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- [00:00]
Diego Prime
Diego Prime Big dojs con grandes of herta se encocina la grande sestentos manos haci que si tener puedes con seguruno fer tension Abre pazo al baron del.
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Professor Stephen Dyson
Brioche, al visconte del viscocho y alconte de los cuernitos Miembro de Prime Juan California Hola.
- [00:26]
Diego Prime
Aprovicha horas acquirenta porciento de descuento in prime Big deal days.
- [00:30]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Limu Emu and Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car.
- [00:35]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.
- [00:37]
Professor Jeff Dudas
But now we want you to feel it.
- [00:39]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Cue the Emu music Limu.
- [00:41]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth.
- [00:47]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Customize and save.
- [00:49]
Professor Jeff Dudas
We save. That may have been too much feeling. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts.
- [01:00]
Marshall Poe
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts, and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:07]
Professor Stephen Dyson
I was excited when I saw the title of this album because we're two professors. And it did seem to me that there's a real sort of analogy between what we do and what a showgirl does. You know, it's all for us sequins and kind of glamorous, revealing outfits in the classroom.
- [02:20]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Without question.
- [02:20]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. And then it's just blood Sweat and tears when we're back in our office working hard on reading books and then going to pointless meetings. I'm Professor Stephen Dyson.
- [02:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And I'm Professor Jeff Dudas.
- [02:30]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And we are two professors who have just spent several hours listening to Taylor Swift's new album, Life of a Showgirl. We're here to give some sort of instant reactions as to the themes, the ideas that we see in the lyrics and the music. Jeff, you're a big Swiftie. You're also someone who spend a lot of time thinking about Taylor Swift's kind of worldview, how she presents herself in the culture and her cultural importance. You've been interviewed several times by publications such as Newsweek and npr. So a Taylor Swift album album release, which actually nowadays is called an activation, I learned. Oh, it's called an activation. That's what happens at midnight. Used to be you'd get a physical cd, but now it's activated. You know, it pops up on the, on the telephone. Anyway, Taylor Swift album activation is a big, a big thing for you.
- [03:17]
Professor Jeff Dudas
It's, it's a big deal. It's been a while since we've had new music from her and the really the last sort of music related element that we've heard from Taylor Swift had to do with her purchase of her original master albums and that was in the spring. We, we haven't really heard much from her musically since and she's been in a way laying low since the end of the big Eras tour, but always sort of hanging around in the public public eye in the way that only a huge superstar can actually hang around.
- [03:46]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. So it's 12 songs, 41 minutes. I mean my understanding is the, the last album was sort of this behemoth. Yeah, the, the critique in retrospect was that sort written in that period was, was kind of released. There wasn't maybe enough curation. She'd. Maybe the songs were, I don't know, a little interior, a little kind of self referential. This album is very lean. It's very short. 12 songs, 41 minutes. It's quite poppy in its, its sensibility and quite sort of, I don't know, outward looking. Is that a reasonable summation?
- [04:17]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, I think the one thing I would say about the pre. Her previous album, the tortured poets department, you have, you have accurately relayed my impressions of that album. I don't know how general those impressions are, but I will say that it was precisely that experience with her previous album that left me a bit trepidatious about this one. I had really Felt like those songs on the previous album on the Tortured Poets Department, they felt to me to be so interior, so self referential, and so specific to the actual events of Taylor's life that I had a very difficult time detecting the broader sort of outreach or points of connection with an audience that wasn't simply an audience obsessed with Taylor Swift's life. And I was concerned that she had maybe reached this, had gone beyond the moment of peak overexposure, and that it might be downhill from here, and that artistically she may have lost that capacity to keep her own experiences human enough or to relay them in ways that were human enough that they can make broader connections with a wider audience. So I was excited about this release, but I can't say that I was on pins and needles waiting for it. If anything, I was a little more trepidatious. But happily, I think it's quite good. I think it's a really nice return to form for her in a lot of ways. I agree the. It feels like she took her 12 best songs and those are the ones that we get. And there. There are the themes that we'll talk about that are pretty consistent. They're her typical themes right over the course of her career. But I think she. She's got a lean and tight set of songs here that are much more immediately arresting and grabbing and intention inducing. And they are critically varied. Each of the songs sounds different of a piece with one another, but different enough that you don't get lost in this kind of miasma of tone and atmosphere. So I'm pretty enthusiastic so far with the new album.
