Taylor Swift’s The Official Release Party of a Showgirl Movie: Everything We Learned

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THE RUNDOWN

• This past weekend, Taylor Swift’s theatrical event for The Life of a Showgirl brought fans together for an inside look at the making of the album.
• Swift explained the meaning and inspiration behind all of the songs, which were played in full with lyric videos.
• The film also premiered the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” and showed behind-the-scenes footage of how it was made.

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On October 3, Taylor Swift released her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, and kicked off her weekend-long theatrical event, The Official Release Party of a Showgirl.

Over the film’s limited three-day run in theaters, fans came out to hear Swift discuss her creative process, her inspirations, and the world she built around this era. The movie also featured lyric videos and behind-the-scenes footage from her music video for “The Fate of Ophelia,” which premiered during the screening.

Ahead, everything we learned from the film.

Swift is a big fan of Shakespeare, which explains why “The Fate of Ophelia” served as an anchor for the album.

In the film, Swift says she “obviously” loves Shakespeare, adding that his stories hold up to this day and are “actually not overhyped.” Her opening track refers to the character Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but Swift rewrites her version of the story so that it doesn’t end in tragedy.

“Ophelia drowned because Hamlet just messed with her head so much that she went crazy, and she couldn’t take it anymore,” Swift explained, adding that “all these men were just gaslighting her until she drowned.” She decided to make the song’s hook more uplifting by saying she was saved from suffering the same fate as Ophelia.

“I love those tragedies so much. I fall in love with those characters so much that it hurts me that they die,” she continued. So she decided to imagine a world in which a woman who could have ended up like Ophelia had a happier ending. “I’m just kind of putting this romantic spin on the fact that Ophelia was driven mad—they drove her mad—but not me.”

She wanted to lean into theatrics as much as possible in the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia.”

Throughout the film, Swift shared behind-the-scenes footage of the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia.” In the final cut, she moves through historical periods of thespianism, including a scene in which she seems to be dressed as Arthur Hughes’s Ophelia from Ophelia (“And He Will Not Come Back Again”). To capture these scenes, Swift worked with her Eras Tour choreographer, Mandy Moore, and had a specific directive for her dancers. In one part of the BTS footage, she encourages them to lean into the dramatics, yelling, “More theater!”

Here are all the Easter eggs from the video.

Swift said she could “relate to both characters” in her song “Father Figure.”

Fans have speculated that Swift’s fourth Showgirl track, “Father Figure,” is either about her alleged feud with Olivia Rodrigo or her public falling out with Scott Borchetta, her former label boss and the CEO of Big Machine Records (the latter seems to be the leading theory).

Never one to call someone out by name, Swift took a more general approach in her explanation of the song in her film. She said it’s about how power dynamics between a mentor and mentee can change over time, revealing, “I can relate to both characters in certain parts of the song.”

Read ELLE’s complete breakdown of “Father Figure.”

Her song “Eldest Daughter” reflects her realization that it’s OK to “need somebody” and alludes to Travis Kelce.

Swift said “Eldest Daughter” came from her desire to create a song about the charade of looking “cool,” “busy,” and “unbothered.” She described it as a commentary on the “facades that we put in front of ourselves.”

It’s also a reflection of her journey toward becoming softer, she noted, saying that it’s okay to “need somebody.” This alludes to her relationship with fiancé Travis Kelce, which she sings about in other tracks such as “Opalite,” “Wi$h Li$t,” “Wood,” and “Honey.”

Read all of her standout lyrics about Kelce here.

She opened up about feeling like she was too rigid in high school.

Reminiscing on her teenage years—when her music career started taking off—Swift said “Ruin the Friendship” refers to high-school-age anxieties about telling someone you have feelings for them. “It would’ve been fine to take chances I didn’t take,” she said, calling her high school self “so disciplined.”

Here’s more on the track, which Swift described as “very wistful and very nostalgic.”

Amid her alleged feud with Charli XCX, Swift said she thinks “attention is affection” in the music industry.

While fans theorize that Swift’s song “Actually Romantic” is a jab at Charli XCX, the singer didn’t name anyone specific while explaining the track. She said that it’s a “love letter to someone who hates you,” adding that it’s “very, very sweet” of someone to “think about me this much, even if it’s negative.” She continued, “In my industry, attention is affection, and you’re giving a whole lot of it.”

Here’s more on the speculation about Swift and Charli’s alleged feud and what might have been a subtle response from the British singer.

Swift is the go-to person for friends who go through PR nightmares and worry about being “canceled.”

In her song “Cancelled!”—which some believe is about Swift’s friendships with Blake Lively and Brittany Mahomes—Swift sings about growing stronger through public scrutiny. In her film, she said being canceled is “something everyone goes through now” and revealed that whenever someone in her circle is facing backlash, “I tend to be the person they reach out to.”

She continued, pretending to be on the phone, saying, “It’s just sort of like, ‘Oh yeah, OK, somebody told me that you got in trouble for making that joke. Hey, yeah, how are you doing? It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine. Do you want to go to lunch? Yeah, it’s fine.’” She added that she judges people “a lot less now that I’ve been kind of under the microscope for so long.”

Read more about the inspiration behind “Cancelled!” and Swift’s commentary.

According to Swift, “Honey” was a game-changer on the album.

“Honey,” which explores how Kelce redefined pet names for Swift, turned out to be a major addition to the project. Swift explained that the song added such a different feel from previous works that it made her team say, “This is a whole new album.”

Here’s more about the track.

Swift wanted Sabrina Carpenter on the title track for a specific reason.

Sabrina Carpenter is the only featured artist on The Life of a Showgirl—and Swift gave her that honor in the title track intentionally.

While reflecting on the inspiration behind the song “The Life of a Showgirl,” Swift said she wanted Carpenter to sing on it “so bad,” calling her “a friend of mine” and “one of my favorite artists.”

Swift continued, saying, “She’s been the opener for the Eras Tours, but she’s also really well-equipped for this career. She is so good at moving through backlash or criticism or people just being unfair to her, picking her apart. She has the temperament to, like, pivot and use it as fuel.”

Swift said she reached out to see if Carpenter would want to collaborate because “I really feel like she’s got the same mentality as what this song sings about—like, having this love for it and a love for the game that overrides how hard this can be.”

According to Swift, Carpenter “had the most wonderful, immediate response” and agreed with a resounding yes. At the time, the “Espresso” singer was on tour in Sweden but recorded her part for “The Life of a Showgirl” on her days off. “And that is a showgirl for ya,” Swift said.

Here’s a lyrical breakdown of Swift and Carpenter’s duet.

Swift said fans who attended her Eras Tour became the “unknowing inspiration” behind The Life of a Showgirl.

At the end of the film, Swift thanked her fans for their support, saying that the Eras Tour, which ran from March 2023 to December 2024, catalyzed The Life of a Showgirl. “The way that that tour felt, the way it lit up my whole life, was such a through line for making this music,” she said. “So thank you for being that unknowing inspiration. Behind the scenes, I was internalizing all that love and putting it into that record.”