Taylor Swift has revealed more details about her upcoming album, The Life of a Showgirl, which includes a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter on the title track and will be released 3 October.
The singer shared the cover and track listing for The Life of a Showgirl on Wednesday night, timed for her appearance on her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s podcast New Heights, which he hosts with his brother, the former fellow professional footballer Jason Kelce.
The Life of a Showgirl has 12 tracks – a nod to this being her 12th album – and includes a cover of George Michael’s 1987 song Father Figure.
Swift told the Kelce brothers that the album was recorded in Europe while she was on her global Eras tour and is inspired by her life while spending two years on the road. The Eras tour became the first billion-dollar tour in history and ended up making more than US$2bn over 21 months.
“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” she said. “I’m so proud of it. And it comes from the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life, so that effervescence has come through on this record. So as you said, bangers.”
Unlike her previous album, The Tortured Poets Department, she would not be dropping a second surprise album right afterwards, she said. “There are no other songs coming … with Tortured Poets Department, I was like, ‘Here is a data dump of everything I have thought, felt, experienced in two or three years. Here’s 31 songs.’ This is 12. There’s not a 13th, there’s not other ones coming. This is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time.”
The track listing is:
The Fate of Ophelia
Elizabeth Taylor
Opalite
Father Figure
Eldest Daughter
Ruin the Friendship
Actually Romantic
Wi$h Li$t
Wood
Cancelled!
Honey
The Life of a Showgirl featuring Sabrina Carpenter
The album marks the return of Max Martin and Shellback, the Swedish producers who worked on Swift’s albums Red, 1989 and Reputation. Swift called the two men “geniuses” and credited them for working on her favourite of her songs including Shake It Off and Blank Space.
Fans have long speculated that her next songs will draw on Swift’s relationship with Kelce, which they revealed publicly in 2023.
“Every single song is on this album for hundreds of reasons. You couldn’t take one out and it be the same album, you couldn’t add one. It is just right. That focus and that kind of discipline with creating an album and keeping the bar really high is something I have wanted to do for a very long time,” Swift said.
“I tend to love to write lots and lots of music, so it’s a temptation to release lots of music,” she added. “But I wanted to do an album that was so focused on quality and the theme and everything fitting together like a perfect puzzle that these 12 songs for my 12th album – I feel we achieved that.”
Her main goals, she said, were “melodies that were so infectious that you’re almost angry at it” and lyrics that were “just as vivid but crisp and focused and completely intentional.”
Swift is known for dropping hints and clues for her fans before album announcements and her 12th album was no different. On Monday night on Instagram, Taylor Nation – a branch of Swift’s official marketing team – shared a carousel of 12 images from the Eras Tour, writing in the caption: “Thinking about when she said ‘See you next era … ’” Soon after, a countdown to 12.12am eastern time on 12 August appeared on her website, which was transformed to a glittering orange.
At 12.12am Swift’s website briefly crashed, before reappearing with scant details about The Life of a Showgirl.
The 35-year-old is among the world’s bestselling musicians, selling an estimated 200m records globally, and she holds the record for most No 1 albums in the US by a female artist in history.
Her last album, 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, set a streaming record on Spotify – 300m in one day and 1bn in five – and made her the first artist in history to secure the top 14 spots on the Billboard Hot 100.
