Revenge of the Showgirl

09 Oct, 2026

Barely two weeks ago, Taylor Swift faced another spectacular round of public condemnation. The release of The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore, featuring four additional songs, provoked a barrage of criticism on YouTube, not only from her habitual detractors but also from some of her disappointed fans. The songs were dismissed as uninspired, mediocre, and unworthy of an artist once celebrated for her songwriting. Her relentless marketing of multiple album editions was denounced as shameless capitalist greed.

Then came the MTV Video Music Awards on 27 September, where she received the inaugural Artist Director Honors, an award critics derided as practically “Taylor-made” for her. Commentators delivered their verdicts with the solemn authority of music historians, while others approached the proceedings with the righteous indignation of people who felt personally injured by a white woman from Pennsylvania continuing to sell records.

The thumbnails alone were masterpieces of melodrama. Taylor Swift’s latest music was deemed a disaster. Her fans were supposedly abandoning her. The public had finally had enough. The empire was crumbling. Her career was supposedly collapsing. This was the end.

And then came the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated 10 October 2026. Here are the results:

Four songs. Four simultaneous debuts. Four of the five highest positions on the definitive singles chart in the United States.

All by Taylor Swift.

“Patient Zero” also became her sixteenth No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100. Meanwhile, The Life of a Showgirl, propelled by its expanded Encore edition, returned to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for its thirteenth non-consecutive week at the summit:

Thirteen weeks at No. 1. Sixteen chart-topping singles. Four songs occupying four of the top five positions.

Apparently, Taylor Swift didn’t get the memo that social media had declared her finished.

I would love to see some of those YouTubers explain these numbers away. In fact, I have little doubt that they will try. Somewhere, at this very moment, someone is probably preparing a forty-five-minute video explaining why four simultaneous top-five hits are definitive evidence of an artist’s commercial decline.

Someday, Taylor Swift will indeed become commercially irrelevant. Popularity is never permanent, and every great career inevitably reaches a point of decline. But for the moment, the figures are rather merciless.

Those numbers don’t just undermine the argument against her. They leave bruises.

. . . and the “Swiftie” went away empty-handed. I suppose it’s becoming something of a tradition. Every year, following our annual retreat, I make a pilgrimage of a rather less spiritual nature to the Sunrise Records store in Corner Brook.

Last year, the object of my devotion was The Life of a Showgirl. [Read the post → here.]

This year, having learned only the previous evening of Taylor’s vindication on the Billboard charts, I arrived with a renewed sense of purpose. Surely, I thought, The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore would already be available on vinyl, and I might even have the satisfaction of being among the first in NL to acquire it.

At the store, Ryan was busy unpacking a shipment of newly arrived records, and I explained the purpose of my latest expedition . . .

Unfortunately, the new arrivals contained no Encore. There were plenty of Taylor Swift records on the shelves, of course, most importantly, the original The Life of a Showgirl . . .

But I couldn’t possibly leave a record shop without buying something. That would have been an intolerable breach of tradition. I therefore consoled myself with Ed Kowalczyk Live and the Grandmother of All Showgirls . . .