泰勒·斯威夫特即将发布她的第12张录音室专辑《Showgirl的一生》，定于10月3日发行。这张专辑包含12首歌曲，并与Sabrina Carpenter合作了一首二重唱。斯威夫特与Max Martin和Shellback再次合作制作了这张专辑，专辑的封面艺术灵感来源于她在Eras巡演后台的经历，旨在展现巡演台前幕后的不同侧面。橙色作为专辑的主色调，与斯威夫特以往的专辑色彩编码习惯相符。这张专辑是斯威夫特在购回自己音乐版权后的首张新专辑，与之前的“Taylor's Version”项目不同，她表示这张专辑是她一直想制作的，并且不会有额外的“3am”版本。专辑中还包含文学引用，如莎士比亚的《哈姆雷特》和伊丽莎白·泰勒。此外，专辑发行期间还将有一场名为“Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl”的影院活动，包含音乐视频和幕后花絮。
🎬 影院体验活动：为了庆祝专辑发布，斯威夫特将举办一个名为“Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl”的影院活动，从10月3日至5日在部分影院上映。该活动时长89分钟，将包含专辑相关片段、音乐视频（包括主打单曲“The Fate of Ophelia”）、歌词视频以及斯威夫特对歌曲的个人分享，并允许观众在观影过程中唱歌跳舞。
"The Life of a Showgirl" will be released on October 3.
Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott/TAS Rights Management
Taylor Swift's 12th studio album, "The Life of a Showgirl," will be released on October 3.The tracklist includes 12 songs and a duet with Sabrina Carpenter.Swift reunited with Max Martin and Shellback to co-produce the album.
Taylor Swift fans rejoice: The chart-topping pop star, who's been largely avoiding the spotlight since concluding the Eras Tour last December, has officially set another new era in motion.
Swift announced Tuesday that her 12th studio album is titled "The Life of a Showgirl." She made the big reveal in a teaser for her appearance on "New Heights," the podcast hosted by her now-fiancé, Travis Kelce, and his brother, Jason Kelce.
When the full episode premiered, Swift simultaneously revealed the album cover, tracklist, and release date — October 3 — on social media.
During the episode itself, Swift also shared more details about the album's aesthetic, explaining how the cover art was inspired by her behind-the-scenes experience of the Eras Tour.
"My day ends with me in a bathtub, not usually in a bedazzled dress," Swift said on "New Heights." "I wanted to glamorize all the different aspects of how the tour felt."
"The reason I wanted to have an offstage moment as the main album cover is because the album isn't really about what happened to me onstage, but what I was going through offstage."
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The singer's most attentive followers, aka "Swifties," are constantly keeping an eye out for Easter eggs and hints of new music — but speculation ramped up earlier that week when Taylor Nation, the social media arm of Swift's PR team, shared a collection of 12 photos from the Eras Tour, all of Swift wearing different shades of orange.
The caption said, "Thinking about when she said 'See you next era…'" with a burning-heart emoji.
Even casual observers of Swift may recognize her custom of color-coding album cycles. Each color usually corresponds with the album's artwork and, in some cases, its lyrics and themes.
Such was the case for 2012's "Red," named for the color Swift associates with passionate, reckless love affairs, and 2017's "Reputation," an album whose black-and-white aesthetic was partially intended to evoke newsprint. Orange had yet to be associated with any other album in Swift's catalog.
Later that day, Swift's official website was updated with a countdown to 12:12 a.m. on Tuesday, August 12, set against a sparkly orange backdrop. (The numeric repetition is another of Swift's calling cards.)
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"The Life of a Showgirl" will be Swift's first new album since announcing that she bought back her masters, giving her complete ownership of her musical catalog and effectively rendering her "Taylor's Version" project moot. Before the purchase was made public in May, Swifties had been eagerly anticipating the rerecorded version of "Reputation," her fan-favorite sixth album — though Swift has since confessed she has no imminent plans to release it.
"To be perfectly honest, it's the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn't be improved upon by redoing it," Swift wrote in an open letter to fans. She added that she did finish rerecording her self-titled debut album — the only other missing entry in the "Taylor's Version" series — though she didn't clarify when it might come to light.
"Those two albums can still have their moments to reemerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about," she wrote. "But if it happens, it won't be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now."
The tracklist includes 12 songs and a duet with Sabrina Carpenter
Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter perform together during the Eras Tour.
