Song: ‘The Life of a Showgirl’
Artist: Taylor Swift feat Sabrina Carpenter
US chart peak: 8 (so far)
Release date: October 3, 2025
Writers: Taylor Swift, Max Martin, Shellback
Producers: Taylor Swift, Max Martin, Shellback
Quintessential Max moment: That key change in the final chorus, just before “I’m married to the hustle”.
Video synopsis: It’s a ‘visualizer’, apols.

Sabrina Carpenter’s appearance on ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ is interesting in a myriad different ways. It’s a connection forged on the Eras tour, where this album was created, and where Sabrina was the opening act. Within that it’s a nod to the fact that during this time Sabrina went from bit-part pop star to actually huge megastar, a success that Taylor is keen to both celebrate and perhaps tacitly bask in via her assist. Sabrina’s playful, nudge-nudge wink-wink musical style is also boiled down to its basic essence on the album’s ‘Wood‘, a clearer nod to how Sabrina – who often collaborates with Taylor’s regular producer, Jack Antonoff – has re-shaped pop in her image.

But this title track is very much Sabrina entering Taylor’s world. Max et al create a soft scoop hybrid of trap-pop and country, all boom-bop beats and light acoustics. Taylor takes the first verse and chorus, before Sabrina takes the slightly more risque second in which Kitty (yep, she’s “pretty and witty”), the song’s showgirl subject, grew up with a father who “whored around” and a mother who “took pills and played tennis”. To be fair, both lines do sound much more playful paired with Sabrina’s airy vocal.

Kitty, AKA Britney’s ‘Lucky’ for the 2020s, acts as a classic Taylor protagonist, a star who everyone thinks has it all – the glitz! The glamour! – but is actually quite sad. For the first two verses, she’s the song’s main focus, a refreshing step away from the interior world of Taylor/Travis/Paranoia and into some thinly veiled characterisation.

Of course this escape can’t last too long, and by the bridge it’s Taylor talking, referencing her status as pop’s Queen bee as she scans the pictures of her rivals who wish she’d “hurry up and die”. But that’s unlikely, she tells us, because she’s actually a cyborg built to churn out endless vinyl variants… No, actually, it’s because while her body may fade away, her various achievements will live on forever and ever. Which, regardless of what you think of Taylor Swift, is pretty undeniable at this point.