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No one needs another take on Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl. We live in a surfeit of TLOAS takes. But this is a ~business~ story, I promise.
First things first: Many critics have deemed Swift’s 12th studio album a miss, and I’m not going to sit here and tell the critics they’re wrong (at least, not about TLOAS). I can squint and point out the album’s gems — I think “Wood” is fun, actually — but that kind of analysis is best reserved for my music-reviewing brethren.
My job here is to point out why I think TLOAS is a savvy business play masquerading as Millennial cringe. In short: It’s novelty Oreos.
ICYMI: Five years ago, the New York Times’ Jonah E. Bromwich wrote that those limited-edition Oreos — with weird flavors like Root Beer Float or PB&J or Key Lime Pie — are all part of a clever marketing strategy by the cookie brand:
You take a weird flavor that is decidedly not for everyone and chuck it into the world like chum. “Piña Colada Oreo Thins,” to a reasonable person, sound certifiably insane. If you were to walk by such an abomination in the grocery store you might shake your head and say, Dear God, Oreo has lost its way. Might as well buy a box of the original recipe now while you still can.
It is a madman theory of marketing, and it works.
Bromwich writes that over a three-year period when sales of novelty Oreos were up 12%, sales of the classic were up nearly 22%.
Showgirl is Taylor Swift’s Piña Colada Oreo. We’re not suggesting that Taylor would put out an album that was less than her best on purpose, but it hardly matters. The result is still a weird Oreo, and a weird Oreo can be — when you’re as successful as Taylor Swift — great for the brand and the bottom line.
Because who makes money when you’re done giving Showgirl a try and decide it’s time to revisit Evermore? Miss Taylor Alison Swift.
Earlier this year, Swift acquired her entire music catalog outright, reclaiming her masters from Shamrock Capital, the private equity firm that bought the recordings from Swift’s first music label. That means all the revenue from all her past work — album sales, merchandise, films, the works — goes into her pocket.
“Unlike most celebrities,” my colleague Ramishah Maruf writes, “Swift has made lucrative business dealings a part of her persona, positioning herself at the vanguard of the long narrative in the music business that unseen executives received much of the money actually generated by artists.”
Any time Swift releases a new album, Ramishah notes, streaming of her previous work (good ol’ plain or Double Stuf Oreos) also spikes.
To be sure, Showgirl is no commercial flop, even if the critical reception is mixed. As of Thursday, it was closing in on the modern-era record for album sales in a single week, potentially dethroning Adele’s 2015 masterwork, 25, according to Billboard (which notes the modern era data date to 1991). The Swifties are clearly not letting withering critiques from The Standard (“I was beginning to wonder if I was accidentally listening to a parody album hallucinated by some porn-addled AI”) or Pitchfork (“Showgirl sounds like much of the pop music you have heard over the past 10 years and throughout your lifetime) spoil their fun.
Addressing the mixed reviews, Swift offered the kind of “all press is good press” reasoning you’d expect from a billionaire brand executive.
“The rule of show business is, if it’s the first week of my album release, and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping,” she told podcast host Zane Lowe this week. “I know what I made. I know I adore it, and I know that on the theme of what the Showgirl is, all of this is part of it.”