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In the final photo that Taylor Nation shared on Instagram, Swift is singing onstage with Sabrina Carpenter, her fan-turned-protégé and Eras Tour opener.
Swifties took the inclusion as a clue that Carpenter is featured on "The Life of a Showgirl" — a theory that was proven correct when Swift shared the official tracklist. The album's closer and titular track is a duet with Carpenter.
Other song titles include "The Fate of Ophelia," a reference to the tragic heroine in Shakespeare's "Hamlet," and "Elizabeth Taylor," named after the famous '50s movie star.
Among many other literary references, Swift has included nods to both Shakespeare and Elizabeth Taylor in past songs; one of her most famous hits, 2008's "Love Story," is an optimistic twist on "Romeo + Juliet." Meanwhile, Elizabeth Taylor is name-dropped in the 2017 single "…Ready For It?"
Also notable: Track 10 on "The Life of a Showgirl" is titled "Cancelled!" and stylized in all caps. Swift ruminated on the psychological effects of "cancel culture" and celebrity worship throughout "Reputation," as well as the "TTPD" standout track, "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?"
Swift reunited with Max Martin and Shellback to co-produce 'The Life of a Showgirl'
Max Martin attends Spotify's Inaugural Secret Genius Awards in 2017.
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Though he is famously private and media-averse, Max Martin is known as one of the music industry's most iconic hitmakers, dating back to '90s hits like "I Want You Back" by *NSYNC, "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys, and "...Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears.
Martin began working with Shellback, a fellow Swede, in the mid-aughts. Together, they co-produced the biggest hits from Swift's beloved album "Red" ("22," "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," and "I Knew You Were Trouble") and much of her subsequent pair of pop blockbusters, "1989" and "Reputation."
During the episode of "New Heights," Swift described Martin as her "mentor" and said he and Shellback helped make some of her favorite songs in her discography, including "Shake It Off," "Blank Space," "Style," and "Delicate."
"We've never actually made an album before where it's just the three of us. There's no other collaborators. It's just the three of us making a focused album," she explained. "It felt like catching lightning in a bottle."
As one might suspect from the duo's participation, Swift confirmed that she considers "The Life of a Showgirl" to be full of "bangers" and "melodies that were so infectious that you're almost angry at it."
"I essentially said to him, I want to be as proud of an album as I am of the Eras Tour, and for the same reasons," Swift said of Martin. She even said she would fly to Sweden in between shows to work on music with him.
"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. It just comes from like the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life," she continued. "And so that effervescence has come through on this record."
Swift has already shut down theories of a double album
"The Life of a Showgirl" was co-produced by Taylor Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback.
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For her previous two albums, Swift surprise-released another set of songs just a few hours after they each dropped, dubbed "Midnights (3am Edition)" and "The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology," respectively.
In the latter's case, this nearly doubled the length of "The Tortured Poets Department," making it her bulkiest album to date with 31 songs — a decision that drew plenty of criticism.
Fans had already begun speculating that Swift was planning a similar surprise for "The Life of a Showgirl," but she has denied that's the case.
"With 'Tortured Poets Department,' I was like, 'Here's a data dump of everything I thought, felt, and experienced in two or three years. Here's 31 songs.' This is 12. There's not a 13th, there's not other ones coming," Swift said on "New Heights."
"This is the record I've been wanting to make for a very long time," she added. "Every single song is on this album for hundreds of reasons, you know, and you couldn't take one out, and it'd be the same album. You couldn't add one. It's just right."
However, Swift still arranged an extra treat for fans: A theatrical 'release party'
"The Life of a Showgirl" is Taylor Swift's 12th studio album.
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Two weeks before the album's release, Swift revealed that "The Life of a Showgirl" would be accompanied by a limited-run cinematic event.
"Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl" will be screened in select movie theaters from October 3 to 5. It is not a feature film but a montage of album-related clips, including a music video for "The Fate of Ophelia," which will be promoted as the album's lead single.
According to Variety, which broke the news, "Other elements in the program's promised 89-minute running time will include footage shot behind the scenes at the 'Ophelia' video shoot, lyric videos for other songs on the album, and Swift's 'never-before-seen personal reflections' about those new songs."
"I hereby invite you to a dazzling soirée," Swift wrote. "Looks like it's time to brush off that Eras Tour outfit or orange cardigan… Tickets are on sale now. Dancing is optional but very much encouraged."
