Taylor Swift has just revealed the full tracklist for her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl. Right away, the very first song is turning heads with a title that hints at a deep literary background.
The album’s opening track, "The Fate of Ophelia," is set to release on October 3. Swift, who is 35, explained on the "New Heights" podcast on Wednesday, August 13, that the song draws inspiration from the character Ophelia in William Shakespeare’s famous play, Hamlet. Swift playfully teased her fiancé, Travis Kelce, about his understanding of her lyrics. "He pretends not to know what these words mean, but he knows what they mean," she said. "He knows all the words, and he knows what they mean. He might not have read Hamlet, but I explained it to him."
Kelce, also 35, chimed in with a laugh, saying he "watched The Lion King" instead. The 1994 animated Disney movie is, in fact, an adaptation of Hamlet.
Swift’s song, however, gives a fresh twist to the classic literary figure. "This song has some of my favorite moments," she shared with British broadcaster "Magic" on the album’s launch day. She quoted a section after the hook: "Keep it 100 on the land, the sea, the sky / pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes." Swift added, "When we wrote that, I thought, ‘Yes! This is why I make music.’" She explained that the song is "about feeling for a long time that you could have had a similar fate to Ophelia, who was going slowly mad, over the years, because of love."
She went on to describe the song’s shift in perspective: "Instead, we reference her fate, but we talk about someone who saves you from that fate and the euphoric feeling of looking at it… and feeling that you have been rescued by this lucky turn of events, where you end up finding a person who changed that for you." Swift, fittingly, found this kind of love with her fiancé, Kelce, who proposed to her in August.
Her lyrics directly reference Kelce’s public invitation for a date: "I heard you calling / On the megaphone / You wanna see me all alone." This line points to the moment Kelce invited her out on his podcast.
Hamlet remains one of Shakespeare’s most renowned tragedies. It tells the story of a young prince dealing with his father’s death and his mother’s hasty marriage to King Claudius, who is also Hamlet’s uncle. Ophelia, Hamlet’s love interest, is a key character in the play. Her story is famously tragic. She is often used by the men in her life. After her father dies, Hamlet ends their relationship, mistakenly believing others manipulated their romance. Ophelia eventually drowns.
Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, famously describes Ophelia’s death in the play:
"There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds / Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke / When down her weedy trophies and herself / Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide / And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up / Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes / As one incapable of her own distress / Or like a creature native and endued unto that element. But long it could not be / Till that her garments, heavy with their drink / Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay / To muddy death."
Swift even seemed to echo Ophelia’s drowning in the album’s cover art for The Life of a Showgirl. The image shows her in a bathtub, partially submerged in water, wearing a jeweled corset. Swift clarified the cover’s meaning: "This represents the end of my night, when I’m on tour, I have the same day every day." She added, "My show days are the same every day. I’m just in a different city, and my day ends in a bathtub, not normally with a glittery dress."
She continued, "I wanted to, in a way, glamorize the different aspects of how that tour felt… being at the end of the night when all this has passed. You won’t be able to go to bed until 4 AM after this, but you had to jump 50 million hurdles in the obstacle course that is your show, and you made it. ‘You have two more in a row, but tonight you made it. That’s all that matters right now.’" Swift explained that The Life of a Showgirl is about "what [she] was living offstage" during her two-year Eras Tour.
Fans won’t hear "The Fate of Ophelia" until its fall release, but that hasn’t stopped them from guessing at Swift’s lyrical clues. One X user wrote, "Guys, Ophelia’s fate… Ophelia is the Shakespeare girl, who went mad and drowned after loving and losing. Imagine this conceptualized as the spotlights pulling you down." Another Swiftie pointed out that Ophelia dies in Act IV, Scene 7, connecting it to Swift’s appearance on "New Heights." "Tay said 47 twice [in the episode]," the user noted, referring to the podcast’s numerology. "[Also,] Ophelia’s act is reclaiming her agency (Masters?). It’s like saying, ‘When I was drowning, that’s when I could finally breathe’ [from her song ‘Clean’]." Swift notably reacquired the masters of her first six albums earlier this summer.
Swift hasn’t shared more about her specific musical inspiration for "The Fate of Ophelia." However, she did admit that making the record was a dream come true. "It meant everything to me to have this creative experience, where we knew we had to bring the best ideas we’ve ever had," Swift said on "New Heights" about collaborating with producers Max Martin and Shellback. "I also know the pressure I put on this record by saying that, but I don’t care because I love it so much, and I’m so proud of it. It simply comes from the most infectious, joyful, wild, and dramatic moment I was in my life. So that effervescence has been noted in this record."
The Life of a Showgirl will be available on Friday, October 3.