REVIEW | *The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore* adds “Patient Zero,” “Cleveland!,” “Pink Clouding,” and “Babylon” to the most talked-about album of Taylor Swift’s latest phase. There are better melodies, a bit more humanity, and a song that reminds us why she remains an exceptional storyteller. But some of her old ghosts also resurface.
Taylor Swift doesn’t know how to close a door.
There’s always one song left.
One edition.
Here’s a clue.
A secret.
One version.
A vault.
A “Taylor’s Version.”
One last act after the final act.
And now we have, literally:
the encore.
Almost a year after publishing *The Life of a Showgirl*, Taylor Swift returns to the album that divided critics and fans to add four new songs.
“Patient Zero.”
“Cleveland!”
“Pink Clouding.”
“Babylon.”
Together, they form The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore, released on September 25. These aren’t outtakes recovered from the original sessions: Swift wrote them later with Max Martin and Shellback, after traveling to Sweden to celebrate the album’s extraordinary commercial success with them.
And that difference matters.
Because *The Encore * isn’t really just leftover material from *Showgirl*.
It’s Taylor Swift taking another look at the album after seeing how the world reacted to it.
And maybe that’s why these four songs say more than they seem to.
First, we need to talk about *The Life of a Showgirl*
Released in October 2025, Swift’s twelfth album was one of the most highly anticipated releases of her career.
The return of Max Martin and Shellback had people imagining a massive pop machine.
Expectations were sky-high.
And that’s exactly what happened from a business standpoint.
“The Life of a Showgirl” debuted at number one and had the biggest first week for an album in modern U.S. history, according to Billboard data also reported by NME.
But success and consensus are two different things.
The critical reception was considerably more mixed. Some reviews praised certain moments, while others took issue with the excessively self-referential lyrics and a production that was far less explosive than the collaboration with Martin and Shellback had promised.
And that makes *The Encore* a fascinating experiment.
Taylor already knows what we said about the show.
Now he’s back on stage to perform four more songs.
1. “Patient Zero” and Taylor Does What He Does Best Once Again
Of the four, “Patient Zero” is the most obvious choice to justify this edition.
The production features electronic percussion, processed strings, and a restrained pop beat that avoids peaking too soon. NME highlights precisely that combination and describes the song as a brilliant pop track built around a catchy metaphor.
Because the “patient zero” in the title is Taylor.
The song is directed at another woman who has found herself caught in the orbit of a man Swift knows all too well.
She was there first.
Learn the symptoms.
Discover the charm.
Learn more about the disease, too.
And now recognize the pattern from the outside.
It’s a very Taylor Swift idea: taking a relatable romantic situation and finding a simple image that can serve as the foundation for the entire song.
Toxic love turned into a contagion.
The best part is that you don’t need to create a maze of references to do it.
There’s a melody.
It makes sense.
There’s a chorus that sticks with you.
And once again, there’s a certain ability to convey a great deal without needing to explain absolutely everything.
It’s not the best song of his career.
But she is indeed a Taylor who is easy to miss when her own mythology ends up overshadowing the song.
The Best
The metaphor.
The Worst
Which will inevitably kick off another round of the world championship to figure out who it’s dedicated to.
Verdict
The encore gets off to a good start.
And we also know that Taylor has something important in store for her.
The music video for “Patient Zero” stars Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell, was directed by Swift herself, and features Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. The full video is set to premiere during the VMAs.
2. “Cleveland!” or When Falling in Love Doesn’t Always Lead to Better Songs
And then comes the most problematic song of the four.
“Cleveland!”
Musically, it’s immediate.
Actual battery.
Backlit keyboards with an ’80s vibe.
Bells.
Pop music made to get you pumping.
There is something deliberately grand and joyful about her.
The problem arises when we listen to what he wants to tell us.
Swift once again addresses the criticism she receives and contrasts the outside noise with having found someone who accepts her. NME links the song to her relationship with Travis Kelce, who is from the Cleveland area.
On paper, it could be endearing.
But Taylor has been talking to his critics for far too long.
Sometimes it seems that even in his happiest songs, he needs to save a seat for them.
There goes Cleveland! It’s losing steam.
It’s not that a billionaire superstar can’t be hurt by comments.
Of course you can.
But rather because we’ve already heard more interesting versions of that conversation on their own albums.
The Independent has been particularly critical of the issue, while The Guardian also believes that this focus on haters ends up tarnishing a song that is meant to celebrate love.
I’m closer to that interpretation.
Musically, it’s easy to get into.
Lyrically, it revolves around a world that Swift knows all too well.
Maybe a little too much.
The Best
The pop movement.
The Worst
Taylor Swift continues to write songs for people she supposedly no longer needs to hear from.
Verdict
Fun for three minutes. Much less interesting after that.
3. “Pink Clouding”: when Taylor lets her guard down
And then something much more beautiful happens.
“Pink Clouding.”
The title comes from an expression associated with the feeling of euphoria that can arise during the early stages of recovery. Swift uses it to reflect on a relationship that began while she herself was still emotionally unsettled.
But here, something important changes.
Taylor isn’t making any accusations.
He’s acknowledging it.
She doesn’t seem interested in winning the argument.
He is looking back and wondering about his own responsibility.
Musically, we have bright synth-pop, layered vocals, and an ethereal production that inevitably brings to mind some of the vibes from *Lover* and *1989*. *The Guardian* has specifically highlighted the humanity and remorse evident here, in contrast to other, more defensive moments in the artist’s body of work.
