5. Eldest Daughter

1. Musical Style: Pop-country Ballad

2. Literary References: "Lamb to the Slaughter," a 1953 short story by Roald Dahl; "Smooth Operators" links up with the '80s classic single by Sade. Oh, and she uses another line that you might recognize: "Never gonna let you down."

3. Key Lyric: "When I said I don't believe in marriage, that was a lie."

4. Favorite Lyric: "I have been afflicted by a terminal uniqueness / I've been dying just from trying to seem cool"

5. Taylor's Callback: The brilliant chorus of "Mine," and the line, "You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter" is foreshadowed with the new lyric in the bridge, "Pretty soon I learned cautious discretion / When your first crush crushes something kind."

6. TL/DR: Travis makes me feel young, innocent, and hopeful.

7. Previous Track 5s: Cold as You, White Horse, Dear John, All Too Well, All You Had to Do Was Stay, Delicate, The Archer, My Tears Ricochet, Tolerate It, You're on Your Own, Kid, So Long London.

In Swiftie lore, every track five is the emotionally devastating breakup song, and the list above bears out that belief. The only songs not directly negative are Delicate (Reputation), in which the singer is suspicious of her new love and unsure if it's real, and The Archer (Lover), ambiguous in its lyrics, doubtful of the future of the romance, and definitely not a love song.

Ironically, Travis Kelce's trademark celebration move is "the archer," miming shooting a bow-and-arrow, and Taylor mimicked his move on stage during the Eras Tour, particularly when Travis was in attendance. Sometimes the universe just aligns itself.

"Eldest Daughter" has the same tone of fear and doubt about herself and the possibility of love, but instead of putting the blame on the faithless lover, she indicts her own insecurities about love and overcomes them with a pledge of devotion and faithfulness.

It's an amazing departure from what track five has always meant for Taylor, and it's the clearest indication of how her songwriting has changed as a result of a relationship nearing the apex of its fulfillment. This is her way of completing The Beatles' declaration of "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah!" in her own unique way.

The opening verse is an indictment of Internet culture, that digital monster that has both celebrated and reviled her since its inception. The concluding lines, "I have been afflicted by a terminal uniqueness, I've been dying just from trying to seem cool" resonates as the deepest truth. We all wear masks online, we all want to go viral and get all those likes, but it's all an act.

She goes on in the chorus to disavow the expected trends; she's not a "bad bitch," her words aren't "savage." In fact, they're as vanilla and trite as you might expect from a lovesick girl to write: "I'm never gonna let you down / I'm never gonna leave you out."

Did Taylor just fucking Rickroll us?

At the heart of Taylor's lyrics is always that insecure, needy teenage girl who just wants to find love and a feeling of belonging. It resonates through the lyrics of all her track five songs. People who have found her lyrics "cringe" in this album have missed the point of it all.

Love and acceptance, in its purest form, feels this simple. "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah!" She doesn't need to ornament it with poetry this time because it's the real thing. 

This song compares the feelings of an adult woman in love to moments of sadness and joy in childhood. The second verse includes a marvelous callback to the "careful daughter" of "Mine" when she sings, "Pretty soon I learned cautious discretion." The physical injury of the broken arm aligns with "When your first crush crushes something kind." 

The lyrics of the verses and bridge are complicated in juxtaposition to the simplicity of her lovestruck vows in the chorus. Again, Taylor doesn't do anything unintentionally in her writing. None of this is an accident for the "Mastermind."

The bridge is one of the most gorgeous bits of writing and singing she's ever done, bringing the past and the present together with the lines, "'Cause I thought that I'd never find that beautiful, beautiful life that / Shimmers that innocent light back / Like when we were young."

The final pre-chorus tells us the rest of the story: "Every youngest child felt / They were raised up in the wild / But now you're home."

