Taylor Swift has declared she is 'the one to beat' as she prepares to release her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, on 3 October. The pop star made the comments during a podcast interview with her boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce, on his show New Heights. Swift revealed that until her record-breaking Eras tour, she had 'never allowed myself to say: You've arrived. You've made it.' The tour became the first to gross $2bn, surpassing its own record as the first billion-dollar tour.
Swift's new album arrives just 18 months after The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) and 10 months after the Eras tour concluded. She described TTPD as 'too wordy, too long, too downbeat' and said she craved 'focus and discipline' for Showgirl, which will feature 12 songs with 'melodies that were so infectious you're almost angry'. The album is expected to capitalise on Swift's immense popularity, with industry analysts predicting it will surpass TTPD's record of 1.76bn streams in its first week.
Swift also announced that she now owns the rights to her first six albums, having successfully negotiated to buy the asset outright. This ends her re-recording project, with only her 2006 debut left unreleased and 2017's Reputation barely started. During the podcast, Swift discussed her family life, including caring for her 73-year-old father after a quintuple heart bypass, and gave Kelce a lesson on Hamlet.
Critics note that Swift's consistency and evolution have made her one of the last monocultural pop stars. Annie Zaleski, author of Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind the Songs, said her reign is 'unprecedented' because 'she's so consistent and continuing to evolve'. With Showgirl, Swift aims to maintain high quality, admitting she has 'been wanting to keep the bar really high for a very long time'.
