Dis Cover: Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl

So, Taylor Swift is releasing a new album. And as is the trend with Taylor these days, this album comes with about 23 album cover variants — something which is becoming far too much of a trend these days.

The title of Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album is The Life of a Showgirl, so the album covers all centre this as a theme, with Taylor dressed up…as a showgirl.

Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl

I do not like this album cover at all. But with that said, I do think it is the strongest of the album covers, because the idea and concept of it is the clearest. The Life of a Showgirl features a song titled “The Fate of Ophelia”, so the album cover has a clear connection to the actual music too, which is nice. The rest though…

Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl | The Tiny Bubbles in Champagne cover

Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl | Baby, That’s Show Business cover

Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl | The Shiny Bug cover

Most of these are not strong enough to warrant being album covers. And this is a big issue with variant album covers — you can tell that none of the variant images were originally intended to be album covers. Also, the colour scheme for The Life of a Showgirl is completely lost in each of the variant covers. The main colour for this album is orange (and mint), but this isn’t carried through into any of the variant covers at all.

The general look of the shots is one thing, and we’ll get to that. But as for how Taylor looks in these shots, I think she needed to work with a better movement director. I just get this sense that when it comes to poise and how to hold and move her body in ways which are musical, sensual or sexy — Taylor doesn’t know how to do it in a way which doesn’t look awkward. You see it when she dances and you see it frequently in the majority of her photoshoots for fashion editorials. The awkwardness is actually kind of endearing. Because despite Taylor having an awareness that striking a pose in these sorts of ways is out of her comfort zone, she still commits to it all for the shots.

The more I think about this, the more I realise that the ‘At least she’s trying’ when it comes to the majority of what Taylor Swift does is a massive part of her appeal. And maybe these showgirl shots not being particularly great and Taylor Swift not fully selling being a showgirl is the thing that will help the shots connect. It would potentially be odd and jarring if Taylor were perfectly poised, perfectly styled, the shots were super high fashion as fuck and they were ‘serving’ as the kids say — because it’s not what we’d expect from her and it’s really not her brand. The fact that Taylor is showing so much skin on these album covers is already a bit of a bold departure for her, which tips her girl next door image.

But I do like ‘The Tiny Bubbles in Champagne’ cover. We can see clearly Taylor is a showgirl, akin to the album title. And it’s also the one shot where Taylor isn’t having to do anything with her body or do anything other than just look into the camera. And because of this, the shot works because it’s just a really nice shot. The same goes for the ‘It’s Rapturous’ cover, which could have been really striking if it were lit and graded with just a bit more punch and it was cropped differently.

Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl | “It’s Beautiful” cover

Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl | “It’s Rapturous” cover

Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl | “It’s Frightening” cover

The Life of a Showgirl album covers were shot by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, who have shot for numerous fashion brands and pretty much every big fashion editorial in existence over the past 30 years. Madonna fans may know of them, as they have frequently shot her throughout the 2000s.

Unless somebody had told me that Mert & Marcus had shot the covers for The Life of a Showgirl, I would never have even guessed. There is no real sense of style, a signature or a strong visual point of view with any of these shots — which seems to be a trend with working fashion photographers who had really clear visual identities in the 90s and early 2000s. One culprit is the shift to digital photography, which has contributed to the flatness of everything and a push toward ‘natural lighting’ — something we have seen affect films too. Another culprit is fashion publications and brands these days being so risk averse and wanting everything to look generic, which results in shots looking the same no matter who took them. Even when photographers try to shoot in their signature style in this day and age, it just doesn’t translate the way in which it used to. We saw this happen with David LaChapelle when he shot Megan Thee Stallion and Ice Spice’s album covers in 2024. He tried to do his signature shit, but it looked terrible. Truly unfortunate, given that he managed to come through for Charli XCX’s New York magazine shoot mere weeks later, but that’s probably after seeing the dragging he got for Megan and Ice Spice’s album covers.

The Life of a Showgirl shoot could have been really punchy and amazing. But instead, it wound up having no pizazz, no razzle, zero dazzle and every shot feels flat. And for each album shot, I can imagine how Mert & Marcus would have shot it 10 years ago. It coulda been something like this. Maybe something like this. Perhaps something like this. Or even something like this.

Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott have shot Taylor a couple of times over the years. They shot her for American Vogue in 2016 (terrible) and British Vogue in 2017 (decent) and they also shot her Reputation album cover (great shot, horrid graphic design). Their British Vogue shoot even had a shot of Taylor in water, which looks better than the main The Life of a Showgirl album cover, because of the make-up, the image grading, the lighting and Taylor looking a bit forlorn.

Where it comes to Taylor, Mert & Marcus can be hit and miss. And this time, it was a bit of a miss.

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