- [06:29]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. So From a Torch, a tortured poet is a kind of internal, quiet sort of thing. And a showgirl is a sort of glitzy, you know, but also sort of blue collar, I guess. I mean, I know they don't literally wear the blue collar shirt, but you get the metaphor. Blue collar kind of thing. And an outward kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, it did occur to me, Jeff. I was excited when I saw the title of this album because we're Two professors. And it did seem to me that there's a real sort of analogy between what we do and what a showgirl does. You know, it's all for us kind of sequins and kind of glamorous, revealing outfits in the classroom.
- [07:02]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Without question.
- [07:02]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. And then it's just blood, sweat and tears when we're back in our office working hard on reading books and going to pointless media.
- [07:09]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And in the same way that showgirls, I imagine, perform in Ways that, you know, they feel like they're killing themselves out there just every day going out there sweating bullets, taking the slings and arrows of public opinion. I mean, that's sort of what we do as well when we're standing in front of a class.
- [07:23]
Professor Stephen Dyson
We're the real heroes.
- [07:24]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Without question.
- [07:25]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Absolutely. So that, I mean, my relationship with, with kind of Taylor Swift is like my relationship to all pop music. You know, you're the big kind of pop fan. And I've. I've always traditionally been more into kind of indie rock and sort of Brit pop and that kind of thing. And so with Taylor Swift, I always find I, I sort of admire the, the edifice and the, the craft of it and the sheer sort of size of it, but I can never quite sort of step inside it, you know, so maybe, I don't know, maybe you'll, you'll convince me when we discuss these songs. But I did find it a, a comfortable listen. And what, what I mean by that is like all of the best pop music that these songs have to work immediately. And that's what a pop song is. It can't be something that you have to listen to 10 times before you figure out the hook or the melody. So that they're sort of instantly digestible without sounding sort of too repetitive or too derivative. And it's a really, really hard line. It's really, really fine line. Like the line between totally derivative and, you know, exactly what a pop song should be doing is, is so, so difficult. Like they're very, very close. And that's the whole trick is staying on the, the right side of that line, isn't it?
- [08:30]
Professor Jeff Dudas
It's walking that line. And what I think this album does well in, in multiple senses is walk the line. So it walks the line in exactly the way that, that you're discussing, which is what a pop song aesthetically has to do. It does have to. It has to catch the audience, it has to catch the listener quickly and then it has to stick around. And you're right, it's paradoxical, right, because it has to do two separate things. It has to be familiar enough that it catches the listener immediately, but it has to be distinct enough that it hangs around and doesn't just dissolve into every other three minute song that you've ever heard. And it's a very tight line to walk. I think the other thing that's happening, and this alludes to what I was suggesting earlier, is that it's. She has to walk the, the bigger and bigger and bigger that Taylor Swift becomes. And the more outsized her Persona and her life, the, the higher the level of superstardom she becomes, the more difficult it's got to be to walk that line between revelation of herself and revelation of her life and that capacity to connect the specific emotions that she is feeling and experiencing with a broader audience who are not billionaires, who are not vacationing in the French Riviera, who do not have famous spouses or partners, and who don't have famous friends. I think that this album does a really pretty good job of walking both of those lines.
