At the end of Taylor Swift’s newly released 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, the narrator makes a somewhat shocking confession.

In the album’s final song, the title track, the narrator describes the sordid life of a showgirl: the betrayals, the faithless men, the industry indifference. She urges the song’s second narrator — a wide-eyed dreamer “as sweet as a peach,” also voiced by Swift — not to strive after the spotlight.

The peach-sweet dreamer decides she’s going to aim for fame nonetheless. She takes the first showgirl’s warning to heart, finding that by the peak of her career, all the up and comers are “bitches” who wish she would “hurry up and die.” Regardless, the dreamer-turned-icon has no plans to do so: “I’m immortal, baby dolls,” she croons. “I couldn’t if I tried.” For that reason, she’s “married to the hustle,” and despite the “pain hidden by lipstick and lace,” she “wouldn’t have it any other way.”

As the song fades out, we hear what appears to be audio from the end of a performance of Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour, as she thanks the audience and the band and Sabrina Carpenter for opening for her. (Carpenter sings a verse on “Showgirl.”) The association is complete: Swift is both the peach-sweet striver and the cynical industry vet, and regardless of what pain her experience may have caused her, she is glad she made it to the top.

It’s the “wouldn’t have it any other way” line that startled me.

Pop stars tend to sing a lot about the tragedy and pain of fame, and Swift is no exception. Her last album, 2024’s The Tortured Poet’s Department, included a callout of her own Swifties as “wine moms” and “judgmental creeps” for criticizing her relationship with Matty Healy. So it’s not unusual for Swift to sing about the dark side of fame. But it is unusual, both for pop stars in general and Swift in particular, to finish up such a song by announcing that nonetheless, she wants to be famous and she is happy that she is.

Taylor Swift used to try to........

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