Everything We Know So Far About Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl

Taylor Swift is dropping a new album.

A countdown appeared on Swift’s website against a glittery orange background on Aug. 11 and reached zero at 12:12 a.m. ET on Aug. 12. The website briefly crashed as fans flooded the site in anticipation.

Swift announced her 12th original studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, opening preorders but keeping many other details to be revealed two days later during an appearance on the podcast “New Heights,” hosted by her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and his brother, retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce.

About 20 minutes into the episode on Aug. 13, Jason tweeted that more than a million people were tuned into the livestream, on which Swift announced that the album would be released on Oct. 3 and revealed its artwork and tracklist.

The album includes a feature from Sabrina Carpenter on the title track. Some fans had speculated that the “Manchild” singer, who opened for Swift during some Eras Tour shows and is releasing her own album Man's Best Friend later this month, might appear on The Life of a Showgirl.

The collage-like album art, which Swift also shared in an Instagram carousel, features glittery orange all-caps font that resemble scrapbooking stickers. Swift wears an intricate, sparkly, revealing bodice that calls to mind the typical garb for the profession to which the album title refers. Additional photos in the carousel included Swift with more accoutrements of the showgirl lifestyle. In one, she wears a short black wig, giant pink feathers, and a crystal headpiece while sitting in an ornate dressing room in soft lighting. The caption credits Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott for the photography; the duo previously shot the album cover for Reputation. Mert told TIME in a 2017 interview, “I like when someone has an opinion and a point of view and Taylor had an incredible point of view.”

The album will offer a look “behind the curtain” of Swift’s life, she said on the podcast. She explained that the Portofino orange color symbolizes “what was going on in my inner life” during her record-breaking Eras Tour, while the cover represents how her “day ends with me in a bathtub,” she said, although “not usually in a bedazzled dress.”

“I wanted to glamorize all the different aspects of how the tour felt,” she added. “The reason I wanted to have an offstage moment as the main album cover is because the album isn’t really about what happened to me onstage, but what I was going through offstage.”

In keeping with the theme of the album, Swift also shared some personal updates on the episode with the Kelce brothers, including that her parents underwent medical procedures over the summer and that she has been spending time in Florida with Travis. “Our jobs are very similar,” she said. “To entertain people for three hours in NFL stadiums.”

Full tracklist

The tracklist for the album is as follows:

Soon after the announcement, “Eldest Daughter” was trending on X. Swift is known for placing particularly emotional, vulnerable, and raw tracks fifth on her albums, which prompted extra anticipation for this particular song.

Swift also said that she has no plans to turn the release into a surprise double album like she did with The Tortured Poets Department, her last album, which was released on April 19, 2024. “This is 12. There’s not a 13th, there aren’t other ones coming,” she said.

Producers Max Martin and Shellback

While many fans had been anticipating a reissue of Swift’s Reputation album from 2017, as the artist had in recent years released re-recordings of four of her previous albums as part of an effort to reclaim the rights to her own work, Swift bought back her masters earlier this year and said in a letter to fans that she was putting off the re-recording project for now.

Swift revealed on the podcast that she recorded her latest new work for The Life of a Showgirl in Sweden, flying in between Eras Tour shows. The entire album was produced by Swedish producers Max Martin and Shellback, which fans had speculated was the case after Swift shared a playlist on Spotify titled ‘And, baby, that’s show business for you’ with a cover image of her initials in orange against a light green background, the apparent colors of her new album. The playlist features some of her old songs, all of which were produced by Max Martin and Shellback.

It’s a departure from her longstanding collaboration with Jack Antonoff, who has worked on every Swift album since 1989, which was released in 2014, and Aaron Dessner, who worked on Folklore (2020), Evermore (2020), Midnights (3am Edition) (2022), TTPD (2024), and several “from the vault” tracks that she released alongside her re-recorded albums.

“These guys, they’re just geniuses,” Swift said of Max Martin and Shellback on the podcast. “We’ve never actually made an album before where it’s just the three of us. There’s no other collaborators. It’s just the three of us making a focused album.”

The sound will be “a lot more upbeat” and a “180 from Tortured Poets,” Travis Kelce said. Swift added, “Life is more upbeat.”

“It just comes from like the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life,” she said. “And so that effervescence has come through on this record.”

Easter eggs

The countdown for the new album followed other so-called Easter eggs, hints for fans that Swift is known for dropping ahead of big announcements, including a 12-photo carousel posted by Swift’s official marketing team featuring images of Swift in orange outfits during the Eras Tour. The post’s caption, “Thinking about when she said, ‘See you next era…’,” references the first page of Swift’s official photobook, The Eras Tour, in which a letter from Swift to fans ends with, “See you next era…”

The Kelces’ “New Heights” podcast also posted a teaser on Aug. 11 for a special episode on Aug. 13, featuring a “VERY special” mystery guest, which led fans to jump on the fact that Swift’s favorite number is 13. Shortly after, the brothers revealed that the guest would be Swift in a post that read, “Taylor’s about to do a f*cking podcast!”

August also appears to be a favorite month for Swift, who aside from writing a song named ‘August,’ has made five out of 13 of her album announcements (including re-recordings but excluding her first two albums, which did not have official online announcements) in August, according to Kayla Wong who runs a social media account dedicated to tracking Swift-related news through data. Most of Swift’s albums released two to three months after being announced.

In the hours after the album announcement, as many fans speculated about the details to be revealed, many Swifties simply savored the news. “taylor swift sensed i needed a reason to live and decided to announce ts12 this week,” one fan posted on X, while another said, “almost forgot the entire point of being alive is getting to experience a new taylor swift album.”