On 'The Life of a Showgirl,' Taylor Swift feels love's glow and the spotlight's glare With the music industry in the palm of her hand and a new fiancé on her arm, Swift hints that she may be ready to run away from the spotlight. But she will never ever ever not be famous.

toggle caption Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott

The whole picture is right there from the start. In the first few seconds of "The Fate of Ophelia," track one on Taylor Swift's 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, a commanding drum fill sets up a dreamy keyboard line, and then comes the bass: huge and buoyant, like one of those bouncing balls in old cartoons that follow a song's lyrics and direct you to sing along. Swift takes a cue from that limber bottom and lets her voice dip and bend — she sounds smitten and a bit hungry as she recalls first contact with her now-forever lover, but also self-aware and playful, so sure of herself that she fills this latest confession with one-liners even as she knows her listeners will take it very seriously. "I heard you calling on the megaphone," she swoons. "You wanna see me aaall aloooone."

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The reverb on the vocal makes this reverse come-on massive and intimate at the same time. Here's that showgirl of the album's title, drawing others in with a stage whisper. But she's also murmuring into the ear of that suitor who was able to "wrap around me like a chain, a crown, a vine." She tells him (we all know his name) that she's locked this memory away, but as he certainly knows, in a showgirl's world there's no secret so precious that it can't be converted into material. And anyway, the music is saying something more immediate: For the first time on a recording in a while, Swift is having fun. Her voice has never sounded stronger, the collaboration with her studio mates never easier. The bass and drum give off little signals about the musical terrain where the song has taken root — a shade of Gorillaz' "Clint Eastwood" in the Omnichord, a touch of Stevie Nicks's "Stand Back" wafting through the melody, a slowed-down and more evenly modulated echo of Swift's own "Wildest Dreams."

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