Well...here we go, time for the Taylor Swift show this week and trust me, it's going to be more of a show here on the blog than any kind of show that was actually on Taylor's album"The Life of a Showgirl" but we'll get to that. Let's start with the top ten where to nobody's surprise...it's all Taylor Swift with "The Fate of Ophelia" at number one, it's pretty much the same across the top ten with enormous streaming.
"Opalite" at number two, "Elizabeth Taylor" debuts at number three, "Father Figure" jumps in at number four, "Wood" knocks at number five, the title track "The Life of a Showgirl" featuring Sabrina Carpenter dances in at number six, "CANCELLED!" stamps itself at number seven, "Actually Romantic" irritates at number eight (more on this song in the new entries but safe to say it being this high is infuriating), "Wi$h Li$t" cashes in at number nine and "Eldest Daughter" at number ten.
Taylor actually has the top twelve with "Ruin the Friendship' at eleven and "Honey" at number twelve.
Gains
There are no gains to be spoken of this week, thanks Taylor.
Re-Entries
One return this week surrpisingly enough with Teddy Swims at forty five with "Bad Dreams" thanks to his performance at the NRL Grand Final giving this song a sales push.
Losers
Nearly everything that's not Taylor Swift lost in the double digits this apart from from one song that only lost two places so I am going to focus on that one song instead of killing my hands by going through the entire chart so that one song is "So Easy (To Fall in Love)" by Olivia Dean which slipped two to twenty nine...this song would have hit the top twenty this week if not for the Taylor Swift album bomb. Sigh,
Drop outs
There were thirteen drop outs this week and most of these will return as the Taylor Swift album bomb dies off over the weeks ahead.
Well, I don't expect "Nobody's Son" and "House Tour" both by Sabrina Carpenter to return but I'd like to see 'Folded" by Kehlani and "Lady Lady" by Olivia Dean come back, both are good songs.
'Jealous Type" by Doja Cat just continues to suffer from Doja's album and itself just having no traction whatsoever.
We also lost long running hits like "Mystical Magical" by Benson Boone, "Eternity" by Alex Warren, "Messy" by Lola oung, "Sailor Song" by Gigi Perez, "What I Want" by Morgan Wallen and Tate McRae, "Sapphire" by Ed Sheeran (this song still weirds me out with that eyes exploding line) and "Yukon" by Justin Bieber,
Also gone is "Strategy" by Twice because I am surprised anyone remembers that song.
New Entries
So I am not left pulling my hair out by saying the same things about the Taylor Swift songs, I am only going to review rhe songs from the album that wind up being the best and the worst but I will give some general thoughts on 'The Life of A Showgirl" just quickly, fair to say as somebody who liked her last couple of studio albums spanning back to 2019's "Lover", this album left me feeling flat, disappointed and just tired, previous albums saw Taylor's songwriting mature and take on an understanding of why she is the way she is and she got out of her own way with the songwriting instead on "The Life of a Showgirl", Taylor cannot stop spewing immature, cloistered in her own shell garbage and including a song about her boyfriend's privates just adds to the cringe factor that makes returning to this album in any compacity impossible because the immaturity on display is not the kind that makes the album fun at all.
Anyway let's dive into the new entries we will be discussing as we have already gone through where the Taylor Swift songs landed on the chart but we aren't starting with Taylor Swift because...
46. "Baby Steps" by Olivia Dean
There is a part of me glad we got this song from Olivia Dean this week so it wasn't all just Taylor Swift in the new entries because this song is one of my favourites from "The Art of Loving" where Olivia is taking the first slow "baby" steps out of a broken relationship and learning how to live independent of anyone else including a man and while I am not a huge fan of the stuttered chorus but I do love how 70s soul this sould with it's gentle guitar and piano. I dig this and if you haven't checked out Olivia's album you really should.
8. "CANCELLED!" by Taylor Swift
The rest from here is all Taylor Swift and I wanted to write about the two tracks I feel are symbolic of the problems with this album which are of coursr Taylor's own song writing to the complete mess that the production is thus proving conclusively that Jack Antonoff was never the problem because this album produced by Max Martin and Shellback and it's some of the limpest production to date where the build up on this song amounts to nothing all while Taylor is singing some of her most childish lyrics of her career about how she likes all her friends cancelled and cloaked in gucci and scandal. It's juvenile, immature and you cannot have any fun to this because of the limp ass production. Next!
7. "Actually Romantic" by Taylor Swift
Or perhaps I shouldn't have said "Next' because this is the song where Taylor spectacularly misses the point of Charli XCX's "Sympathy is a Knife" and comes out looking absolutely insane. "Sympathy is a Knife" is about Charli's own insecurities and anxieties yet here's Taylor going "Ooh aren't you obsessed with me...well that's all a bit romantic to me really" like way to absolutely miss the point of the song you are pissed at, Taylor! Throw in the bland production from Max Martin and Shellback and this song is one of the worst on the worst album of Taylor Swift's illustrious career.
1. "The Fate of Ophelia" by Taylor Swift
So this is the best song on "The Life of a Showgirl" and it's honestly by some margin to me because this is where Taylor actually does show her song writing chops when she's writing about her own issues but rather other people whose lives aren't interconnected with hers and she isn't eating her own tail, this time exploring Ophelia, a tragic figure from Shakespeare's Hamlet and how she lost her agency and pledging herself to an honest and loyal soul mate, its a bit of a twee track but on the trainwreck that is "The Life of a Showgirl", it's one of the better songs...go figure.
However best of tthe week goes to "Baby Steps" by Olivia Dean, as for the worst...ughh...honestly,. "Actually Romantic" by Taylor Swift gets it because it beyond missed the point.
No comments:
Post a Comment