Critics can’t seem to agree on Taylor Swift‘s latest release, The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore.
After Swift, 36, dropped the deluxe edition of her 2025 album on Friday, September 25, reviews featuring a wide range of opinions on the pop superstar’s four new tracks started rolling in.
The Telegraph published a scathing takedown with the headline “I’m a Swiftie and even I think these new songs are terrible,” which quickly went viral on social media. In her two-star review, culture writer Poppie Platt opined that “Patient Zero,” “Cleveland!,” “Pink Clouding” and “Babylon” are “just as derivative and flat” as the 12 tracks that appeared on the original version of The Life of a Showgirl, which similarly divided critics and fans.
Platt particularly took issue with “Cleveland!,” noting that Swift’s ode to her husband, Travis Kelce, is more “rooted in public perception rather than her inner feelings.” (Lyrics include “Hate all you like / This is the love of my life.”) The journalist concluded her critique by noting that Swifties will likely send The Encore to the top of the charts regardless of its lack of “creative risks,” which she called “the biggest problem.”
USA Today disagreed, declaring that the reissued album deserves “an ovation.” Music writer Melissa Ruggieri celebrated lead single “Patient Zero” as an “omniscient take on a soured relationship” and said “Cleveland!” showcases “what Swift does best: reverses the mirror with obvious self-awareness, and then tells you how much she doesn’t care what you think.”
Ruggieri went so far as to address the Grammy winner’s haters herself, writing, “If you can’t be happy for Swift, regardless of your level of fandom, then it might be time to turn that mirror on yourself.”
The Independent had mixed feelings about The Encore. Music editor Roisin O’Connor dubbed “Babylon” a “diamond” but felt the three other new songs were “duds.” She compared Swift’s “shockingly uneven” songwriting on The Encore to the original Life of a Showgirl, commenting that both editions are bogged down by “very, very safe” production from Max Martin and Shellback.
“It might be hard for even the most zealous Swifties to stomach,” O’Connor wrote of “Patient Zero,” which she called the “musical equivalent of an ‘I told you so.'”
Variety also had conflicting thoughts. Music critic Chris Willman warned fans who had yet to hear “Cleveland!” that Swift clearly “has no intention of stopping writing about marital bliss, in the giddiest form possible, with an unrepentant sunniness so blinding it could almost blot out the memory that she’d ever written an elegy in her life.” However, he was pleased to find that the rest of the new tracks “prove she has no intention of turning in her Tortured Poets membership card anytime soon.”
“As much as the world loves Swift as the 21st century’s quintessential album artist,” Willman wrote, “it’s refreshing to get something fast and easily digestible from her between pop opuses, too.”
Other reviews dubbed The Encore “superb” (The Irish Times) and recognized both its “sweet highs and galling lows” (The Guardian).
Swift surprised fans on Wednesday, September 23, by announcing that she was rereleasing an expanded version of The Life of a Showgirl to celebrate it becoming the fastest-selling album in U.S. history last year.
“I hope you love [the bonus songs],” she wrote on Instagram, “because they were born out of pure gratitude for your exuberance.”