Travis is the youngest child, both literally in his family and musically for this lyric. In the past, Taylor's track fives exposed the pain that resulted from her vulnerable insecurities; this closes the book on all that heartache for her to make the honest declaration that had always been a lie told to her in the past: "I'm never gonna leave you now."

It's also significant that the music for this song is nothing more than a piano and acoustic guitar. All the rhythmic mastery that informs the rest of the album is stripped away, going back to Taylor's own musical beginnings, playing piano and guitar on her own. 

"Eldest Daughter" stands out as unique on this album as well as in the Swiftie pantheon of track fives by upending all our expectations about what this song was going to be and what she had imagined true love would be like. 

4. Father Figure

1. Musical Style: 1960s Jazz fused with late-Eighties George Michael

2. Literary References: "A Star Is Born" (1937, 1954, 1976, 2018), "Don't You Want Me?" by the Human League, "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo

3. Key Lyric: "This Empire belongs to me"

4. Favorite Lyric: "You'll be sleeping with the fishes before you know you're drowning"

5. Taylor's Callback: "All Too Well," particularly the famous line, "Fuck the Patriarchy!" Also, thematically, "The Man."

6. TL/DR: He said loyalty; he meant servitude.

7. Previous Track 4s: A Place in This World, Hey Stephen, Speak Now, I Knew You Were Trouble, Out of the Woods, Don't Blame Me, The Man, exile, 'tis the damn season, Snow on the Beach, Down Bad.

First things first: Look at those previous track fours...there was no way "Father Figure" was going to be anywhere else on the Showgirl playlist. Almost all of these songs deal with some kind of conflict, either within the persona of the singer or with an outside force.

I had an epiphany yesterday while thinking about this song and what I wanted to write today: nowhere in the lyrics does she ever mention the music industry! The first time I heard this, I thought it was a diss track to Scott Borchetta, the CEO of Big Machine Records, Taylor's first music label.

It may be that, but it's much more than that. It's natural to associate this song with the music industry because of its connection with George Michael, another singer with a famous feud with record executives who wanted him to look and sing in a particular way.

He broke away from this (and finally came out as gay) in the single "Freedom 90" from his brilliant album "Listen Without Prejudice." Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol to get out of his record contract with Warner Brothers. Taylor, of course, fought for years to regain ownership of her original master recordings.

All this background, combined with the general knowledge of how the music industry treats new acts, makes the song seem obviously linked to the classic story, "A Star is Born," in which an older man brings a young woman from obscurity to stardom, only to see her surpass him both professionally and personally. 

But that's not what we find in the lyrics. It's "The Godfather" (Taylor's Version).

Look at all the Mafia-influenced images: "I protect the family," "made a deal with the devil," "sleeping with the fishes," the emphasis on loyalty above all else, the flaunting of wealth (the Jag, the chateau, paying the check, pure profit, portrait on the mantel) all evoke images of the Mafia Don outraged that his protege has the balls to try to rise up and break away from him.

The crude line "Because my dick's bigger" is not simply for shock value; it's another callback to "The Man" where she insists that the things she does for which she's criticized would be praised coming from a male singer, and this line is another example.

It's also linked to the idea of "Fuck the Patriarchy" from "All Too Well" because it covers the hyper-masculine world of all businesses, but particularly the music industry, in which machismo and bravado is celebrated in men but wholly unacceptable for its women. 

Taylor is at the peak of her narrative skills with this song. It took me several listens to determine the voice of the lyrics and conclude it's the same persona throughout the song. On first listen, I thought the protege might have taken control of the narrative, but the point-of-view remains consistent throughout.

What we don't know, what is only implied and inferred, is whether the speaker is victorious or defeated at the end of the song. The final lyric, an echo of the first verse, "You remind me of a younger me, I saw potential," could be either an epitaph of dominance or a cry of remorse in defeat. Which one is it? 

