Taylor Swift’s Hollow Gematria

I’m a girl-dad to two devoted Swifties, which means I know her entire catalog whether I want to or not. As a two-decade, snob-adjacent music journalist, I’ve heard the new album, The Life of a Showgirl, and consider it her weakest. Based on how quickly she’s addressing negative reviews—“If it’s the first week of my album release, and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping,” she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe—I think she knows it, too.