If youโre a Taylor Swift fan, one of your deepest fears this year might have been that the pop superstar will be so wrapped up in a long, rapturous honeymoon that sheโll neglect to bring us down by continuing to write about the bums that got away, or any lingering regrets that were accumulated on the way to the skybox. So it will come as some relief that three of the four new tracks on โThe Life of a Showgirl: The Encoreโ prove she has no intention of turning in her Tortured Poets membership card any time soon.
Meanwhile, the fourth track, โCleveland!,โ establishes that she also has no intention of stopping writing about marital bliss, in the giddiest form possible, with an unrepentant sunniness so blinding it could almost blot out the memory that sheโd ever written an elegy in her life. Youโve been warned.
However itโs packaged, these four tracks essentially constitute a new EP โ something she really hasnโt formally given us since 2008โs โBeautiful Eyesโ โ more than they feel like any kind of obvious addendum to โThe Life of a Showgirl,โ despite reassembling the same trio of Avengers (Max Martin, Shellback and herself) for the task. Call if what you want: as much as the world loves Swift as the 21st centuryโs quintessential album artist, itโs refreshing to get something fast and easily digestible from her between pop opuses, too. Hereโs how these four tracks taste at first bite:
โPatient Zero.โ When Swift thinks of a certain recent ex in her past, she does not think of Tim McGraw. She thinks of hospitals, and/or pandemics. One has to suspect that if โPatient Zeroโ has a real-life inspiration, itโs the same guy who inspired her to write that she was dying, emotionally, in โYouโre Losing Me,โ the scary post-โMidnightsโ bonus track that appeared to be about her longest-term relationship going into its last throes on life support. But as harrowing as โYouโre Losing Meโ was, โPatient Zeroโ is absolutely chipper, since sheโs singing about being long since recovered from the malady and remembering it only for the sake of warning the fellowโs current paramour about how his good-guy act wonโt be nourishing in the end.
The sound is very different from anything on โThe Life of a Showgirl,โ so it makes some sense to learn that this and the other tracks were recorded after that album was already out (and very long after it was recorded). The dry drum sound heard on much of โShowgirlโ is replaced here with electronic percussion, while the key bit of instrumentation is a violin, or something built to emulate one. If you didnโt know better, you might guess this was a stray Jack Antonoff track, since it doesnโt bear any of the obvious Martin/Shellback hallmarks. Thereโs a bittersweet, lopingly mid-tempo feel to it that we havenโt heard in, well, a fortnight.
Fans will point to her telling the exโs new gal that she should take the sisterly advice from โsomeone who had him and walked away,โ which does narrow down the possibilities of who it could be about IRL, if anyone. And from that, prompt the cries of โSheโs married, and she still hasnโt gotten over it?โ The point is kind of that she has. But good for her for keeping that memory mill alive; sheโs going to need it to keep writing songs that arenโt all white picket fences. Plus, we love a T-Swift who forgives โ maybe โ but never, ever forgets.
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