Taylor Swift is spilling all the tea on her new album, The Life of a Showgirl. As Wednesday’s episode of New Heights came out on YouTube, the singer shared the album cover, track list, and the release date for the record. It’s out Oct. 3.
“And, baby, that’s show business for you. New album The Life of a Showgirl. Out October 3,” she wrote. She also shared that she co-produced the album with Max Martin and Shellback.
The album cover, designed by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot, features Swift floating underwater with the title displayed in an orange, glittery font. She also unveiled the track list; it includes a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter on the title track, which closes the album.
“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant. It just comes from like the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life,” she said on the New Heights podcast. “And so that effervescence has come through on this record. And like, as you said, bangers.”
The LP includes 12 tracks, including songs titled “Actually Romantic,” “Father Figure,” “Elizabeth Taylor,” “Cancelled!,” and “Honey.” Swift also confirmed that only 12 songs would be dropping unlike her last album, which had two parts.
“With Tortured Poets Department, I was like, ‘Here’s a data dump of everything I thought and felt in two or three years. Here’s 31 songs.’ This is 12. There’s not a 13th, there’s not other ones coming,” Swift said on the podcast. “This is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time … Every single song is on this album for hundreds of reasons, you know, and you couldn’t take one out, and it’d be the same album. You couldn’t add one. It’s just right.”
She added: “I tend to love to write lots and lots of music, so it’s a temptation to release lots of music, but oftentimes, like I wanted to do an album that was so focused on quality and on the theme and everything fitting together like a perfect puzzle, that these 12 songs for my 12th album, I feel like we achieved that, and I’m really happy about that.”
Swift announced the album title in a teaser for the New Heights podcast, hosted by her boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason. In the clip, Swift sits next to her boyfriend and podcast host Travis Kelce as she opens up a mint green case with her initials on it in orange lettering. “I wanted to show you something … This is my brand new album, The Life of a Showgirl.”
In the previously posted clip, the album cover was blurred out.
On Monday night, a countdown appeared on her website, with the ticker scheduled to expire today at 12:12 a.m. ET. When the time reached, the site temporarily crashed before unveiling an orange glitter vinyl variant of the record, a cassette, and a CD version of the LP.
The Life of a Showgirl is the 12th studio album from Swift, who last released an album in 2024, The Tortured Poets Department.
Earlier this year, Swift purchased the master recordings for her first six albums and gained control of her music catalog. “All of the music I’ve ever made now belongs to me,” the singer wrote in a letter on her website. The news came as she rereleased Taylor’s Version albums of Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and 1989.
The Life of a Showgirl Track List
1. “The Fate of Ophelia”
2. “Elizabeth Taylor”
3. “Opalite”
4. “Father Figure”
5. “Eldest Daughter”
6. “Ruin the Friendship”
7. “Actually Romantic”
8. “Wi$h Li$t”
9. “Wood”
10. “Cancelled!”
11. “Honey”
12. “The Life of a Showgirl” feat. Sabrina Carpenter