Taylor Swift's 'The Life of a Showgirl' is here, and the internet is divided
Taylor Swift's newest album, The Life of a Showgirl, dropped today, and I am not the first person to notice this. Swiftie or not, if you've been online at all since midnight on Oct. 3, you've probably noticed a flooding of posts — on X, on Instagram, on Reddit, on Threads, you name it — about Swift's 12th studio album.
According to data from global social listening and insights tool Meltwater, 1.32 million users have mentioned the album on X. Reddit was the second-strongest platform after X, with 81.7K mentions. Overall, the sentiment towards the album is overwhelmingly neutral, according to the insights tool, with 975,000 neutral mentions, 492,000 positive mentions, and 105,000 negative mentions.
But if you search her name on X, it's relatively difficult to sift through the negative and find those 492,000 neutral mentions.
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Even Nicki Minaj can't stop posting on X about it (I don't want to talk about all the other things Nicki's been posting about).
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Of course, there was also a flood of negativity towards the album, from fans and haters alike. The general negative consensus online is that she's a millennial who is in love, so we should have expected a bit of a cringy album.
Another complaint is that the album didn't match the visuals strongly enough. Some of the meaner reactions (it is the internet, and the internet is not nice!) imply she's made her lyrics more childish for her football player fiancé.
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Of course, there were many posts about the alleged Charli XCX diss track, "Actually Romantic," which sounds like an Olivia Rodrigo track (perhaps it's intentional?).
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It's clear that no matter the sentiment, Swift is giving us something to talk about — from her relatively explicit language on "Father Figure" to the alleged Charlie XCX diss track and everything in between.
Whether you loved it or hated it, are shopping for it or are ignoring it, chances are, you're hearing about it.
Topics Music X/Twitter Taylor Swift
Christianna Silva is a senior culture reporter covering social platforms and the creator economy, with a focus on the intersection of social media, politics, and the economic systems that govern us. Since joining Mashable in 2021, they have reported extensively on meme creators, content moderation, and the nature of online creation under capitalism.
Before joining Mashable, they worked as an editor at NPR and MTV News, a reporter at Teen Vogue and VICE News, and as a stablehand at a mini-horse farm. You can follow her on Bluesky @christiannaj.bsky.social and Instagram @christianna_j.