Musically, the song is intentionally evocative of Michael's original "Father Figure," for which Taylor received permission from his estate to create, a fitting tribute to a talent who left us far too soon. Taylor and her collaborators also create a jazz-influenced bridge that carries us to the climactic final verse where the speaker boldly declares, "This Empire belongs to me," even though the wealth of that empire is owed to the talent of the protege.

"Father Figure" is a triumph of musical and lyrical complexity, and it's no surprise that Swifties are citing this newest Track Four as their favorite on the album. This Empire clearly belongs to Taylor. 

3. Opalite

1. Musical Style: 1970s/80s ABBA-infused Pop

2. Literary References: "Storm Inside a Teacup" goes all the way back to Cicero; often used in American idiom as "tempest in a teacup."

3. Key Lyric: "This is just / A storm inside a teacup / But shelter here with me, my love / This life will beat you up"

4. Favorite Lyric: "I had a bad habit / Of missing lovers past / My brother used to call it / 'Eating out of the trash'"

5. Taylor's Callback: "I thought my house was haunted / I used to live with ghosts" calls back to "Haunted" from "Speak Now" as well as the "Anti-Hero" video, in which this idea is literally portrayed. Also...

6. TL/DR: "It's not that big of a deal...shake it off!"

7. Previous Track 3s: Teardrops on My Guitar, Love Story, Back to December, Treacherous, Style, I Did Something Bad, Lover, the last great american dynasty, gold rush, Anti-Hero, My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.

If you're looking for the perfect pop confection, look no further than Taylor's track threes, and "Opalite" is the most unapologetically catchy pop tune on the entire album. 

The lyrics are simple: both the characters in the narrative lived in the dark night of sadness until they found each other; now they've emerged together into the sunlight of happiness. The Beatles said it a bit more simply: "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah!" Taylor echoes this simplicity with "Now the sky is Opalite, oh, oh, oh, oh!"

For the third song in a row, give credit to Max Martin and Shellback for their drum and bass composition, which drives the song forward, especially on the bridge, which is where the song quite literally takes flight.

Taylor's vocals soar upward as she sings, "This is just / A storm inside a teacup," and the emotional effect is like soaring into the air. The rhythm intensifies this feeling, leading up to the climax of the bridge in which she builds four layers of harmony with the word love, once again echoing what The Beatles did with the bridge of their version of "Twist and Shout."

Someone on social media posted recently that "Taylor's honorary doctorate should have been in engineering because she's so good a building bridges." I wish I could give that person proper credit, because the bridge is always my most anticipated section of all her songs, and the bridge on "Opalite" elevates the song from catchy to classic. 

This is the most infectiously memorable song on the album, the track that I loved the most upon my first listen. The link to Travis Kelce is also undeniable, as opal is his birthstone, and critics have praised its upbeat mood and lyrics, describing it as one of Taylor's most happy and optimistic songs of her career.

"Opalite" is certain to join the pantheon of legendary Taylor track threes, most notably "Anti-Hero," "Love Story," "Style," "Back to December," and "the last great american dynasty," all of which feature memorable narratives within brilliant melodies. 

This is also probably the most danceable track on the album, and Internet creators, particularly in the Philippines, have already created viral Tik Tok videos choreographing the song. If Taylor makes her own video featuring more of Mandy Moore's dance moves, it might turn out to be her biggest hit of all time.

2. Elizabeth Taylor

1. Musical Style: 1950s Movie Melodrama Score

2. Literary References: "Antony and Cleopatra" by William Shakespeare

3. Key Lyric: "Hey, what could possibly get for the girl who has everything and nothing all at once?"

4. Favorite Lyric: "Babe, I would trade the Cartier for someone to trust (just kidding)."

5. Taylor's Callback: "...Ready for It?" from "Reputation"—"He can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor, every love I've known in comparison is a failure."

6. TL/DR: "I wonder if I'll find the love that Liz Taylor couldn't?"

7. Previous Track 2s: Picture to Burn, Fifteen, Sparks Fly, Red, Blank Space, End Game, Cruel Summer, cardigan, champagne problems, Maroon, The Tortured Poets Department.

