As you probably know, Taylor Swift released her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, on Friday, and as you also may have noticed, it has received… A lukewarm response, to say the least.
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In fact, even Taylor’s biggest fans were left underwhelmed by the 12-track record, with one viral tweet that was posted just hours after TLOAS’s release brutally reading: “And I have like 5 copies of this shit coming in the mail.”
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And this comment actually ties into another aspect of the backlash that Taylor has received over the weekend, with everybody getting pretty fed up over how she mercilessly continues to capitalize on each of her albums by releasing multiple different variants that each have their own unique sell.
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Taylor has been criticized for doing this for several years now, with the constant stream of limited edition vinyls an apparent attempt to inflate sales and ensure chart dominance. In addition to each vinyl being a different color and having its own unique album artwork, they are only available to buy for a limited amount of time — creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity.
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Of course, Taylor followed her tried-and-tested marketing strategy for The Life of a Showgirl, and prior to the album’s release, 24 different versions had been available for pre-order. When it came to the vinyls specifically, not only was each one a different standout color with different artwork on the cover, they also had different exclusive content included with it, too, with Taylor including a unique poem with each variant. Others had USPs like an exclusive Polaroid photo, poster, and varying inner sleeve quotations.
![And Taylor even teased that it was integral for all of the variants to be discovered by fans during her appearance on The Graham Norton Show on Friday, where she explained that all the separate poems together reveal a surprise. She told the host: “There’s different poems on each variant and if… No, I’m not gonna tell about that, but they’ll [the fans] figure that out, there’s something about the poems that’s fun.”](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/AteqpHHL7ImKd_XUMHAntg--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTY1MTtjZj13ZWJw/https://media.zenfs.com/en/buzzfeed_articles_778/db974d0415658777639e18a2b585e29d)
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And Taylor even teased that it was integral for all of the variants to be discovered by fans during her appearance on The Graham Norton Show on Friday, where she explained that all the separate poems together reveal a surprise.
She told the host: “There’s different poems on each variant and if… No, I’m not gonna tell about that, but they’ll [the fans] figure that out, there’s something about the poems that’s fun.”
But, it turns out, Taylor had even more variant tricks up her sleeve after her album’s release, with the singer announcing on Saturday that she was releasing four limited edition CDs for fans to buy.
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For what it’s worth, Swifties had already been on high alert that something exciting would be happening the day after TLOAS’s release, with a timetable of Taylor’s plans for release week suspiciously teasing “stand by” during this window.
And anticipation reached fever pitch when a countdown appeared on her website an hour before the announcement.
It’s worth noting that for Taylor’s last two albums that weren’t rerecords, The Tortured Poets Department and Midnights, the star surprised fans with additional tracks shortly after each record’s release. For Midnights, Taylor dropped seven extra songs onto streaming platforms just three hours after the album came out, and for TTPD, she famously announced that it was actually a double album just two hours after releasing the first half — giving fans an additional 15 songs there and then.
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With that in mind, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Saturday’s surprise fell short, with Taylor telling fans that they’ll need to buy four extra CDs if they want to enjoy all of the new content.
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Posting to her social media pages once the countdown ended, Taylor revealed: “File this under ‘save your best for the finale’… I think my favorite moments from the tour were the acoustic surprises. So I went back into the studio with Max and Shellback to record acoustic/unplugged versions of a few of the Showgirl songs with brand new vocals and production! Cannot WAIT for you to hear.”
She then explained that one CD would include acoustic versions of “Opalite” and “Ruin The Friendship,” another features acoustic versions of “Wi$h Li$t” and “The Life of a Showgirl,” the third would include acoustic versions of “The Fate Of Ophelia” and “Eldest Daughter,” and the final will have an acoustic version of “Elizabeth Taylor” plus her original songwriting voice memo.
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As with the vinyl variants, each CD also has different album artwork, and — once again creating that sense of fan urgency — they were only available for purchase for 24 hours.
And the whole thing has left a serious bad taste in fans’ mouths, with many taking to social media to call out Taylor’s “greediness” amid her endless success and notorious billionaire status. One viral tweet reads: “i feel comfortable saying this is one of the most fucking disgusting and anti-art practices any artist could make and it’s terrible that the one doing it is one of the most popular artists in the world. the utter greediness is just shameful. this shouldn’t be acceptable.”
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“i can’t with her greed anymore. Back in the day she used to include acoustic version and voice memos on the deluxe album just ONE album not FOUR seperate albums?? she’s milking the fans for more money because apparently being a billionaire isn’t enough,” somebody else wrote.
Another tweeted Taylor to ask: “Girl, we’re in a recession. Can’t you just be nice to your fans for once? Haven’t you got enough of their money yet? Be serious.”
One more wrote: “Every time I think she’s done squeezing the same songs, she finds a new ‘limited CD’ angle. Marketing genius or just exhausting at this point? Imagine releasing 4 versions of the same songs and calling it ‘artistic’ capitalism has never sounded so acoustic.”
And as if the new variants weren’t enough to rile up fans, they were also left unimpressed by the AI-generated videos that were used to build excitement during release weekend — especially as they came less than a year after Taylor spoke out against AI when it directly impacted her.
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If you need reminding, Taylor decided to publicly endorse Kamala Harris in the presidential election after fake images of her endorsing Donald Trump began to circulate online, with Taylor saying on Instagram at the time: “Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation.”
After the album’s release, fans were excited to discover secret TLOAS promo billboards hidden in 12 different cities across the globe. Each one showed an orange door with a QR code that led to a video exclusive to each country, and visibly AI-generated. Here’s London’s as an example.
Letters of the alphabet were hidden in each of the videos, and fans eventually worked out that they spelled: “You must remember everything but mostly this the crowd is your king.”
These Easter egg videos were promoted on X by YouTube, and were originally shared to Taylor’s YouTube page, but appear to have since been deleted — which may be due to the backlash they received.
Responding to the videos, one disappointed Swiftie shared a screenshot of this post and simply asked: “where are you 🙁 #SwiftiesAgainstAI,” to which another user replied: “she ‘fights’ for causes when she is the victim. she always did this and this is just one more example. she was anti ai because someone made a video of her. she is a feminist when people are misogynistic towards her. and then she calls women bitches in her music with ai videos.”
This tweet has been liked more than 137,000 times since it was posted on Sunday.
Somebody else agreed: “It’s white feminism. All the activism begins and ends with situations about her and herself only.”
It’s worth noting that while the videos were shared to Taylor’s official account, it’s not known how personally involved she was with this promo gimmick.
Whew. What do you make of it all? As always, let me know your thoughts in the comments!
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