Taylor Swift‘s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, dropped late last week on Friday, Oct. 3, and it’s chock-full of pop culture references, both subtle and blatant.
From retellings of Shakespeare to a series of celebrity mentions, TikTok trends, and other major moments, here are all of the nods you may have missed in The Life of a Showgirl.
1. The Fate of Ophelia
In the opening track of her 12th studio album, Swift imagines an alternative ending for Hamlet’s Ophelia, who famously drowned to death after the titular character “just messed her head so much that she went crazy,” as Swift described in a clip from the theatrical release party that aired in cinemas from Oct. 3 to Oct. 5.
“I just love those tragedies so much. I fall in love with those characters so much that it hurts me that they die,” she explained. “And so now I’m just kind of putting this, like, romantic spin on the fact that Ophelia was driven mad. They drove her mad, but not me. And that’s the song.”
It’s likely an allusion to the way the media has been known to treat her, and she seems to be suggesting that someone—perhaps one Travis Kelce—swept onto the scene and saved her from the same fate with lyrics like, “And if you’d never come for me, I might’ve drowned in the melancholy,” and, “Late one night you dug me out of my grave and saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia.”
Swift has, of course, retold Shakespeare before, in one of her first big hits, “Love Story,” and also quotes another of his famed works in another track on the latest album, mentioned below.
In a more subtle manner, Swift also showcased the sourdough craze of the last several years in the video, as she baked a loaf of bread to be featured in a still-life moment that left her feeling giddy, as seen in the behind-the-scenes clips featured in the release party footage aired in theaters over the weekend.
Swift has joked that the “obsession” has “taken over [her] life,” and she’s been known to gift her baked goods to her friends and colleagues—often with puns in the notes, like, “It’s a loaf story.”
2. Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor earned an entire song to herself on this album, with Swift describing the track as “a sort of half cosplay, half singing from your own perspective.”
Per her words, it’s an exploration into the anxiety that surrounds the job, knowing “that [show business] isn’t gonna be forever.”
The first line she came up with was, “I cry my eyes violet, Elizabeth Taylor,” referencing the fact that in certain lighting, the Cleopatra star appeared to have violet irises. She went on to “tell a story that referenced some of the cool things about her life,” many of which she said paralleled hers, with “what it kind of conveys [being] things I’ve absolutely experienced time and time again.”
It’s not the first time Swift has referenced the timeless actress, nodding to her and her tumultuous love affair with actor Richard Burton in the opening track of her sixth studio album, reputation, “…Ready For It?”
In the song’s second verse, she sang, “…and he can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor / Every love I’ve known in comparison is a failure / I forget their names now, I’m so very tame now, never be the same now.”
Related: Elizabeth Taylor’s Son Makes Bold Comparison Between the Actress and Taylor Swift
3. Father Figure
“Father Figure” is the only confirmed interpolation on the album, though, as many fans have noted, there are some melodies that sound as though they may have been inspired by other artists, too.
This one incorporates a run from the late George Michael‘s 1987 track of the same name—something Michael’s estate was more than pleased to permit. Swift noted that, “in the context of the George Michael song,” the phrase is “romantic,” but she wanted to use it as more of a creative writing prompt to “turn it into a story about power, and a story about a young ingenue and their mentor, and the way that that relationship can change over time, and betrayal, and wit, and cunning, and cleverness, and strategy, and essentially, it ends up in a who’s gonna win situation, who’s gonna outplay the other, who’s gonna outfox the other.”
Many fans believe this to be a nod to the change in dynamic between her and Scott Borchetta, the head of her former label, Big Machine Records, who was ultimately responsible for the sale of her master recordings which led to the release of rerecorded “Taylor’s Versions” of four of her first six albums, before she was able to regain ownership of the originals.
“Father Figure” also paraphrases The Godfather when she sings, “You’ll be sleeping with the fishes,” which follows other mobster references, like how she “protect[s] the family.”
4. Eldest Daughter
In the fifth track of The Life of a Showgirl, Swift quotes Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage,” crooning in the chorus, “But I’m not a bad bitch, and this isn’t savage.” The track went viral on TikTok in early 2020, so it makes sense that the nod would fall in the middle of a retrospective song about the internet-obsessed culture we exist in.
Swift calls back to the “constant quest for perfectionism,” often associated with the oldest daughters of a family, and “how people have always wanted to look cool, and people have always wanted to look sexy and powerful and unbothered…like they don’t need or want anything.”
She added that it “kind of unmasks all the facades we put in front of ourselves, and just says, like, ‘yeah, I’m not a bad bitch, I’m not all those things that we aspire to be culturally, and that we’re told we have to be in order to, like, find love.”