When I saw the track listings for Taylor's new album, which rolled out after her announcement on the "New Heights" podcast with Jason and Travis Kelce, I was most excited for her second track, "Elizabeth Taylor."

Shortly after, I got into an exchange with a young woman on Threads who had no idea who Liz Taylor even was. One of the most beautiful, talented, and celebrated actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Liz was also the most scandalous, going through seven husbands (eight, if you count Richard Burton twice, which she did) and enduring decades of tabloid journalism devoted to exposing every last detail of her private and public life.

Hmmm...that sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

It's no wonder Taylor chose another Taylor to write about. Hounded by the press for the entirety of her career, every relationship, big or small, detailed in every corner of the Internet, getting cancelled and moving to England, and performing under the brightest lights imaginable—the parallels of their life and fame are obvious.

The song is about that dynamic and how the right man overcomes it for her: "All the right guys / Promised they'd stay / Under bright lights / They withered away / But you bloom." 

The first verse spells out one of the reasons why Travis is different for her: he's used to the brightest lights, and he blooms under them. Before that previous quote, she sings, "Oftentimes it doesn't feel so glamorous to be me." 

One of the most important factors in understanding Taylor's life and art is that she willingly sacrificed having a "normal" life of privacy in exchange for fame as a singer. She asked for this life, so she doesn't have regrets, but she is a human being with emotions and desires, as was Elizabeth Taylor, and this tension between the famous life and the desire for love and security is the theme of this song.

The key verse and my favorite verse illustrate this tension perfectly. She is "the girl who has everything (fame) and nothing (love) all at once," but when she says she would trade one (Cartier) for the other (trust), she inserts, as an aside, "Just kidding."

Asides were a common technique for Shakespeare, who used the technique to allow his characters to speak the truth directly to the audience. The other Shakespeare connection, of course, is Liz Taylor's starring role as Cleopatra (no, I'm serious...this happened) beside perhaps her greatest love, Richard Burton.

Taylor and Burton also starred in the film version of the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," about a married couple fighting as their relationship circles the drain of divorce. Both on screen and in the tabloids, Taylor and Burton lived their relationship within that tension of public and private lives.

For anyone too young to remember Elizabeth Taylor as a person, she was famous for her violet-colored eyes, which Taylor Swift uses as the hook for her chorus: "I'd cry my eyes violet / Elizabeth Taylor / Tell me for real / Do you think it's forever?"

Very few people know what it's like to be as famous as either of these Taylors, which is what I think makes the song so interesting. The bridge is lyrically complex as well, saying "All my white diamonds and lovers are forever," which references Liz's "White Diamonds" perfume brand as well as the classic James Bond film, "Diamonds Are Forever," another tie-in to Hollywood, which she also references in the chorus ("Be my N.Y. when Hollywood hates me / You're only as hot as your last hit, baby").

Swiftie lore takes the track number into serious account, and by placing "Elizabeth Taylor" at track two ("Been number one / but I never had two"), she places it among some of her best songs, including "Fifteen" (Fearless), "Blank Space" (1989), and "cardigan" (folklore). 

The music uses lush Hollywood string arrangements underneath a modern rhythm that emphasizes bass and drums in the way that the first track establishes. The bass drop followed by the string hit at the beginning of the chorus is the most memorable hook, but I love the swell of strings in the bridge, which also serves as the outro.

Judging my social media reaction, many fans already credit this song as their favorite on the album, which is no surprise, as her past track twos have generated some of her most popular hits. 

The song is basically a question: Travis is different from all her past romances, but can she be sure that it will last? She wrote this song before their famous proposal, but while diamonds are forever, not every love lasts as long, as she is well aware. She leaves us with the last line, "Don't you ever end up anything but mine..."

"Mine" was track one from "Speak Now," in which a young romance turns out to be the real thing, the one that lasts forever. Yeah, she's that clever and that specific. None of her lyrics are accidental.