And it works.
Because vulnerability is much more interesting when it isn’t accompanied by the need to prove who was right.
In “Pink Clouding,” we find something that has always made Taylor Swift great:
to look at herself and not necessarily like what she sees.
That’s where it gets dangerous again.
Not for his exes.
For her.
The Best
Emotional honesty.
The Worst
Max Martin and Shellback could have pushed the production a little further.
Verdict
The Surprise of the Encore.
4. “Babylon”—and there she was, the Taylor Swift we’d been looking for
And here we are at the last one.
“Babylon.”
Acoustic guitar.
Space.
A production that keeps growing without needing to ask for permission.
And a story.
Above all:
A story.
Swift finally steps away from the mirror.
The song follows a character who leaves his small world in search of money, freedom, status, and something resembling success.
He does it.
But then he finds out the price.
Nostalgia.
The family.
What he left behind.
The place he may no longer be able to return to.
NME describes precisely that narrative arc, while The Independent—despite being extremely harsh on the rest of the album—considers “Babylon” a radical improvement and a moment that marks the return of Swift’s narrative prowess.
I agree in principle.
“Babylon” is reminiscent of the Taylor we saw during *Folklore* and *Evermore* discovered something fundamental:
Not every song had to be about Taylor Swift for Taylor Swift to be in them.
That set her free.
I could make up characters.
Changing Perspectives.
Storytelling.
Observing other lives.
And, paradoxically, by distancing herself from who she was, she managed to write some of her most personal songs.
“Babylon” recaptures some of that feeling.
It doesn’t have to be an anthem.
It needs you to want to know how it ends.
And for Taylor Swift, that’s still a superpower.
The Best
The Narrator.
The Worst
It ends just when we want more of this Taylor.
Verdict
The best song out of the four.
So, is *The Encore* better than *The Life of a Showgirl*?
Yes.
But it doesn’t transform it.
And that difference is important.
These four songs do not, in hindsight, transform *The Life of a Showgirl* into something else.
Nor do they resolve all the contradictions in the album.
But they do contain something that the original album occasionally lost amid the spectacle, the self-referentiality, and the impossible burden of being Taylor Swift™:
a person.
“Patient Zero” has a concept.
“Pink Clouding” has a vulnerability.
“Babylon” has a history.
“Cleveland!” has a great pop sound, even though underneath it all we find ideas that Swift has explored far too many times.
The funny thing is that, taken together, they work almost better as a small standalone EP.
Four Perspectives.
The ex who gives you a heads-up.
The Woman in Love.
A person who admits a mistake.
The character who discovers that getting what he wanted hasn’t saved him either.
That has a curve to it.
Taylor Swift has a problem that almost no other artist can have
He posts too much.
It sounds absurd to say that.
For decades, we’ve been asking artists to release more music.
But Taylor is part of an unprecedented creative and commercial machine.
Album.
Special Edition.
Re-recording.
Bonus tracks.
Music video.
Another edition.
Another cover.
Another secret.
Another Easter egg.
Another song.
Another conversation.
The problem is that when absolutely everything becomes an event, the event ceases to be extraordinary.
The Independent and The Guardian, from different perspectives, raise a similar point in their reviews of *Encore*: abundance may be starting to work against the music itself. T
Maybe they’re partly right.
Because Taylor Swift has already shown that she can post a lot.
The interesting artistic question now is a different one:
What would happen if I decided to wait?
But there’s another possibility
May *The Encore* be precisely that transition.
These four songs didn’t just come out of thin air.
Swift explained that she traveled to Sweden to celebrate the success of ” Showgirl ” with Max Martin and Shellback.
There was a study.
They came in.
And they wrote.
That means we’re listening to songs written after the album was released.
After its release.
After the record.
After the conversation.
After the criticism.
And maybe that’s why some of them seem to breathe differently.
Less explanation.
More melody.
More space.
More excitement.
Not always.
But enough to make it interesting.
REVIEW: The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore
Taylor Swift didn’t need to add four songs to one of the biggest commercial albums of her career.
That is precisely why it is interesting that he did it.
“Cleveland!” shows that she still occasionally finds herself caught up in the never-ending conversation about Taylor Swift, the public figure.
But “Patient Zero” rediscovers its ability to craft a pop metaphor.
“Pink Clouding” reminds us that admitting fault can be far more powerful than pointing it out.
And “Babylon” proves once again that when Swift stops explaining her own legend and simply tells a story, there are few female pop songwriters capable of doing it as well as she does.
“The Encore ” does not rewrite ” The Life of a Showgirl.”
He didn’t need to do that.
But for four songs, he opens a door.
And behind it lies something more interesting than just another deluxe edition.
The next Taylor Swift may be on the horizon.
Now she may just have to do something that’s extraordinarily difficult for her.
Let the music breathe before resuming the show.
LOFFMUSIC REVIEW
TAYLOR SWIFT — THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL: THE ENCORE
“Patient Zero” ★★★★☆
“Cleveland!” ★★½☆☆
“Pink Clouding” ★★★★☆
“Babylon” ★★★★½
Editorial Assessment
7,5 / 10
It’s not a new album, so I wouldn’t compare it numerically to the rest of her discography. As a follow-up, it improves on the emotional balance of *Showgirl* and features “Babylon,” the song that leaves you most eager to hear where she might go next.
