How else could we have ended things?
[Video]
[5.38]
Al Varela: Everyone has been pushing out their takes about The Life of a Showgirl and all the fluff pieces, mean tweets, and flaming hot takes you could have about it. Yet, for as much as I’ve seen people make fun of songs like “Eldest Daughter”, “Wood”, “CANCELLED!”, and especially “Always Romantic”, I haven’t seen much if any discourse regarding its positioned single, “The Fate of Ophelia”. To be honest, there’s not much to say about it. This is exactly what the return of a poppier, more upbeat Taylor Swift would sound like. Catchy, driven, nice melodic chorus, lyrics that aim for a mix of poetry and pop appeal, it’s all very predictable. I do like it though. It’s nice and catchy, has a good driving groove, and it’s by far the least embarrassing of the love songs dedicated to Travis Kelce on the album. Still, like the album itself, I can’t avoid the fact that I know Taylor can and should be doing better. It’s been a real disappointing year for pop blockbusters, to the point where not even Taylor Swift can make up for it. Maybe next time.
[7]
Kayla Beardslee: Much of Showgirl (which would have been a better title on its own) makes me believe that Taylor Swift’s body has been taken over by an alien life force, though in reality I’m sure it’s just the inescapable mind-melting caused by extreme wealth and fame. “Ophelia” at least takes place before the body-snatching fully sets in: the lyrics, images, and emotions are as stagnant and hollow as the rest of the album, but there’s actual purpose to the melody and competency to the way the production is pieced together that makes the song a touch more vibrant than the rest of the dead-eyed billionaire slop that follows it. I’m a Folkmore girlie forever, but after a third straight release of overwrought. disoriented pop music that stumbles along in their shadow, I truly believe those albums broke Taylor’s brain. Sure, we got her magnum opuses exactly when we needed them, but at what cost?
[7]
Hannah Jocelyn: I’m slowly getting used to the five-bar phrases, which remind me of Sky Ferreria’s pre-cool single “One”. As for other ephemera this resembles, the clean guitar reminds me of Rock Mafia productions from the late 00s (or maybe “I Can See You”) but with all the energy taken out, the chorus is like trying to remember “Give Your Heart A Break” from hearing it once on Radio Disney. Remember when “I don’t need a man to save me” was corporate feminism 101? Now former corporate feminism representative Taylor Swift is saying a man saved her! There’s nothing wrong with a Taylor Swift love song; there is something wrong when someone who at least used to play with cliches now just plays them completely straight. It’s not even overwritten anymore, just the most absolute basic bare minimum for a Taylor lead single. In a word: Archetypal!
[4]
Claire Davidson: By now, most critics have observed that the marketing surrounding The Life of a Showgirl was a misnomer: rather than the tight, chorus-driven immediacy that many people assumed Max Martin and Shellback would bring to Taylor Swift’s compositions, what we get are songs that are far more low-key, their tone guarded and brooding when they swing for big hooks at all. “The Fate of Ophelia” may lack the defensive paranoia of the album at its most noxious, but it still represents the fatal flaw that leaves so much of The Life of a Showgirl feeling hollow: in attempting to deploy a conventional, upbeat pop structure to its lyrics—a clear attempt to distract from the palpable unease they contain—the songs only further betray how anxious Swift obviously is as a narrator. “The Fate of Ophelia” opens with pensive, morose piano keys before implementing bizarrely rubbery synths on the first verse, attempting to inject some momentum into a track that otherwise feels far more plaintive, with Swift reflecting on the deep-seated depression she felt prior to meeting Travis Kelce. The song is ultimately meant to be reassuring, an expression of gratitude that Kelce came to “save” her, but its happy-go-lucky chorus clashes blatantly with the otherwise somber verses, which only grow more ill-fitting as Swift laboriously explains the titular allusion in a bid to seem sophisticated. That posturing becomes far less convincing, mind you, when Swift vows to “keep it one hundred” and declares her loyalty to Kelce’s hands, team, and “vibes” on the post-chorus, yet another example of her trademark blend of lyrical verbosity with tin-eared bits of contemporary slang. Ironically, all of this is wasted on arguably the album’s best hook, which employs a buoyant foundation of splashy guitars and sweetly chiming keys that pair well with the wistful hitches in Swift’s falsetto. To think, this is one of the album’s better tracks!
[5]
Julian Axelrod: It Happened To Me: I underrated a Taylor Swift lead single until it got stuck in my head for three days straight. “Keep it 100 on the land, the sea, the sky” is one of those perfectly ridiculous Taylor lines that straddle the line between stupid and sublime.
[8]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: It’s a very nice drum track. Good for Shellback!
[5]
Nortey Dowuona: …is Max Martin on fraud watch?
