Taylor Swift has revealed that her her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, will be released on October 3.
The pop superstar, 35, appeared Wednesday night on New Heights, the podcast her boyfriend Travis Kelce co-hosts with his brother, Jason. More than 1.3m viewers tuned in to watch the YouTube version of the podcast which ran for almost an hour and 45 minutes.
During the wide-ranging conversation Swift discussed her relationship with Kelce and her much-anticipated new album, explaining that the 12 songs were inspired by her experiences during her record-breaking Eras Tour.
“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 and vibrant,” she said. “It just comes from like the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life. That effervescence has come through on this record, and like, as [Kelce] said… bangers.”
She added that the album will stand alone without bonus tracks, saying: “There’s no other songs coming. It’s not like The Tortured Poets Department where I was like: ‘Here’s a data dump of everything I thought or felt in two or three years. Here’s 31 songs.’ This is 12. There’s not a 13th, there’s not a 14th, there’s not other ones coming.”
“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? You couldn’t take one out and it be the same album. You couldn’t add one and it be the same album. It’s just right. That focus and that kind of discipline with creating an album, and keeping the bar really high is something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time,” she said.
Earlier in the episode, Swift reflected on how Kelce wooed her, joking: “This podcast got me a boyfriend, ever since Travis decided to use it as his personal dating app about two years ago.”
She added that when they first spoke, she realized “he’s the good kind of crazy.”
“I knew that he wasn’t crazy the first couple of times that we talked,” she continued. “I was just like, he’s truly getting to know me in a way that’s very natural, very pure, very normal. Just the way that he could make me laugh so immediately about normal things. Travis is a vibe booster in everyone’s life that he’s in. He’s like a human exclamation point.”
The track list for The Life of a Showgirl reads:
- “The Fate of Ophelia”
- “Elizabeth Taylor”
- “Opalite”
- “Father Figure”
- “Eldest Daughter”
- “Ruin the Friendship”
- “Actually Romantic”
- “Wi$h Li$t”
- “Wood’
- “Cancelled!”
- “Honey”
- “The Life of a Showgirl (featuring Sabrina Carpenter)”
The album was produced by Swift with Max Martin and Shellback, with whom Swift has previously collaborated on albums including 2017’s Reputation.
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Swift first announced her new record in a preview clip from the episode posted earlier this week. The album is now available for pre-order and will be shipped before October 13, according to Swift’s website.
The multi Grammy-winning pop star’s previous album was The Tortured Poets Department, released in 2024. In the same year, she ended her Eras Tour, which sold tickets worth an estimated $2.2 billion (£1.6bn) in its nearly two-year run, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time for two years in a row.