- [10:05]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, you have to say, the challenges I face of being like super famous, having to be this public person getting involved in beefs with and who knows how real they are, but they're always played up in the media. We get involved in beefs with other famous people and having hyper famous boyfriends that, that sort of come and go. They're exactly analogous to me, a 36 year old billionaire, than they are to you, whatever my target demographic is, you know, a younger person without that money and without that, that exposure. And of course there's a way to do it. These are all these, these are universal. They're not universal human experiences, but they can be universal human sentiments. Yes, but, but again, you're always, you're right, you're always walking that, that a similar line. You know, musically, on Persona terms, she's got, she's got to walk that, that line between the instantly familiar and the totally derivative.
- [10:51]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [10:52]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And in sort of emotional or connective or lyrical terms, she's got to walk that, that line between, you know, singing about things that are obviously unique to very few people in the world and connecting universally. But you've got to do it in a way that doesn't start to sound inauthentic or whiny or just like non relatable.
- [11:10]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right, that's exactly it. And it's especially difficult, I think, in the pop genre, which as you have alluded to, doesn't always have the longest or deepest tradition in really going much deeper than surface level emotion. You know, it doesn't have, for example, and this is somewhat relevant in the case of Taylor Swift, but you know, pop music lyrically does not have the conventional kind of traditional emotional palette that something like country music has. Right. Which is all about, in the best of country music anyway, is all about the travails of everyday life and the experiences of people struggling in circumstances not of their own making. This is also true of something like punk music or other kinds of like, you know, hard rock music. Right. In which the. The thematics tend to, or the genre at least, tends to provide a kind of history that allows contemporary songwriters to go a bit deeper and to explore a bit more. And pop music, for better or worse, the best of it, I think, does. Does show the capacity for real emotional depth. Like, like I think we see here. But a lot of it does exist on the surface and it exists emotionally on the surface. And it becomes especially difficult, it seems to me, to walk the line of superstardom if you are confining your revelation, if you're confining your art to those kinds of surface emotions. I'm sad, I'm happy. Right. You need to go a little deeper than that because otherwise, hey, I'm sitting in the French Riviera, but I'm sad.
- [12:52]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right, Right. So I, I want to take you through some themes that I. I kind of see in the album that'll allow us to talk about some of the. Some of the specific songs and the qualities of them. So I thought those sort of five basic themes, you know, these. I should just say these are just our instant reactions. There's no, no guarantee we've accurately identified what they are.
- [13:08]
Professor Jeff Dudas
We would, I mean, listen to the album four times.
- [13:10]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [13:11]
Professor Jeff Dudas
The both of us.
- [13:11]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, everybody's cutthroat in the comments. But if you, if you want to give us your thoughts in the comments section, we'd love to hear that. Love to hear those. So theme number one, I Found Love. Not. Not the first time she said she's kind of sang about this, although not, you know, often with different sort of chaps of various Fame and fortune. And I thought four songs kind of had that. Had this as the central thematic fit of Ophelia and Opalite, which I would say are to me the two sort of most immediately striking pop songs. I think there's nothing on here that says as stonking as her biggest hits and maybe, maybe not quite trying to be as stonking as her biggest hits, but everything has, you know, a kind of strong melody and a very sort of machine tooled production. There's a great deal of craftspersonship in these songs as pop songs. Fitophelia, Opalite, I Found Love Wood and Honey in different ways. Kind of. I Found Love Wood. It's a sort of very sexualized song, I think.
- [14:07]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Corny song.
- [14:08]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. And there is a horniness about this, this album that I think you were saying is relatively new for.
- [14:14]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I can't remember hearing that. That kind of exploration of. Of lust in previous Taylor Swift albums or previous eras, so to speak, of her career here. I think she's taking a page or she's she has been emboldened by some of the younger female pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo and most obviously on this album, Sabrina Carpenter, both of whom have been far more bold about exploring the sort of full range of their emotional lives than Taylor has been in the past. Taylor has been very locked in, you know, infamously certainly at the start of her career into this kind of good girl, bad girl binary and really a desperate desire to be seen as a good girl in all ways. And that would be incompatible or that would be conventionally or historically or traditionally incompatible with the kinds of expressions of lust that we see on several the songs in this album.
