That’s showbiz, baby.
Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” has been delivered unto us.
Because sometimes we get nice things — and because this gal is nothing if not an Easter egg birthing, number-venerating architect of her own mythos — 12 tracks happen to perfectly align with the dozen signs of the zodiac.
Blame it on a childhood spent huffing the pine and promise of Christmas trees, my friends: the girl has a plan.
The rumor mill is churning and burning with trash talk about the track list, including the speculation that “Wood” is about Travis Kelce’s trouser tree, “Actually Romantic” is a menacing diss track aimed at Charli XCX, and “Cancelled!” is a kiss-off to Blake Lively.
We’re here to cut the songs and the stardust.
In honor of Miss Americana’s latest opus, we’re taking a look at the astrology of the showgirl. Fun fact: the album itself is a Libra, having been born into the world just after midnight on this date.
Read on to see what ‘TLOAS’ song sings to the spirit of your zodiac sign.
“The Fate of Ophelia”
The firstborn sign in the zodiac, Aries is cardinal fire, ruled by Mars and born to burn and live and love at volume 11.
Apropos of this, “The Fate of Ophelia,” the first track on “TLOASG” — with its references to megaphones, pyromania, “keeping it 100” and contact sports set against a ceaselessly synth beat — is pure Aries.
Aries is also the sign of the “I” and the “ID,” of autonomy and individuation expressed in the lyrics, “I swore my loyalty to me (Me), myself (Myself), and I (I)”
Add to the mix and the matches that I’ve yet to meet an Aries without a savior/hero complex, and this bop glorifies how the right kind of love from a can really light up a sad girl with a notebook.
Bonus: Red is the power color of Aries, and in the popular Pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia by John Everett Millais, the tragic, titular subject has auburn hair, an artistic choice that has inspired countless iterations.
“Wi$h Li$t”
Taurus lords over the second house of values and possessions, wealth and worth, and “Wi$h Li$t” reads like a roster of wanting a couple of kids and a basketball hoop, while diavowing the tangible goods that come up short on satisfaction: yacht life, Balenci’ shades.
“Please, God, bring me a best friend who I think is hot,” sings Tay Tay.
And trust, folks, this is the true prayer of team Taurus, a herd that likes to cover their bases and meet their needs in the most efficient way possible — preferably without having to leave the house.
Someone that can roll deep, hang tight and get carnal with you? Dreams really do come true.
“Honey”
Gemini ruled the third house of communication and exchange, thought and language, poetry and slander, honey tongues and trash talk.
In kind, “Honey” explores how the sound and effect of a word can change based on the person delivering it.
Presumably, in the goatee-framed mouth of one Travis Kelce, a number of common pet names (honey, sweetheart) have been reborn and rebranded, from passive-aggressive dismissal to gilded affirmation.
Bless up, honey drip.
“Eldest Daughter”
Never is Swift’s soft and squishy, emotionally sunburned Cancer moon on more obvious display than in the lyrics for “Eldest Daughter.”
Cancer lords over the fourth house of roots and foundations. Ruled by the maternal, moody AF moon, this is a sign with a permanent boner for nostalgia; see childhood crush and trampoline references.
Cancers maintain an ethos of “preserve and protect,” and their ultimate aim is the comfort and safety of their nest and nestmates.
When she sings, “So many traitors, smooth operators/But I’m never gonna break that vow/I’m nеver gonna leave you now” and later promises “now you’re home” — well, she means it.
Cancer is often depicted as a “soft” sign, but these folks learn early on to protect their delicate underbellies with elaborate defenses, a fact Swift acknowledges in lines like “dying just from trying to seem cool” and “dressed up as wolves.”
Happy for Tay Tay that she can at long last surrender her faux fur and feigned cool.
“Actually Romantic”
Allegedly written as a diss track for her former friend and current Leo nemesis Charli XCX, “Actually Romantic” reads like a cocksure love letter to haters and violators of the sacred covenant of girl code.
All press is good press to a Leo, and whether you’re calling them names over a plate of cocaine or singing their praises to the high heavens, it all swirls in the same ego drain.
In effect, getting wet over hate is big-time big cat energy.
“CANCELLED!”
The cauldron of the internet is in a rolling boil with the theory that “CANCELLED!” is about Swift’s former pal and problematic quintuple Virgo Blake Lively.
Whiffs of Lively, who has been on the cusp of cancellation for years, are threaded throughout the song’s lyrics:
‘Good thing I like my friends cancelled / I like ’em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal / Like my whiskey sour / And poison thorny flowers.’
