Mere hours after the launch of Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, mixed reviews began pouring in, polarizing Swifties and non-Swifties alike.Footnote ¹

But to Swift, any press is good press: four days after the release, Swift commented, “The rule of show business is if it’s the first week of my album release and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping.”Footnote ² Controversy and mixed reviews surrounding the release of a new album are nothing new to Swift, as seen in her previous album, The Tortured Poets Department; however, something more fundamental has changed in this most recent era.Footnote ³ The controversy stems from a dramatic shift in Swift’s marketing and business strategy.

Swift debuted in 2006 as a teenage country singer, writing diaristic songs about high school crushes, heartbreak, and an idealized America.Footnote ⁴ Natural, innocent, and unpretentious, Taylor’s entry into show business was centered around evoking a “girl-next-door” perception from listeners. Her family-friendly persona and curated lyrics brought about “a nostalgic longing for ‘traditional values’ such as monogamy, propriety, and chastity,” which helped revitalize country music to a younger audience and invited listeners to feel like confidants.Footnote ⁵

As Swift matured and began to step out of the confines of the “girl next door,” the public scrutinized her. Her response was to take control of the narrative. Swift released “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space” in response to criticisms surrounding her dating life.Footnote ⁶ After experiencing backlash from a feud with another celebrity involving a defamatory recording, Swift disappeared from the public eye for a year. Upon her return, she reclaimed the symbols that had once been used to negatively portray her, such as a snake in the lyrics and branding of her sixth album: reputation. Footnote ⁷ Furthermore, when her masters were sold, instead of accepting the loss, she launched an ambitious project of re-recording these albums to be able to own them and changed the rules of the music industry itself. Time and again, Swift has shown her ability not only to bounce back from negative coverage but to monetize her ascent as well.

To hone loyalty, Swift converted intimate reliability into currency by capitalizing on the parasocial relationships she had fostered. Swift’s early branding brought similarly aged girls into a special relationship where she would share intimate details of her life through her lyrics and leave coded messages for her most dedicated fans to decipher.Footnote ⁸ Fans could feel like they knew Swift the person through her online presence and fan-first priority structure.Footnote ⁹ Activities like “Tay-stalking” on Tumblr and secret album listening parties for fan-club members in her living room bred a loyal fandom. This closeness fostered loyalty with fans who went on to buy multiple album copies, travel for shows, and fiercely defend her online.

Swift utilizes a business strategy that creates multiple tiers for fans. Casual listeners can stream her music with very little friction, while the more invested fans can go down rabbit holes looking for clues, dissecting cryptic lyrics, Instagram captions, props in music videos, and buying her physical album copies. Rather than releasing only one version of an album, Swift repackages it, creating opportunities for fans to revisit and spend more time on material they love. The more personally and financially invested a fan is, the more they are emotionally rewarded for it.

Swift has extended this approach to her merchandise as well. As her marketing strategy matured, she reintroduced vinyl as an important piece of collectable media for each new album. This was especially apparent with her album Midnights (2022), where she released four album variants that, when formed into a square, created a clock. This enticed fans to purchase four musically identical albums and propelled Midnights to become immensely profitable from a source largely abandoned by the music industry.Footnote ¹⁰ In fact, this was such a successful strategy that Midnights sold more physical copies in its first week than any album since at least 1991, when accurate tracking began.Footnote ¹¹

In 2023, Swift’s stardom reached a new maximum when she embarked on the Eras Tour, which became the highest-grossing tour in history.Footnote ¹² Being her first tour in five years and having released four studio albums and two re-recorded albums, the induced demand was higher than for any of her previous tours, which had closely followed the album release. Spanning two years, 149 nights, and grossing over $2 billion, Swift’s brand transcended the typical boundaries of pop stardom, becoming a cultural institution.Footnote ¹³ While all her albums had always been lyrically and sonically distinct, the Eras Tour capitalized on this idea of independent but interconnected eras to sell Swift’s life progression and reinforced that she will never change, but she will never stay the same.Footnote ¹⁴

The promotional rollout for The Life of a Showgirl followed Swift’s typical trajectory, including pre-release photo variants, but was announced in a novel format: her boyfriend’s podcast. Following the Eras Tour, her guest appearance brought the larger-than-life superstar down to Earth in a more relatable way. She continued the long-form interview trend by going on several late-night shows as well.Footnote ¹⁵ The album promotion was a near-constant stream of scarcity marketing tactics. Before the official album drop, her team released eight vinyl variants and four Compact Disc (CD) variants that were only available for 24 hours. Release weekend included a novel partnership with American Multi-Cinema (AMC) Theaters to have a “release party film” for a music video debut, behind-the-scenes footage, and album commentary.

Swift released The Life of a Showgirl in an unprecedented chapter of her life where she was topping music charts, worth more than ever before, had just completed the most successful tour of all time, and was happily engaged. She marketed the album as “a step behind the curtain” of her new life, one of “uncomplicated joy.”Footnote ¹⁶ However, the album explores many subjects that led to controversy, such as sexually explicit innuendos, diss tracks at other artists, and wealth.

Swift’s market flooding, paired with new lyrical topics, represents the final culmination of a significant branding shift from her once “girl-next-door,” selling relatability, to a “showgirl” selling spectacle. From the shock of the provocative line, “Redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see // His love was the key that opened my thighs” in “Wood,” to a description of her mega-rich peers, “They want that yacht life, under chopper blades // They want those bright lights and Balenci’ shades” in “Wi$h Li$t,” Swift has shared her perspectives on life as it is: one that is no longer directly relatable to the common fan and breaking with the norms of her art.Footnote ¹⁷ With a career built upon relatability, the question remains: Can Swift successfully sell victory? Can the artist who built her fanbase on intimacy and relatability continue to sustain her audience as her world becomes increasingly unrelatable?

In the titular track of The Life of a Showgirl, Swift sings, “you don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe // And you’re never ever gonna.”Footnote ¹⁸ For Swift, being a showgirl is necessarily a figure that the public will never truly know or understand, and one that is forever larger than life. This departure from her more relatable past is a divergence for her brand, and success is not guaranteed.

Swift has displayed, time and time again, her ability to pivot, and as she quipped in “The Life of a Showgirl,” “I’m immortal now, baby dolls // I couldn’t [die] if I tried.”Footnote ¹⁹ The success or failure of this shift in branding will only be fully evaluated in retrospect; however, Swift’s response has been to embrace the transition but also to include some intimate movements in a novel format. While no longer directly relatable to her fans, she has recreated a similar sense of closeness and community through watch parties and interviews, illustrating how she has adapted and found new forms to achieve intimacy at scale.