- [15:14]
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- [15:38]
Professor Jeff Dudas
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- [15:42]
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- [16:06]
Diego Prime
Big Deal Days Para que con cigas grande sofertes para unuevo espa De piece Te transformara en la reina de la relaxion Espera tiene choros de burbuja aprobecha horas ac cuarinta porciento menos and Prime Big Deal Days.
- [16:20]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, and I wonder, as you're saying that I did wonder about the recurrent motif of the eldest daughter which shows up in Fate of Ophelia and shows up in the song called Eldest Daughter. And I wondered if obviously Taylor is in her own family, sort of an eldest daughter, but I did wonder about her being a sort of eldest daughter amongst this kind of cadre of, you know, female songwriters.
- [16:43]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And yeah, I think that's a sharp point. And it also points a little bit to Father figure as well, in which she's, you know, Taylor is explicitly portraying herself as having these proteges. Right. And being a kind of A mentor in various ways to these proteges.
- [17:00]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. So I think that. I think that that gets to the second theme that I saw on the album. It's hard being famous. You get a lot of attention from people. You get in beefs with. With other people. The music business. It's quite bad.
- [17:12]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [17:13]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Quite sort of rapacious. I saw that this in Elizabeth Taylor.
- [17:17]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. Father figure Wish list.
- [17:19]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, Wish list. Eldest daughter, actually romantic.
- [17:24]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. I think Wish List is probably the hits that theme most on the nose. And does it in ways that I think are a little more universal. Right. And a little bit more open hearted. Incapacious to engage with a broader audience than some of the others. I mean, of. Of the bunch. I mean, actually romantic, I think is in many ways this. The cleverest of those songs and the smartest of those songs. But it also. I mean, it's hard. I mean, I know that you probably have a lot of scenarios in which you have people sort of dedicating a great deal of their lives to thinking about you.
- [18:04]
Professor Stephen Dyson
No, it's just you believe me.
- [18:07]
Professor Jeff Dudas
But I. You know, it's. What she's describing is a. Is a kind of what feels like a pop star rivalry in. Or at least a celebrity rivalry in ways that I think are really clever and funny. Right. And that's the other thing, is that this is a song that is funny in a way that Taylor is not always funny or has not always been willing to show herself in song as being funny.
- [18:29]
Professor Stephen Dyson
You called me. Barring Barbie is a good line. Like barring Barbie is actually, you know, I know that's an insult put in the mouth of another person, but it's.
- [18:36]
Professor Jeff Dudas
But only when you're brave on coke. Yeah, right, that. Which is. Which is.
- [18:39]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right, Right. But if you were not a Taylor Swift fan. But boring. Barbie's actually, you know, not. Not a. Not a bad one.
- [18:46]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [18:46]
Professor Stephen Dyson
So. So this is living in your head rent free, which is one of the oldest kind of things. And the way to subvert that is always to. It is always to. To say, like, oh, that's so cute. Right. It's never to respond with anger. It's always to. It's always to kind of flip it around on the other person. There's a very famous scene in Mad Men, which is one of my favorite TV shows, where kind of a young rival of Don Draper is in the elevator with him and says, don, you know, you're a fraud. You disgust me. Everyone knows you're miserable, you're an alcoholic, you're living a double life. And I just, you know, I feel so sorry for you. Cause you gotta maintain this facade of success. And I just know that you're miserable and I really feel sorry for you. And Don just says, I don't think about you at all, and walks out the elevator. And that's the classic. That's what Taylor Swift is doing here.
- [19:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
That's the classic thing. But then the other thing that's happening, which I think is clever and. And sort of interesting and maybe unique, is that she's also saying, you know, and you're kind of turning me on like this.
