Taylor Swift Releases 'The Encore' Showgirl Expansion — SkimNews
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- Taylor Swift released "The Encore," a four-song expansion of The Life of a Showgirl, written with Max Martin and Shellback during a celebratory trip to Sweden after the original album's record-breaking release
- The expansion directly contradicts Swift's prior public statement that the 12-track Showgirl would not be expanded, a promise she made while contrasting it with the 31-song blow-up of The Tortured Poets Department
- Patient Zero is singled out as the strongest new track, built around a "mournful and curiously processed Celtic fiddle sample" with echoes of Lover and Tortured Poets' Fortnight
- Pink Clouding is praised as a mature apology to a former partner carrying genuine regret, while Cleveland! is savaged as a vindictive love song about Kelce that reads as a cut-and-shut of two of her worst tracks
- Fans suspected the timing of the Encore drop was designed to remind Grammy members during voting or to disrupt Ella Langley's record-breaking US No 1 run
- Closing track Babylon is dismissed as sub-Evermore, and the reviewer concludes the healthiest thing for Swift's creativity would be to step back from releasing entirely
Why it matters: Swift publicly promised Showgirl would not be expanded and then expanded it anyway, handing critics fresh evidence that her release cadence now dilutes output — four songs the reviewer says could have lived on any of five different past records. The timing, dropping during Grammy voting season, makes the expansion look like a commercial nudge rather than a creative one, and it undercuts the original album's biggest selling point: that it was lean and purposeful.
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