience, but luckily I don’t ever have to forget it because I was recording while we were writing - and now it’s a way to look back on the process and give you guys a glimpse into how we wrote these songs, and hear the moments we thought of these ideas in real time.”

Of course, unlike the reputation videos, these were not free. In an effort to seal her first-week sales numbers as impossible to beat, she decided to split these across multiple variants—five to be exact, all mix-and-matched, all available for a limited time. There are about 12 voice memos scattered across five different album releases and no way to have them all unless you buy them all.

It was a pretty thirsty move for someone already annihilating records and it was immediately met with a tired sort of backlash, even from ardent fans feeling burnt out by this album’s 30-some variants. And then the reactions began.

@mfbenjiSaid with love ❤️ #taylorswift

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I don’t mind that she sounds actively bad in these (she was on tour still). And Max Martin and Shellback are famously less concerned with lyrics, more interested in structure, so there is a certain rigidity to these early drafts. And they technically aren’t terrible at showing the song-building process. “The Life of a Showgirl” gets two snippets, one an early look full of “wows,” the second a screechy bridge running amok on TikTok. “Elizabeth Taylor” is a lyrical draft focused on a hook, but it feels a bit thin with its POV. “Father Figure” has her pause the song multiple times to make sure they heard her lyric — “I said they all want you to rise, they don’t want you to reign.” “Ruin the Friendship” brings another hook she’s proud of even as Max Martin and Shellback struggle to connect. “Honey” shows the producers battling it out to make sense of the song structure. “Cancelled!” is mainly her growling.

Overall, they are generally more unpleasant to listen to compared to previous iterations. But there was something else nagging at my chest as I listened. Something that turned me off the album after listening to it (half-heartedly but exclusively) for the better part of two weeks.

Unlike the voice memos of 1989 after a decade of people questioning if she really wrote her stuff or the behind-the-scenes of an album so sonically different like reputation or showing off a new collaboration style with Aaron Dessner on folklore, there is nothing gained from these haphazard snippets.

(Unless, I guess, your goal is to prove this album wasn’t written by AI). (Jury’s still out).

It’d be one thing if these were BTS videos released on her YouTube for free. But to share them the way she did—as valuable, as collectibles, as if they prove something—feels inauthentic in its attempt to prove authenticity. And the album suffers even more for it.

There’s something rushed and uncurious in this album, no hunger to prove something (a vindication in reputation, a new muscle in folklore, a heavy pen in Tortured Poets). This is less a project by an energized artist and more a deliverable by an insatiable brand.

Taylor wanted to write something in love (when her capital has never been better) and she quickly did it while her schedule aligned with the hardest “gets” in pop music. She mentioned in interviews an excitement at getting to work with them again but there wasn’t really any “we” in these memos. Instead, she comes across as inflexible, maybe pragmatic. She is the self-proclaimed father figure and she is in control. Of the music videos, the rollout, the easter eggs, and, for better or worse, she will control the end result of the music, too. These behind the scenes that used to contain some creative collaboration now feel more and more “yes man”-ified. There is no play, no aha moments or eager building on each other; there is only the practicum of matching lyrics to chords and making sure the structure holds.

The artistic process feels almost clinical. At least compared to other eras, she doesn’t seem all that interested in what she’s bringing to the table—or how others might challenge her. Her perspective, when shared, is a hollow enthusiasm for one or two lyrics, a nod to Darth Vader vs. Skywalker, the promise that Elizabeth Taylor has a rich filmography to pull lyrics from. Some people might take the freedom of a billion dollars and only invest in making things they’re really passionate about. But I suppose others might take it as a sign that the machine is working so might as well let it run its course.

The truth is, she’s a huge success. Of course she is. People can fight and argue about how and how long but the numbers don’t lie, the fan girls don’t lie, the fact that even I would try for tickets if she suddenly decided to take this album on tour doesn’t lie. But these voice memos? It’s not exactly reassurance that she is deserving of this record-topping career peak. They are half-baked, half-formed, and really mere vignettes of a fuller process that didn’t seem to even interest her all that much. She should have shown more or kept these to herself. As is, it’s almost an insult to what she’s done in the past, a homework assignment thrown together just before the bell rings.

I would say I’m curious what she does next, but it feels almost unfair to use that as some light at the end of the tunnel when it just seems destined to be…more of this.