- [19:39]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes, it's sort of hot. Yeah, yeah. That degree of sort of ardor and all the rest of it is sort of hot. Yes, I agree. Wishlist, you'd mentioned contrast between a material life that many want. But she who has it all, presumably Taylor, just wants domestic bliss. We tell the world to leave us alone and they do. Wow. Didn't know that was possible.
- [19:58]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Also a recurring theme she has in her canon.
- [20:01]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. And it's always such a delicate maneuver because it's. I think at one point she did. Does talk about bringing a tiny violin to a knife fight. And there is a sort of world's smallest violin quality to that.
- [20:11]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And know that this is a momentary thought from her because we know as well that she has confessed quite openly. I mean, the most obvious song is Mirror Ball. That she needs to be in front of an audience and she needs to feel as though she is the center of attention.
- [20:28]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right.
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Professor Jeff Dudas
So that the chorus and wish list, I think, just sort of illustrates the way that those emotions can become like pendulums swinging back and forth.
- [20:39]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Father figure. The music business is not only paternalist, but sort of mobsterish in what's Going On. You actually need a big sort of Tony Soprano figure to cut the deal. The deal with the devil.
- [20:53]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Well. And there are specific references to mob boss kind of stuff. Maybe Sleeping with the Fishes. She's not being subtle necessarily here, but there's, you know, there's not really. I mean, she's pretty generous, I think, to George Michael's estate here to give him writing credit.
- [21:09]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. I didn't see this.
- [21:10]
Professor Jeff Dudas
It's really. It's the most minor. Right. Of borrowings here. It's not much more really, than the borrowing from something we talked about off camera. Right. The reference to Dancing in the Dark, the Springsteen song.
- [21:24]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes. Yeah. Which is just a lyric.
- [21:26]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Just a lyric.
- [21:26]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, exactly. Third theme, I thought was in some songs, nostalgia. That's in Eldest Daughter. And Ruin the Friendship. Ruin the Friendship. Sort of a Sweet.
- [21:35]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [21:35]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Sweet song. And it does seem to do something lyrically, which is. Which is it sort of lived. It's lived in the near future, you know, oh, I should have kissed you. And it seems like someone who's just looking back a couple years, and then the very last few words are like, my advice would be to always take that chance. Which sounds like a much older Taylor looking back on.
- [21:54]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And she has seeded that in the. The last verse, which references second period. Right. So she's talking about high school.
- [22:02]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right?
- [22:02]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right.
- [22:03]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [22:03]
Professor Jeff Dudas
No, it's. That was. I think that's a. It is. You're right. It's a kind of a sweet and bitter song that is a little surprising in the ways that some of her best songs from the folklore and Evermore period were sort of surprising and bittersweet.
- [22:19]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fourth theme. I thought. I thought I saw the Internet is bad. So eldest daughter has that and then cancelled has that. Pretty on the nose.
- [22:30]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. So, I mean, I guess people are. Are thinking that Canceled is about Blake Lively.
- [22:35]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Okay.
- [22:36]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And about her.
- [22:36]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Oh, and what's his name?
- [22:38]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And the. The. Yeah, the guy.
- [22:40]
Professor Stephen Dyson
That. Film guy.
- [22:41]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Whoever.
- [22:42]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes.
- [22:43]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [22:43]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right. And in which. In which there was a kind of fallout on the. On. On a movie set, and he was the. What was he? Who's a star, but also the director, I think so. And then the. It came out that he'd hired a sort of black ops PR team to try and. Try and do in Blake Lively and do in her reputation.
- [23:01]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And one of the ways of doing this was apparently by releasing some texts that Blake Lively had sent to him in which she threatened to send Taylor Swift after him.
- [23:10]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Oh, really?
- [23:10]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Because, you know, Blake Lively and Taylor have been famously very close. They've been like these sort of glamour friends with Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. And so then there was. Has been a lot of. A lot of rumors that. That Taylor and Blake are on the outs now because Taylor's upset that she got dragged into this litigation.
