Song: ‘Opalite’
Artist: Taylor Swift
US chart peak: 2 (so far)
Release date: October 3, 2025
Writers: Taylor Swift, Max Martin, Shellback
Producers: Taylor Swift, Max Martin, Shellback
Quintessential Max moment: The chorus structure’s stop-start melody.
Video synopsis: It’s a ‘visualizer’, apols.

‘The Life of a Showgirl’s second-most popular song is perhaps the album’s most straightforward moment. Conceptually, it’s a simple journey from the dark to light (one that some critics have viewed through a racial lens), with Taylor musing on her previous relationships in light of the seemingly perfect one she’s in now. There’s a great, quite revealing lyric, early on which suggests that perhaps Taylor’s younger brother should do more critiquing of his sister’s life choices: “I had a bad habit / Of missing lovers past / My brother used to call it / ‘Eating out of the trash'”. In Taylor’s controlled world, where mistakes are usually performed by other people, it’s quite a bold move.

By the second verse, the focus is on Travis Kelce’s former relationship woes, while there’s a classic Taylor middle eight where the melody lifts, her voice shifts up a gear, vowels are extended and the song’s general dreaminess floats across a candyfloss skyline.

Musically, the most interesting aspect is the sickly sweet chorus, which starts with punchy staccato notes before smoothing out as it progresses into a classic “oh oh oh”. It scratches an itch in your brain to keep it rooted inside, so it’s no huge surprise that outside of ‘The Fate of Ophelia’, which is still at number 1 in America, ‘Opalite’ is the other song refusing to vacate the top 10. It has US radio mainstay written all over it.