As her fans are well aware, Taylor Swift just announced her next album: The Life of a Showgirl. It’s hard to believe that we’d be getting new music so soon after the end of The Eras Tour and before the release of her directorial debut. With every new album, comes speculation on its lyrics and tracks. With some lyrical data points, we’ll explore how Taylor has documented her life as a showgirl over several albums.

Taylor Swift on the scene

Scene is a loaded word. It could refer to the carefully choreographed sequence of events with live actors on stage. It could refer to the meticulously planned shots and blocking for actors in a movie. Outside of performances and film, a scene is the happening place, the place that draws prying eyes and whispered words. No one wants to cause a scene, yet everyone is interested in the scene of a crime. Whether it’s in Hollywood or New York, the celebrity scene calls attention. It’s full of beautiful people, who may also be talented, who may also be rich. If you can’t be one of them, you can at least talk about them.

As her music career grew, Taylor got closer to celebrity, a side-effect of her success. It throws its first much on that infamous VH1 night. While she recovered from the aftermath, it follows her through her relationships, patiently waiting for her next misstep in the spotlight. Taylor begins referring to this scene in Red, ditching lame parties at 22. In 1989, she escapes the same scene, full of hunters eager to track her down with their point-and-shoots.

Red | 22: It feels like one of those nights, we ditched the whole scene
1989 | I Know Places: It’s a scene and we’re out here in plain sight

Then came the second blow, that infamous phone call.

reputation is her response to the deep rejection she experienced and the manipulation of the ravenous celebrity culture machine. She speaks of tilted stages, rigged by so-called friends, and roles she was forced to play. Despite all the drama, she finds love away from the scene with someone who rises above it.

reputation | Look What You Made Me Do: I don’t like your little games, don’t like your tilted stage
reputation | Look What You Made Me Do: The role you made me play of a fool, no I don’t like you
reputation | Call It What You Want: My baby’s fit like a jet scene, high above the whole scene

Taylor has long loved movies, and compared parts of her life to her favorite scenes. During folklore and evermore, she revisits this motif as she remembers pivotal moments in her life. She also refers to another kind of scene: a circus. It’s cacophonous and chaotic, just like Hollywood when the veneer of fame is stripped away. It’s no wonder she has used high school and pageantry metaphors to refer to the celebrity machine.

Lover | Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince: Lost in a film scene, waving homecoming queens
Lover | Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince: no cameras catch my pageant smiles (performance of being ok)
folklore | mirrorball: And they called off the circus, burned the disco down
folklore | peace: robbers to the east, clowns to the west (Hollywood is on the west coast)
evermore | dorothea: you’re a queen selling dreams, selling makeup and magazines

In The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor faces her third blow from the celebrity machine: her love life after the end of a long-term relationship. She’s world-weary and heartbroken, and she is sick of people commenting on her life. Two decades in the spotlight have not numbed her heart, but bolstered her defiance. She bites back at every role thrust upon her, the siren, the bolter, the liar, and so many more.

TTPD | But Daddy I Love Him: Sanctimonious creeps performing soliloquies I’ll never see
TTPD | Chloe, Sam, Sophia, Marcus: I changed into goddesses, villains, and fools; changed plans and outfits and lovers and rules
TTPD | How Did It End: Come one, come all (this was a rallying cry to get people to the circus)
TTPD | Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?: I was tame, I was gentle, till the circus life made me mean
TTPD | The Manuscript: And the years passed like the scene of the show

Looking at the data

Films, performances, photos on Tableau

While she was creating spectacles for fans on The Eras Tour stage, the industry turned her personal life into one. It’s unsurprising that references to stage productions and shows explode in The Tortured Poets Department. TTPD is the first album where she elaborates on the gluttonous celebrity machine that swallows young women, chews them up, and spits them out. I’ve reflected on this before (Gone Girl and Taylor Swift: The prison of fame for tortured poets).

Critics will say she should have known at the wisened age of 15 that the contracts she’s signed, the invasion of privacy, and the cruelty of the press were part of the job. But should she have? Should any of the young women absorbed by the celebrity machine known the harms and horrors that waited for them on set and later, in bed? Should any of them have known that their bodies and beds were open for commentary? Even with the most supportive systems, no one is fully prepared for what this industry has waiting in the wings.

Hollywood, and the celebrity machine, is levied as a weapon against girls and women. If you’re in it, your life is up for commentary. If you’re not, they become the standard for your body, your fashion, your looks. It’s also an industry largely controlled by men and their opinions, oblivious to intricacies of the female experience. How many times have we heard that Taylor only sings about her exes? How many times has that affected how we think people view our own feelings?

Taylor created a music where our feelings are be validated, a space we shared during The Eras Tour.

What does this mean for The Life of a Showgirl?

While I don’t know what this means for new album, I’m certain of this: Taylor is like a one-woman show.

She’s the scene stealer, the murderer, the victim, and the bystander. She’s done everything right and done everything wrong. She is a mastermind despite her teenage petulance. She’s everything the public says she is and more.

Taylor is one, in a long line of women, who have offered their gifts to the limelight, only to be tossed from it when their time is up. At 36, Taylor has spent more of her life in the spotlight than out of it. Even as the medium changes, Taylor’s love of storytelling will always through. I wonder how we’ll see this cycle of celebrity and women reflected in this era. In any case, I can’t wait for the new album.