- [23:29]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Okay.
- [23:30]
Professor Jeff Dudas
By Blake Lively. W. If it's true that the song is about Blake Lively, I mean, it also is a song of sympathy, it seems to me. Right. In which she's saying. Taylor's basically saying, welcome to the club, welcome to the canceled club, or welcome to the club of celebrities who get put through the ringer.
- [23:47]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, it does have an odd valence because it's hard at points in the song to tell who is the person being canceled and who is the canceler. And at some point, it seems like Taylor is adopting the pose of someone who has done the damage. And then at other points, she's adopting the pose of someone who's the vict.
- [24:04]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. Which also is not that surprising. I mean, I think back to the song Antihero from Midnights, in which there is the kind of, you know, I mean, in my reading that that is a song that's all about the possibilities and the dangers of celebrity identification and a kind of parasocial relationship that develops between audiences and celebrities. And in that song, in Anti Hero, Taylor is simultaneously portraying herself as kind of victim to this complex, but also as an active instigator of it. And here we get. I wonder if there's some parallels here with the way in which she's describing her role in the kind of the cancel culture elements of the contemporary world.
- [24:47]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right. And then the fifth and final theme I thought I saw is a really interesting one. It really does make me wonder about the genesis or the evolution of this. This album. And it's the theme. It's hard putting on a show. It's not hard being famous kind of psychically, which was an earlier theme we talked about. But it's physically difficult to put on a show, to be a showgirl. And that's in Life of a Showgirl, which in some senses to me is the most interesting song. I find it to be the most musically eclectic sort of internally. And maybe that's because it involves a second artist. And so her sensibilities are having to be brought in. And there's a notable change in kind of orchestration when Sabrina Carpenter starts singing. And I think maybe even a semi tone shift or so. You know, there's. There's an interesting thing goes on when Sabrina Carpenter starts. Starts singing.
- [25:35]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. I'm going to have to listen to that more to pick it up. I. I also picked up on that. I'm not sure if it's just the difference in the timbre of their voices.
- [25:43]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. Or if they changed the bet to the key.
- [25:45]
Professor Jeff Dudas
May have.
- [25:46]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [25:46]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Maybe a slight key change.
- [25:48]
Professor Stephen Dyson
I got the sense there was. But. But also it, It's. It's interest. I wouldn't have brought it up as a theme because it seems to be just in that one song. Maybe a little bit in Elizabeth Taylor as well. Except she called. She called the album.
- [25:59]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [25:59]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And, you know, it did seem as if this was an album that she'd. She'd said she'd written it on the Eras tour and it was gonna be about how physically demanding it is to. To kind of put on this. This show. There were two articles, one in the New York Times and one in the Guardian yesterday that were almost identical, that. That were about the history of Showgirls and how, you know, Taylor Swift had to be careful with appropriating this because she's far too big. She's. She's the lead star, she's not the kick line kind of trooper and she's not the person working in the grimier, you know, putting on a luxurious show, but in actually quite grimy circumstances, which is the valence of showgirl imagery and showgirl mythology. And she had to be careful with that. But she actually hasn't made it central to that album. It's sort of just on that song.
- [26:44]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And on the imagery of the song. But as, as you're saying that, I'm just realizing that in popular culture, in American popular culture, really, the most famous or infamous invocation of the showgirl is the movie Showgirl.
- [26:55]
Professor Stephen Dyson
The Paul Verhoeven one.
- [26:56]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. Which is a, you know, was infamously just a complete bomb. Right. And one of widely regarded as one of the worst movies of the 90s, but has come to have this kind of strange afterlife in the era of streaming. And I, I suspect that she, she would have needed to be careful about not appropriating that imagery as well. Right. Which is likely why. And maybe, maybe that's why when you look at the. The album cover and the various imagery that has been release, she's very much seems to be appropriating a kind of 1950s or 1960s Las Vegas era vibe with the showgirl rather than a kind of a more contemporary, as you say, maybe grimy sort of aesthetic.