1. The Fate of Ophelia

1. Musical Style: 1960s Girl-group Pop

2. Literary References: "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare

3. Key Lyric: "Keep it 100 on the land, the sea, the sky, pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibe"

4. Favorite Lyric: "Tis locked inside my memory, and only you possess the key, no longer drowning and deceived, all because you came for me."

5. Taylor's Callback: "The Alchemy" and "So High School" from "The Tortured Poets Department"; "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" (video)

6. TL/DR: "Travis saved me from drowning in my sadness"

The most amazing thing about Taylor's first track, first single, first video from "The Life of a Showgirl" is what a bop it is, given the subject matter. Ophelia is one of the most tragic characters in Shakespeare's plays, a young woman whose love for Hamlet is used as a political weapon that backfires on her, resulting in madness and suicide. Fun times!

Give credit on this song and the whole album to Taylor and her musical collaborators, Max Martin and Shellback, who crafted twelve songs that use drums and bass so effectively. The rhythms on these songs are the stars of the show, and they are front and center for Ophelia right from the get-go.

Taylor said she wanted the album to be a journey through different eras and styles of music, and the Sixties Girl-group vibe is revealed through the first chorus in the video, where she is part of a three-girl group performing the song in a club.

Others have pointed out the irony of Taylor's reputation for being a, how should I say it, less than masterful dancer against the fact that the chorus of Ophelia resulted in the biggest viral dance craze of 2025 on the Internet. Musically, the girl-group influence is found in the layered harmonies the trio of songwriters create throughout the track.

The key to my key lyric is the number 100, which is the sum of 13 (Taylor's birthday and favorite number) and 87 (Travis Kelce's jersey number). Credit goes to the "Switched on Pop" podcast for pointing this out. 

There's no doubt that she's singing about her relationship with Travis here, but in a more allegorical style, reversing the tragic fate of Ophelia with the image of him saving her: "You dug me out of my grave; No longer drowning and deceived."

Many have pointed out, including Taylor herself, that her lyrics are not a direct revelation of her personal life. This is true for all poets; the poetic speaker should never be confused with the poet herself. However, the obviousness of the clues ("Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes") cannot be confused for anything else.

Taylor loves to do callbacks to her previous songs, something that many skilled songwriters do quite often (Sting is a master at this). Here the callback is not directly musical or lyrical but rather, once again, a "vibe," namely her two songs about Travis from "The Tortured Poets Department," "The Alchemy" and "So High School," both of which describe the vibe she has with Kelce.

She also does a wonderful callback in her video, where the next-to-last scene in a hotel room (#87, of course) features a band playing on the bed and a crowd of friends dancing happily, a direct homage to the same next-to-last scene of the video for "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" from her "Red" album. 

In the final analysis, this may be her best opening track of any album (my favorites include "Mine," "...Ready for It?" and "The 1.") The melody is infectious without being annoying, the lyrics are insanely catchy, and the viral dance craze speaks for itself. Ophelia sets the bar ridiculously high for the rest of the album; watch as she keeps jumping right over it. 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Taylor Swift...

Exactly one month ago today was Friday, October 3. I was fortunate enough to be in Destin, FL, with my wife, Amy, celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. I woke up at dawn to take a walk along the white sand beach beside the Gulf of Mexico and listened to Taylor Swift's new album, "The Life of a Showgirl."

Now at this point, if you don't like her music or if you are turned off by all the attention she garners as a celebrity, you're not going to like this new blog series. That's fine with me. Feel free to navigate away and ignore this blog for the next couple of weeks.

But before you go, remember this: there's no such thing as bad music. Before you respond, just know this—Nickleback, the butt of so many "bad music" jokes, has sold 50 million albums worldwide. Somebody really likes their music.

