The Life of a Showgirl lyrics: 12 important details Taylor Swift fans might've missed

The opening track is a clear nod to her romance with Travis Kelce, as she sings in the chorus how the unnamed suitor saved the singer from "the fate of Ophelia," the iconic Shakespeare character who died by drowning after her mental health was destroyed by the men around her.

"Late one night, you dug me out of my grave and / Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia (Ophelia) / Keep it one hundrеd on the land, the sea, thе sky /
Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes."

Note the lyric, "keep it hundred", confirming Travis teased the album all the way back at the end of July!

It's clear Taylor is suggesting she herself is Ophelia in this scenario, and was at risk of spiraling away until her lover saved her, closing out the song: "No longer drowning and deceived / All because you came for me."

I also love the reference to how Travis wanted to get Taylor alone before her Eras Tour show when he watched her at Arrowhead Stadium, and their nickname TnT, in the first verse: "You wanna see me all alone / As legend has it, you are quite the pyro / You light the match to watch it blow."

"Elizabeth Taylor" opens with Taylor asking the late great Elizabeth directly: "Do you think it's forever?"

What the "it" is soon becomes clear, when Taylor sings "oftentimes it doesn't feel so glamorous to be me / All the right guys promised they'd stay," clearly referencing former loves Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy, and the constant heartache she feels; Elizabeth herself had eight marriages to seven different men over her lifetime.

She then goes on to sing: "Under bright lights, they withered away, but you bloom," referencing her new love Travis Kelce, who loves the camera and the spotlight.

It's also a smart callback to the song "How Did It End?" on TTPD in which she sings of the differences between her and Joe: "He was a hothouse flowers to my outdoorsman."

At first glance "Opalite" seems to be a love song for Travis, whose birthstone is opal.

However, on deeper inspection, its broader themes seem to be about the desire to survive and finding the joy in resilience through the use of one of Taylor's favorite metaphors, color!

The entire Red album was about how fiery love can be "burning red" while "Daylight" saw her sing enderabout realizing love was actually golden, and "Lav Haze" focused on the ways love can feel intimate.

"It's alright / You were dancing through the lightning strikes / Sleepless in the onyx night / But now the sky is opalite," she sings in the chorus, framing that transition from the darkness of the onyx color to the light of the opalite, and a new day.

"Mistake my kindness for weakness and find your card cancelled / I was your father figure /  You pulled the wrong trigger / This empire belongs to me."

Oof. "Father Figure" is giving the opposite of "Clara Bow," from The Tortured Poet's Department. No longer is Taylor singing in support of the women who came before her and after, and have faced societal and industry pressures. Instead, she uses a similar refrain, "you remind me of a younger me," to suggest disappointment in a protege, closing the song: "I saw potential."

Is this a response to the alleged feud between Taylor and Olivia Rodrigo? The pair were close for a time, and it seemed Olivia was being taken under Taylor's wing until suddenly the relationship went cold. More than likely, however, this is Taylor flipping the narrative on Scott Borchetta, her former manager who sold her masters to Scooter Braun.

The song is told from the perspective of what at first appears to be a businessman, promising to take care of his protege, and make them a part of the family, before it flips, and by the end, it reads as the Taylor singing to Scott, reminding him: "Whose portrait's on the mantle? Who covered up your scandals?" and telling him that he is now on the wrong side of the family, with Taylor singing: "This empire belongs to me."

And what an empire it is.

Taylor's track fives are always the songs that she believes are the most vulnerable and emotionally intense track on an album, and yes, "Eldest Daughter" is the perfect track five.

The lyrics recall the uncertainty of how to act when you don't fit in, when everyone thinks "apathy is hot," but you're unsure how to act if it doesn't feel like you. Throughout the song, Taylor references the things her younger self wanted and needed but pretended as she got older she didn't (such as marriage), as the Taylor of now reminds herself to never let her younger self down again, and to allow the people closest to her the truth. 

And the bridge is also a gorgeous celebration of nostalgia and innocence, that reminded me of "You're On Your Own Kid".

"Ruin The Friendship" sees Taylor going back to high school, singing about driving down "Gallatin Road" referencing the major road between Nashville and Hendersonville, where she went to high school, with a friend and reminiscing about how she "should've kissed him" and ruined her friendship with his girlfriend.

However, the song takes a turn at the bridge and returns to the more recent past, as it becomes clear Taylor is singing about Jeff Lang, her friend who died in his late teens by suicide; the Red vault track "Forever Winter" is also thought to be about Jeff.

"My advice is always ruin the friendship / Better that than regret it for all time / Should've kissed you anyway."

Yikes. "Actually Romantic" has to be a response to Charli XCX's "Sympathy is a Knife", right? Which... to me seems like a wild misunderstanding of what that song, from Charli's 2023 hit album Brat, was actually about.

"Cause I couldn't even be her if I tried / I'm opposite, I'm on the other side / I feel all these feelings I can't control," sang Charli, discussing how the comparisons she felt, rightly or wrongly, between her and another singer who was dating her boyfriend's bandmate (Charli's husband is in The 1975 with Matty Healy) were destroying her own mental health and relationships.

This song also highlights the influence Sabrina Carpenter may have had on Taylor, as the sexual references lyrics reach a fever point in this song, with Taylor's most explicit lyric ever.

Now this is what I was expecting from this album. "Wish List" (no, I won't be including the dollar signs, don't @ me), is about Taylor finally getting her picket-fence dreams with Travis.

Almost every song of Taylor's, especially from the early years, is ultimately about her hopes for this moment: "Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you... Got me drеaming about a driveway with a basketball hoop / Boss up, settle down, got a wish list (Wish list) / I just want you."

What was that I said about Taylor's most explicit lyrics? "Wood" now takes the title.

The song is, on the surface, about how, after two decades of singing about love and hoping and wishing on falling stars, picking daisies, and knocking on wood, Taylor has finally found the one. But you don't have to dig too deep to see all the sexual innuendo included, as she praises Travis for breaking the curse with his "magic wand".

I'm also a big fan of her reference to the now-deleted iconic and viral tweet that read: "Swifites when Ariana sings about sex and doesn't write it like 'he stuck his long wood into my Redwood forest and let his sap ferment my roots'."

We love an online Queen.

Several tracks on this album seem to reference Taylor's battles over how she is perceived, and also the wider issue of how women in business are perceived.

In "CANCELLED," she doesn't seem to be singing about any one person in particular, but suggesting that any woman who has been told she "girl bossed to close to the sun" or "was caught having too much fun" (a nod to the Red vault song "Nothing New"), is now part of her squad.

"We'll take you by the hand / And soon you'll learn the art of never getting caught."

Delicious.

Taylor nods back to her love of the color blue, which has been referenced in almost of all her albums, for "Honey," thanking her new love for "redefining" all her past blues when he calls her "honey".

There's a sweetness to this song as well, as Taylor sings about past moments of women and men passively-aggressively calling her pet names, but recognizes how when it's the right person, she can let down her guard and accept the words.

As we come to the final song, I can't help but reflect on how many references on this first listen I can see for the Red vault song "Nothing New".

That song was about Taylor meeting a younger fan who looked up to her, and warning her about about how the industry champions women and then discards them when their time is deemed up.

Here, in the title track, we see Taylor meeting a showgirl named Kitty, and asking her for advice and being told "you don't know the life of a showgirl, babe, and you're never gonna wanna".

But by the end, the protagonist has ignored Kitty's advice, and has become a showgirl herself, and such a good one that she is now forever immortal, her name and headshot forever on the walls of the dance hall.