The Life of a Showgirl Artist : Taylor Swift Label : Republic Records
The cover of Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, depicts the world’s biggest pop star almost submerged in water in a pose inspired by John Everett Millais’s portrait of Shakespeare’s tragic heroine Ophelia, from the early 1850s. She has always known how to cause a splash – and the artwork is typically arresting and thought-provoking (and no doubt stuffed with the traditional Swiftian Easter eggs).
Still, for Swift to reference the godfather of English literature with her 12th LP is not necessarily a turn up for the books. She has, throughout her career, acknowledged writers from F Scott Fitzgerald to Kurt Vonnegut.
As with everything else in the Swiftiverse, the image and reference are anything but random. In Hamlet, Ophelia drowns after falling into a lake from a tree – a concept Swift has seemingly parlayed into commentary on the overpowering quality of fame.
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