Taylor Swift has confirmed her upcoming 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl will contain exactly 12 tracks with no bonus material.
The announcement came during her appearance on Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast New Heights on Wednesday, where she explained her reasoning behind the streamlined approach, reports Variety.
The pop superstar emphasised that the album represents a focused creative vision, contrasting sharply with her previous release The Tortured Poets Department, which featured 31 tracks. “With Tortured Poets Department, I was like here’s a data dump of everything I thought, felt, experienced in two or three years. Here’s 31 songs. This is 12,” Swift explained. “There’s not a thirteenth, there’s not other ones coming.”
Swift described the creative process as achieving the perfect balance she had long sought. “You couldn’t take one out and it be the same album, you couldn’t add one and be… It’s just right,” she stated.
The album was recorded during a demanding schedule that saw Swift flying to Sweden during breaks from her European Eras Tour dates. She worked with longtime collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, reuniting with the production duo who previously contributed to hits including “Bad Blood” and “Shake It Off”. The intensive recording process required Swift to jet between tour commitments and studio sessions.
“I would be playing shows, I’d do three shows in a row, I’d have three days off, I fly to Sweden, go back to the tour and actually working on this, I was physically exhausted at this point in the tour but I was so mentally stimulated and so excited to be creating,” Swift revealed.
The collaboration with Martin and Shellback marks their first complete album project together, despite their successful previous partnerships. “The three of us have made some of my favourite songs that I’ve ever done before,” Swift noted. “We’ve never actually made an album before where it’s just the three of us. There are no other collaborators, it’s just the three of us making a focused album where it felt like catching lightning in a bottle.”
The album title emerged from Swift’s European touring experience, with Travis Kelce noting she was “living the life of a showgirl” by jet-setting across Europe. Swift confirmed this observation directly inspired the title choice.
The Life of a Showgirl is scheduled for release on 3rd October, with the tracklist and cover art already revealed across Swift’s social media platforms.