- [27:45]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. So I thought that. I also thought it was interesting lyrically in that I thought it had both the best and the worst lines on the album pretty much one after another. So I really like the opening line. Her name was Kitty. She made her money being pretty and witty.
- [27:58]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [27:58]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And I love that triple rhyming. And I thought of. No one will probably get this, this reference, but there's a songwriter I really like called Craig Finn.
- [28:04]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [28:05]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Who has a band called the Hold Steady. He's always singing songs about people like Kitty, kind of small town, often women, but not, not exclusively in small towns coming to big cities and being kind of swallowed up in grimy, dodgy kind of circumstances. And he has a number of kind of lyrical ticks.
- [28:21]
Professor Jeff Dudas
But.
- [28:21]
Professor Stephen Dyson
But that kind of triple rhyming screen. Kitty, witty, pretty, delivered in that way. It was a classic finian. Yeah.
- [28:27]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And it would not be a surprise in the least if, if If Taylor is referencing him there, I mean, she's. She is far more musically literate than she's typically given credit for. And we, we see it on this album. And not to derail us necessarily, but, you know, I think that Opalite is very clearly Beach Boys influence. Sounds a lot like Pet Sounds.
- [28:49]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [28:49]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Particularly in the course. There's the reference to Springsteen's Dancing in the dark.
- [28:53]
Professor Stephen Dyson
There's Jackson 5 in wood.
- [28:56]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yep. Yeah. Which.
- [28:57]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Which sounds a lot like I want you back. The guitar intro and then it.
- [29:00]
Professor Jeff Dudas
So it wouldn't surprise me if she. If she regularly listens to the Hold Steady.
- [29:04]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. So. So that's a great line. Her name was Kitty and she. She made her money being pretty and witty. But then the. The next two lines are. They gave her the keys to the city, which is kind of a weird shift. But she didn't do it legitly, which it's kind of. Oh, that needed a bit more work. Workshop. And there are. There are one or two places where you see the scenes of like a half line or something that doesn't quite scan and it's not, you know, look, no one's perfect, but it's not quite the machine tool. Pop perfection. Yeah.
- [29:32]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I mean, when you get strange lines, they stick. And in her career, this is not that unusual. She will occasionally have a line that feels like it could have used a bit more editing. And part of that is just that when you're as prolific, I suspect, as she is, that you're going to have some clunky lines. And when is something you mentioned off camera that when her Persona and her voice is so prominent on every song, there's very little in the way of instruments of. Of. Of non vocal instrumentality. Right. That takes place in these songs. It's. You're putting a lot of pressure on the lyrics here.
- [30:09]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right.
- [30:09]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And you know, there's going to be some clunkers in there.
- [30:13]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right. And I did wonder, maybe it's a point we'll. We'll finish with. I did wonder if at one point Life of a Showgirl was going to be sort of a concept album based around Kitty the character. And it just sort of seemed to be kind of.
- [30:24]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [30:24]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Setting that up. But it's not the first song in the album. It's. Which is kind of what it feels like it would be in that context. It's kind of the last song.
- [30:30]
Professor Jeff Dudas
It's the last song. And I will say, say I think it works as the last song.
- [30:34]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [30:34]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Because the 42 minutes feel complete and you would rather want to go listen to it again from the beginning than kind of wipe your brow of the sweat of what it took to get through, right? Yeah.
- [30:47]
Professor Stephen Dyson
No, no. It goes down easy. Which pop records should do. There's a lot of interesting thematic work. It's musically interesting and varied, and I really enjoyed digging into it. So thank you for joining us for our instant kind of takes. I mean, you know, we'd love to hear what you think in the. In the comments section. Every hot take is as cold as ice, but we want to get yours. And on that bombshell.