On Oct. 3, Taylor Swift released her 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” 

To say that I and many other fans were disappointed is an understatement. From her lackluster and overused electronic beats to her cringy millennial lyrics, the entire album is a mess. 

In the months leading up to the release, sexy burlesque concept photos were posted on her social media, building up the anticipation of the album. 

While the feather and sparkles aesthetic of the album concept is beautiful and flirty, the lyrics belong to a completely different aesthetic altogether. 

The album starts with a decently catchy song, “The Fate of Ophelia,” referencing Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” 

In the play, Ophelia goes mad and eventually drowns after her father’s death at Hamlet’s hands. 

In the song, however, Swift acts as if she is a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued by her male love interest.

“You dug me out of my grave and saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia,” Swift sings.

This song feels like it is meant for the male gaze and suffers from a lack of emotional depth. 

With an album inspired by a showgirl lifestyle, I was hoping that we would be able to see a glimpse into backstage life and emotions of a world-famous pop star. 

Instead, Swift sings with a victim complex, happy to eventually be saved by a man. 

The fourth track and my personal favorite, “Father Figure,” starts with a simple beat, accompanied by a raspy-voiced Swift. 

The lyrics of this song are very similar to “The Man” from her album “Lover,” as she explains the power dynamics in the music industry. 

This song includes references to the rights of her master albums being sold by Scooter Braun to Shamrock Holdings and their resulting public disputes online. 

Out of all the songs, this follows the “showgirl” aesthetic the most. All the drama of the music industry is featured in this song, making it the most compelling of all the tracks.

In all of her previous albums, track five has always been her most vulnerable and emotional song. This led people to believe “Eldest Daughter” would follow that trend. 

The song begins as a slow piano ballad, but quickly falls flat with extremely tacky and cheap lyrics.

“Every joke’s just trolling and memes,” Swift sings in “Eldest Daughter.”

Millennial dialogue continues throughout, particularly within the first line of the song’s chorus. 

“But I’m not a bad bitch, and this isn’t savage,” Swift sings.

This song has lazy and painfully hard-to-listen-to lyrics, a disappointing follow-up to her other lyrically powerful and thematically similar songs such as “mirrorball” or “this is me trying.”

The seventh track, “Actually Romantic,” which many fans have speculated to be a diss track about Charli XCX, is one of the better tracks on the album.

Although I love Charli XCX, this song is catchy with some decently well-written lines. Many times, Swift’s best songs are diss tracks, like “Bad Blood.”

Notably, this could be considered Swift’s gayest song, even though it is about someone being obsessed with hating her. 

“It sounded nasty, but it feels like you’re flirting with me,” Swift sings in “Actually Romantic” in response to the hate she has received.

More forgettable tracks include love songs “Wi$h Li$t” and “Honey,” which are about Taylor Swift’s fiancé, Travis Kelce. 

Travis Kelce is also mentioned in the song “Wood,” which is a metaphor for his penis, and not even a creative one. 

“CANCELLED!” is one of the worst songs I have ever heard from Swift.

Many people believe this song is about Blake Lively, one of Swift’s long-time friends. She was recently under fire for legal disputes with a co-worker on the set of the movie “It Ends With Us.”

Although it is not confirmed to be about Lively, the lyrics are bad regardless.

From wanting to be friends with people who are cancelled in today’s climate, to writing a lyric about “girl-bossing too close to the sun,” I find this entire song unredeemable. 

With a not-so-grand finale of the album, Swift features Sabrina Carpenter on the album’s title track.

During the Eras Tour, Carpenter opened for Swift several times, and they sang together on a few surprise songs.

As their public friendship has grown since the Eras Tour, it was cute to see that they collaborated. However, this song isn’t anything special. 

The chorus is nice and their voices flow together well, but it is just as forgettable and unoriginal as the rest of the album. 

Even though this album was extremely lackluster, $4 million in sales were made within the first week, more than Swift’s last album, “The Tortured Poet’s Department,” which sold $1.914 million in the first week. 

Between her 8 vinyl variants, 11 CDs and 7 digital versions to date, Swift knows what she’s doing to keep her fans and her money, and she has no plans of stopping any time soon.