Two of my best friends, Steve Lewis and Mike Tucker, have wildly divergent tastes in music from me. We often converse about new songs and older artists, but despite our friendship, we don't have much in common musically, and that's totally okay. Music is subjective, and it's okay to dislike someone else's taste in music without making it a character flaw in the other person.

I haven't posted here at Blogger in a long time. The last series I posted here was in 2019 about "No-Skip Albums." (If you don't like Taylor Swift, maybe browse through those posts before you go.) That series is appropriate, because "The Life of a Showgirl" is a total no-skip for me. In fact, I can't create a ranked list of songs because they are all individually so amazing.

That's what I'm going to be writing about for at least the next 12 posts. I'm going to do a deep dive into each of the tracks from her new album. I'll talk about the musical influences, the literary allusions, the pop culture connections, and my own thoughts about each song.

My daughter Tori introduced me to Taylor way back in her career with the "Fearless" album, which will be an important touchstone for her new work. I was a casual fan of 1989, and incidentally, so was Steve at the time. I did not pay attention to her again until FB friend Shenandoah Lynd (another friend with divergent musical tastes) recruited me into the Swiftie life.

At this point, I went back and consumed "Midnights," which is one of my favorite Taylor albums (more of that one later as well). Following that, I encountered "Folklore" through the Long Pond Sessions documentary on Disney Plus. Shortly after that, she released "The Tortured Poets Department," and I've been a full-blown Swiftie ever since.

That morning one month ago on the Destin beach was a revelation for me, an experience with an artist I already loved unlike many others. Probably the one that comes closest is with my favorite band, Tears for Fears, and their 2022 release "The Tipping Point."

However, it took me several listens to TFF's most recent album to really fall in love with the songs, and at this point, at least two of them are regular skips. Each song on Taylor's new album was amazing to my ears on the first listen, and each subsequent hearing only deepens my love for the album. I would have to think for a long time whether any album comes close to that. 

Maybe "Wish" by The Cure or Kate Bush's "The Sensual World" are candidates for first-listen love, but those came out more than 30 years ago. This is new and fresh pop music, something that hasn't resonated with me for more than 20 years.

Final word: I like pop music, and I like popular pop music. I like hit singles. I like catchy melodies and infectious rhythms. MTV was always on when they only played music. I listened to Kasey Casem's "American Top 40" every week. This is my taste in music—it's very "vanilla old white dude," and I'm totally okay with that. I don't do edgy or avant-garde; I like what I like. 

If you're still with me at this point, here's what's next. We'll go through the tracks, one by one, in album order. First up tomorrow is her first single, "The Fate of Ophelia." I hope that some of you will come along for the ride. 

Photo credit: By Swift, Taylor (October 3, 2025). "The Life of a Showgirl". United States: Apple Music. Archived from the original on August 19, 2025. Retrieved August 19, 2025., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80734644

Chapter 27: Confused

 

“I’m confused,” Siannon said. “Asha said you had crossed over and couldn’t return. If that’s true, why are you here?”

He smiled and kissed her, and then he said, “My soul crossed over because I had no unfinished business. This is the part of me that will always be with you. Our life together, our love, our family, it’s all bound up in your memories, and it’s as real as the image of me you see right now.”

“Remembering you is not the same as having you with me,” she said.

“I know, my love,” Dylan said. “I would feel the same in your place. But you’ve always been stronger than me. You have many years of life ahead of you. I don’t want you to miss out on your next adventure out of grief. I’ll be with you in every moment. I won’t be able to talk to you after this, but you can talk to me, and I’ll always be listening.”

“Promise me one thing,” she said. “When it’s my time, promise you’ll come for me.”

“I promise,” he said. “When you see me again, we’ll be together for eternity.”

“That is worth living for,” she said. “I love you, Dylan.”

“I love you, Siannon,” he said. “You have mourned me well. Now live for me, my darling.”

They embraced one last time, and then the light from the amulet faded, and Dylan disappeared along with it. Siannon saw a man standing at the top of the chamber.