Lean in, egg hunters and conspiracy courters: Lively served as a brand ambassador for the Italian luxury fashion house’s fragrance, Gucci Première, back in 2012 and 2013.
On that cloaked-in-scandal tip, Lively has been all but swaddled in it as of late.
See footage of Lively using slurs and being casually cruel to interviewers and costars alike.
And lest we forget that time she got married at a plantation, launched a lifestyle brand inspired by “the allure” of the antebellum South, and told Vogue the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” made her laugh.
If we really grasp for the straws, or stems of evidence, the thorny flowers bit could be a reference to Lively’s floral shop-owning character Lily Bloom from “It Ends With Us.”
“Opalite”
This one is relatively straightforward, as big dog Travis Kelce is a card-carrying Libra, and opal is the birthstone of the people of the scales and balances.
Libra also rules the seventh house of contracts and trusted partnerships, and by default, marriage, making it an apt ode to her groom-to-be.
Indeed, “Opalite” follows the story of someone who “had a bad habit” of finding relationships that were “never gonna last,” with lyrics about living “with ghosts” and believing they were “haunted” forever.
Until!!!! Life and the encompassing black of an onyx night are transformed by the vested power of opalite.
While opalite is a man-made glass designed to replicate the ethereal glow of opals, perhaps there’s some poetry in Swift’s decision to sub the natural for the unnatural, as her own happiness appears to be Kelce-crafted and beyond the bounds of nature.
He, of course, counts “Opalite” as his favorite ‘TLOAG’ track.
“Wood”
In terms of the human body, Scorpio rules the genitalia, and this one is a direct ode to Travis Kelce’s, well, wood — comparing it to an old-growth forest and a magical instrument.
Scoprio rules the eighth house of death and rebirth and is associated with the threshold of the underworld, and in this ditty, Swift invokes all manner of shadows and superstitions from sidewalk cracks to black cats, crossed fingers and phallic wands.
“Forgive me, it sounds cocky / He (ah!)matized [d–kmatized] me / And opened my eyes / Redwood tree / It ain’t hard to see / His love was the key / That opened my thighs.”
Talk about big-D energy.
In theme and d–k reference, the song, like the sign, is about as subtle as a foghorn.
“Ruin the Friendship”
Sagittarius, with their expansive, optimistic joie de vivre energy, are the perpetual teenagers of the zodiac, ever living in and from the halcyon precipice of adulthood.
Enter “Ruin the Friendship,” a lament about what could have been between two high school friends.
Ruled by good luck and good times, planet Jupiter, Sag folk are more likely to shoot their shot than ramble in regret, but the lyrics about driving fast and miles wide smiles reek of archer wistfulness.
“Father Figure”
Ruled by punishing planet Saturn — lord of time, the long game, the hard knocks and the holy grind — Capricorn is the uncontested daddy of the zodiac, and nothing screams bad and bougie pater familias like condescension, brown liquor, profits, picking up the tab, protecting an empire, and destroying a disloyal protogee, all in the name of family, folks.
Bonus points, in the Major Arcana of the Tarot, Capricorn is represented by The Devil card, and our dark lord gets name -hecked and d–k-measured in this one.
“The Life of a Showgirl”
Aquarius rules the 11th house of friends, and Swift brings in her pal Sabrina Carpenter on this one to sing about the pitfalls of the stage life and how you have to trade the softness of kittens and the sweetness of peaches for ice-cold veins to make it in the game.
As a fixed air sign, Aquarians are emphatic/eccentric about their belief systems, making them the charismatic cult leaders of the zodiac; all clout, no doubt, folks.
As Swift sings, “The bitches/Who wish I’d hurry up and die/But I’m immortal now, baby dolls/I couldn’t if I tried.”
Right on, right on, rhinestone messiah.
“Elizabeth Taylor”
Ruled by Neptune, Pisces is the sign of fantasy and escape, and escape through fantasy. In a similar game of dream association, Swift has a long history of aligning her life with that of glamorous women who have lived, loved, and died before her.
On “TLOASG,” she invokes the violet eyes of apex Pisces Elizabeth and dares to dream of a forever lover (the same tiny, frayed stuffed animal hope harbored in the heart of every Pisces).
Pisces is also the sign of delusion, and our girl has gotten some blowback for this one, with detractors accusing the singer of being “tone deaf” and “cosplaying the struggle” in these and other lyrics.
Sidenote: If Swift were to name her next album “Cosplaying the Struggle,” she would, in my mind, have reached unmatched heights of menace.
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture, and personal experience. To book a reading, visit her website.