[3]
Alfred Soto: “You’ve saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia,” Taylor Swift lies, exquisitely. Right — the richest and most self-assured person since Caesar Augustus would allow a man to drive her to madness and death. The music has the tick-tock simplicity of her earliest hits, and unlike anything released since “Antihero” it sports a hook. Should “The Fate of Ophelia” earn radio play, that tick-tock simplicity will wear out after a while.
[6]
Ian Mathers: You know that thing where, if you have a really great joke but you have to do a lot of explaining before people get it, it’s not actually a great joke? I’m not sure when Swift’s lyric writing passed the equivalent event horizon, but it sure has. Maybe this is compelling if you know all the lore or what-fucking-ever, but it simply doesn’t have much going for it as a pop song if you haven’t. I swear she used to have hooks. Also, I’m not sure Swift and I have read the same Hamlet?
[3]
Joshua Lu: In the accompanying film for The Life of a Showgirl, Swift offers a straightforward definition of the fate of Ophelia: “Ophelia drowned because Hamlet just messed with her head so much that she went crazy, and she couldn’t take it anymore, and all these men were just gaslighting her until she drowned. So it’s like, what if the hook is that you saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia?” As other nerds on this website have likely pointed out as well, Ophelia’s fate is not just men gaslighting her; it’s her lack of autonomy in a patriarchal society that wears down her sanity, culminating in her attempt to reclaim her agency by drowning herself. Ophelia could never claim, “I swore my loyalty to me, myself and I,” because all she can do is swear loyalty to the men in her life. This analysis isn’t some deep reading multiple layers deep into a complicated text; this all literally comes from the Sparknotes description of Ophelia. Crafting Shakespearean fanfiction to give tragedies happy endings isn’t new for Swift, but while “Love Story” could get away with a simple rewrite, this reimagining of Ophelia as a damsel in distress in need of an adequate man grossly belies what led her tragic fate. None of this admittedly matters in a pop song, and “The Fate of Ophelia” is a largely pleasant pop song, shimmering and bouncy, with the title operating as an effective hook. It lacks an extra spark, however, to make it that much more interesting or unique. This spark could have come from Swift’s renowned songwriting, but as with many songs from the parent album, the lyrics here detract from the experience more than anything.
[5]
Jessica Doyle: I wish we could draft the Much Ado About Nothing fan who posted an enjoyable dissection of Chloe Liese’s Two Wrongs Make a Right, because like Liese, Taylor Swift only committed to about 20% of her source material, which makes the other 80% look all the sillier. The fate of Ophelia remains outside her own grasp; for most of the play, she’s at the mercy of whoever’s lecturing her, and the most self-assertive act she can come up with is a withdrawal into madness. Even the Bowdlers, who conjured up a happy ending for Cordelia of all people, couldn’t see a way to end Hamlet with a living Ophelia pledging her allegiance to the hands, team, and vibes of Fortinbras. And here we have Swift trying out Elizabeth Siddal cosplay, but when in the last twenty years would she have been able to sell “I do not know, my lord, what I should think“? Meanwhile, the nondescript instrumental is too twinkly for Ophelia’s tragedy and too muted for Swift’s anti-tragic arc. Everyone would be much better off if we just skipped this and devoted the time to putting Vanessa Paradis’s “Ophélie” on a digital platform worthy of it.
[3]
Jel Bugle: This is a pretty good song! Not sure what she is chatting about, and I don’t really care. It’s got more of a tune than I’ve heard from Taylor in a while, a proper pop song – she do more songs like this one!
[8]
Alex Clifton: There’s a video from my Tumblr days that has remained lodged my brain for over a decade. In it, a man describes buying a clotheshorse with “detachable sock-drying clips,” and says in the most anguished voice, “d’you know what the worst part is? This is the best thing that’s happened to me all fucking day. This is as good as it gets.” That sums up my feelings towards “Ophelia.” It’s by far the best song off The Life of a Showgirl, but when did we reach this point? Is this as good as Taylor Swift gets these days? The woman can write a hell of a hit — I could pick out 20, easily — but this feels comparatively lame. It’s a beautifully sticky melody marred by somewhat corny lyrics (“I pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes”) and a fundamental misreading of Ophelia’s character that is quite unbecoming of a self-proclaimed English teacher. Is this as good as we can expect from Swift now that she’s a billionaire? It’s a grim thought. Again, it’s not bad, but it’s aggressively fine, and if this is the best Swift has to offer from now on, it’s a letdown considering her clear talent. I initially docked a point due to the Ophelia interpretation but added it back in as the music video is the best thing Swift has ever directed, and it’s fun enough that deserves some notice. I just wish that this wasn’t the best thing from the album. Taylor Swift songs should not feel like detachable sock-drying clips.
[6]