Taylor Swift adds four new songs in Showgirl follow-up release

The latest:

Four new Taylor Swift songs have arrived as an addendum to The Life of a Showgirl, released under the title The Encore. The Times reported they are not leftovers from the original sessions but fresh recordings made long after the album came out, cut in Sweden this summer with Max Martin and Shellback. Chief rock and pop critic Will Hodgkinson called the set consistent with the album that preceded it.

Details:

• The release: The Encore adds four tracks to The Life of a Showgirl. According to The Times, they follow the template of the original album: thoroughly American, conversational, large-scale pop built for an audience that treats lyric-reading as autobiography. No track listing beyond the songs discussed was detailed in the review.
• The recording: The songs were made after the album’s release, with Swift travelling back to Sweden this summer to work with Max Martin and Shellback, the producers she has returned to repeatedly. That timing separates The Encore from the deluxe-edition model of unreleased session material.
• The standout: Hodgkinson rated Cleveland! the strongest and most personal of the four. The song is an ode to Travis Kelce, who is from Cleveland, built around the gap between how widely Swift is found irritating and how completely one person loves her anyway.
• The lyric: On Cleveland!, Swift sings that “you only need to find one person in this entire world who doesn’t find you completely insufferable”, after cataloguing the criticisms aimed at her: that she dresses badly, dances badly and is annoying in every way.
• The critic’s read: Hodgkinson argued the track shows the self-awareness at the centre of Swift’s appeal, taking a private situation and making it broadly relatable. He treated that move, rather than the production, as what she does best.
• The weaker track: Patient Zero drew a cooler verdict. The Times described it as a nostalgic look back at a relationship with a narcissist, told as a conversation in which Swift warns his current girlfriend about his charm, social climbing and likely infidelities.
• The production critique: Hodgkinson called the Patient Zero concept neat but the execution thin, citing a repetitive structure, synthetic drums and a single violin line carrying the song. He wrote that its limitations surface quickly.
• The timing: The release lands after what The Times framed as a possible pause for Swift, following the Showgirl rollout and her marriage to Kelce. The review did not address touring plans or whether more material is coming.

Background:

The Life of a Showgirl was Swift’s preceding album, produced with Max Martin and Shellback. Kelce, a Kansas City Chiefs player from Cleveland, joined her on stage during the Eras tour at Wembley in June 2024 before the couple married.

Between the lines:

The review’s framing suggests the two remaining songs discussed sit at opposite poles of the same method: Cleveland! converts a named personal relationship into a universal line, while Patient Zero applies the same confessional approach to an unnamed ex and, in Hodgkinson’s reading, runs out of material. The distinction he draws is one of execution rather than subject.

What’s next

Whether Swift follows The Encore with further recordings from the Sweden sessions, and how the four tracks perform on streaming charts against the original Life of a Showgirl release.