Related: Taylor Swift Once Credited This Beloved Late-Night Host With Giving Her the ‘Best Relationship Advice Ever’
5. Ruin the Friendship
Though many expected this song would address the alleged downfall of Swift’s friendship with Blake Lively amid the Justin Baldoni lawsuit, it actually looks back on the chances she didn’t take as a teenager and how she’ll never know what could have been as a result.
The song name-drops Swift’s longtime best friend Abigail, who was featured in Fearless‘ “Fifteen” (and seen in the music video for her debut album’s “Picture to Burn”). It seems, based on the lyrics, that Abigail was the one who called Swift after their late high school friend Jeff Lang died at the age of 21—and who the Red vault track “Forever Winter” is believed to be about.
When Swift accepted BMI Country Songwriter of the Year and BMI Country Song of the Year for “You Belong With Me” at the BMI Country Music Awards in 2010, she recognized Lang in her speech, admitting, “It’s been a really emotional week for me. Yesterday, I sang at the funeral of one of my best friends, and he was 21. I used to play my songs for him first, so I would like to thank Jeff Lang.”
Swift also gave a shoutout to rapper 50 Cent—who was positively giddy over the inclusion of his name—when she looked back on one specific regret from her youth, lamenting in the lyrics, “And it was not an invitation, but as the 50 Cent song played, should’ve kissed you anyway.”
6. Wood
There is a non-zero chance that the “Fearless” singer paraphrased a viral tweet from 2021, where an Ariana Grande fan gently teased Swifties’ response to more blatantly sexual lyrics from the “Side to Side” singer than what Swift would historically write.
Taylor Swift appears to call back to a viral 2021 Ariana Grande fan post in her new song “WOOD”. pic.twitter.com/dHmduyNmrO
— Buzzing Pop (@BuzzingPop) October 3, 2025
The song is full of double entendres, but Swift quipped that it was about “very popular superstitions,” such as “knocking on wood, black cats, stepping on a crack, and things like that.”
7. Cancelled
This one actually is about Lively’s legal battle with Baldoni—we think.
Swift sings about liking her friends “cancelled,” a nod to the prevalent cancel culture many fall victim to these days, celebrity or not.
She calls it “a tongue-in-cheek glimpse at sort of social outrage that everybody goes through now,” singing, “Good thing I like my friends cancelled / I like ’em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal / Like my whiskey sour and poison thorny flowers / Welcome to my underworld where it gets quite dark / At least you know exactly who your friends are / They’re the ones with matching scars.”
Swift seems to quote controversial conservative commentator Candace Owens when she sings, “Did you girl-boss too close to the sun? Did they catch you having far too much fun?”
Owens once shared a video addressing Swift’s alleged involvement in Lively’s lawsuit, calling the duo “girl bosses who flew too close to the sun” several times. Then, in a a TikTok promoting the video, she reiterated, “This story is going to be remembered as ‘girl boss flew too close to the sun.’”
And, as many speculate that the lawsuit has led to the downfall of her friendship with the Gossip Girl alum, Swift admitted, “I definitely judge people a lot less now that I’ve been kind of under the microscope for so long. I just judge people based on who I know them to be, their actions. Not like, some sort of general consensus, where people are like, ‘Step away, they’re radioactive!'”
This track also features another Shakespearean shoutout, as Swift quotes Macbeth with the line, “Something wicked this way comes.”
8. The Life of a Showgirl
The main character in this track is a showgirl named Kitty, who, in “The Fate of Ophelia” music video is revealed to be named Kitty Finlay—which just so happens to be the name of Swift’s mother Andrea Swift’s (née Finlay) dog, whom the singer has been known to have a gentle beef with (just watch Kitty practically crush her in the below video from Entertainment Tonight).
Swift shared on her appearance with Jimmy Fallon that the character is also a nod to her mother’s mom, Marjorie Finlay, who was an opera singer—something of a showgirl herself. Marjorie’s photo also appears on the dressing room mirror in the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia,” and Swift’s song Marjorie is directly inspired by her, as well, while the lyric video for “Timeless,” a Speak Now vault track, suggests that it is, as well, as it features photos of her and Swift’s grandfather, Robert Finlay.
Then, Swift ends the song—and the whole album—with audio from the conclusion of her final Eras Tour show in Vancouver, Canada on Dec. 8, 2024—which arguably created the biggest moments in pop culture for the better part of two years.
Related: Taylor Swift’s Grandmother Marjorie’s Alma Mater Uncovers Photos of the ‘Evermore’ Inspiration in 1949 Yearbook
