The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift

Tay Tay continues to have a strong presence in my household. After the surprise announcement of her newest album (her twelfth) at 12:12am on Tuesday August 12, the anticipation in my wife and youngest child – both proud Swifties™ – was palpable and unavoidable. Swift has been releasing music at a breakneck pace of late (The Life of a Showgirl is her sixth album in seven years – her 11th album if you count the four “Taylor’s Version” re-recorded albums she’s release in that same time), and her team is the best in the world at maintaining momentum. Speaking as someone who knows, it’s impossible to avoid getting swept away in it all.

The Life of a Showgirl is a great album, in a long line of great albums. In spite of the pace and ever-present nature of Taylor Swift®, her songwriting continues to be second-to-none. Nobody, aside from the Beatles’ 12-album stretch from 1963-1970, has been able to maintain this level of creative output and universal acceptance.

The word “frenzy” comes to mind when I think of the release of the album, and its lead single “The Fate of Ophelia”, on October 3. Suddenly the conversation before, during, and after dinner was all about Taylor, and there were even choreographed dances being learned. “Ophelia,” the opening track on the album featured in the video above, is perfectly catchy – I listened to part of it this morning and it’s been ear wormed into my brain for the rest of the day. There are other great songs on the album, too – I’m particularly drawn to “Eldest Daughter” and “CANCELLED!”

As an almost 52-year-old man, this album wasn’t made for me. Some of the songs make me question who the intended target of Showgirl actually is. There’s always been a heavily-polished “bad girl” vibe to some of Swift’s music, especially since her 2017 album Reputation, but it’s always felt a little forced, a little out of character for the version of Taylor Swift I have in my head. Some of the songs on Showgirl take it too far, in my opinion. “I can make deals with the devil because my dick’s bigger” is a line in the album’s fourth track, “Father Figure” (George Michael’s song of the same title is better). “It’s kind of making me wet” shows up in the song “Actually Romantic” (which is apparently a diss track in response to Charli xcx). And “Wood,” the ninth song on the album, is a thinly veiled, double-entendre-laden ode to Travis Kelce’s penis. As my eight year old loudly sings the lyrics in the back of the car, I can’t help but cringe.

On the whole, Showgirl is better than her last two albums (2024’s The Tortured Poets Department and 2023’s Midnights) neither of which made the Top 31, and not nearly as good as her two 2020 albums, Folklore and Evermore, that collectively ranked #4 in that year’s Top 31. But I don’t need to convince you to listen to this new record, as I’m sure you already have. It’s unavoidable.

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Hit Me Hard and Soft by Billie Eilish

Welcome to the Top 10 of 2024! This is the point in the Top 31 where the decisions I’ve made about what albums to include and where they sit in the Top 10 can really be contentious with the small group of you who are paying close attention. A lot goes into my thought process of where to put an album that I enjoyed greatly throughout the year. There’s the quantitative side – literally how much did I listen to a given artist, but that plays only a small part in my decision. A Top X of anything as derived by a single individual is always a qualitative, gut-feeling endeavor. The Bacon Top 31 is no different. It’s a blend of: How much do I enjoy an album? How often did I listen to it in certain scenarios of my life? How much was the album loved / requested by one of my children?

The album at #10, the fantastic Hit Me Hard and Soft from global powerhouse Billie Eilish hits just the right notes of all of those questions. I enjoy it greatly, I listened to it often around the house and in the car, and the album was VERY MUCH loved by one of my children. But it should be said just because an album is loved by my children doesn’t mean it will show up in the Top 31. You don’t see a Bluey album in here, do you?

Billie Eilish has been making music for 10 years now, and yet she was born in the current century. She is a month into being 23 years old (born December 18, 2001), and yet each of the three full-length albums she’s released have sold more than 2 million copies each. You rarely see that kind of success from anyone, and you never see it from someone who has only been alive for just over two decades. Hit Me Hard and Soft is a VERY good album, and I can’t help but compare it to other releases by global, white, female, megapop stars in 2024. This album is much better than Taylor Swift’s 2024 album The Tortured Poet’s Department, released a month before Eilish’s album. It’s also way better than Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet and Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine. It may be on par with Charli XCX’s Brat, and I’m sorry to say I can’t really give an opinion there, because I simply did not give Brat much attention (but I still hope to). To me, Hit Me Hard and Soft is the best of that bunch.

I’ve been enjoying Eilish’s growth in fame and musicality over the years.¹ I was enamored with her EP Don’t Smile at Me but it did not appear on the Top 31 because I used to have stupid requirements about what qualified as an “album.” Her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? showed up at #12 in 2019. Unfortunately, I didn’t give her sophomore album Happier Than Ever its due, but if I were to rejigger that list from 3 years ago I’m sure there would be some changes now. All that said, Hit Me Hard and Soft is truly her best yet.

“Birds of a Feather” (featured in the video above) is a great song about love and connection, and the video is fun to watch in an Everything, Everywhere, All At Once kind of way. (Watch the short behind the scenes video about the making of, too.) “Chihiro” is my second favorite track on the album, and its quieter tone goes well in an otherwise high-energy album. “Lunch,” the lead single from the album, is catchy but a bit vapid in its lack of complexity. It feels as though it’s seen popularity due to the nature of a young woman singing “I could eat that girl for lunch” evoking thoughts of a still-inexplicably-scandalous lesbian nature. The behind the scenes on this one is less interesting, but it’s neat she also released three of the complete one-take lip syncs of the song for fans to enjoy: (One Take T002), T004, and T009.

If you only give the music a quick pass, and don’t think too much about what you’re hearing, it may be easy to write off Eilish and her producing partner, cowriter, and brother Finneas as merely being in the right place at the right time. But once you start to dig, you really see how much effort these two put into making something the best it can be. A good example of this effort can be seen in the “NPR Tiny Desk Concert” the two of them performed on, “unplugged” style, with a backing band. Eilish doesn’t come off as her only 22-years-of-age, but she is still very endearing as far as global megastars go.

As I mentioned in my Tyler, The Creator review at #12, I do my best to encourage the positive ends of my children’s music listening. They are often stuck listening to my personal favorites while I drive them around to various activities, but I also give them a window into being able to request things. I try to not just shoot their requests down because it’s not something I would traditionally want to listen to. This mentality has brought a lot more good music into my world. In the case of Billie Eilish, I was already well into her world prior to my youngest’s own love of Eilish’s music. But it‘s because of my youngest that my “well into” turned into a “love” of Eilish’s music in 2024. I look forward to other music turning into loves for me as she grows up.

^{1. I’ve also avidly watched the annual interview that Vanity Fair magazine has been creating with Eilish for the past eight years. Watch for yourself if you’ve not seen them before. ↩}

#29 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Taylor Swift

#10 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Billie Eilish