the life of a showgirl open thread

still someone said, "she's sincere," so I'm here

Here we are, at the release day eve of a showgirl. I bought a cheery orange sweater under the assumption that in October it would be cool, in terms of the weather. It is not cool, in terms of the weather, which is also not cool, in the slang sense of being desirable. Now what am I gonna do with this orange sweater, I ask you? This is the only weekend of the year in which it’s legal to wear orange!

just remember, no matter how much you need to touch grass, somebody else needs to touch grass even more

As with the TTPD open thread, I am paywalling the comments section so people can feel free to be cringe if they want with a certain level of privacy. If you want to hang but can’t afford to subscribe, reply to this email and I’ll comp you. I’m supposed to review the album elsewhere, so if all goes well that will probably appear next week sometime. (I will post it here in my usual “new writing” fashion.)

As far as Showgirl rollout goes, I’m hoping that Taylor’s appearance on BBC Radio 1 means we’re going to get a new set of Live Lounge appearances. Her prior appearances have been great:¹

I’m going to declare this thread a leak-free zone. The album will be out in a few hours and then we’ll all be on the same page, you know? Stuff Taylor herself has done (her various lyric drops) are not leaks and are fair game. But this is my house (metaphorically speaking) and I do not enjoy leaks, so don’t mention them.²

That said, I am interested that Taylor’s approach to leaks this time seems to be more “resignation” than it has been in the past. The cover and some lyrics leaked and… she just acted like it didn’t happen! That’s new. It reminds me a lot of her approach to the Eras livestreams. There was a time (1989-ish?) where if you posted video from a Taylor concert it would get copyright struck. The landscape has changed. But certainly up through TTPD, she cared a lot about leaks, and the release styles of both Midnights and TTPD seemed designed to frustrate people who thought they could listen to the leaks and then check out—sorry, assholes, there’s a whole secret part of the album.³

If I had to guess, people who are really into leaks may just constitute a distinct subset of the audience and they don’t really affect streams or sales or roll-outs that much. But they do generate buzz, so they’re worth tolerating.⁴