Everything Taylor Swift has revealed about The Life of a Showgirl

Taylor Swift has revealed that her her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, will be released on October 3.

The pop superstar, 35, appeared Wednesday night on New Heights, the podcast her boyfriend Travis Kelce co-hosts with his brother, Jason. More than 1.3m viewers tuned in to watch the YouTube version of the podcast which ran for almost an hour and 45 minutes.

During the wide-ranging conversation Swift discussed her relationship with Kelce and her much-anticipated new album, explaining that the 12 songs were inspired by her experiences during her record-breaking Eras Tour. She also revealed that the album would feature a collaboration with fellow pop star Sabrina Carpenter.

“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and and vibrant,” she said. “It just comes from like the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life. That effervescence has come through on this record, and like, as [Kelce] said… bangers.”

She added that the album,will stand alone without bonus tracks, confirming: “There’s no other songs coming.”

“It’s not like The Tortured Poets Department where I was like: ‘Here’s a data dump of everything I thought or felt in two or three years. Here’s 31 songs.’ This is 12,” she said. “There’s not a 13th, there’s not a 14th, there’s not other ones coming.”

Swift’s decision comes after she received some criticism for the lengthy tracklists of recent albums such as last year’s The Tortured Poets Department, the “anthology” edition of which ran for 35 songs, including four acoustic versions.

“This is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time,” the Grammy winner said. “Every single song is on this album for hundreds of reasons, you know? You couldn’t take one out and it be the same album. You couldn’t add one and it be the same album. It’s just right.

“That focus and that kind of discipline with creating an album, and keeping the bar really high is something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time,” she said.

Travis called the album “upbeat”, noting its difference in tone to Tortured Poets. “Life is more upbeat,” Swift responded, smiling at him.

Swift noted that she tends to write “lots and lots of music”, which could make it tempting to try and include as much as possible on a record.

“But oftentimes… I wanted to do an album that was so focused on quality and on the theme, and everything fitting together like a perfect puzzle, that these 12 songs for my 12th album, I feel like we achieved that, and I’m really happy about that.”

The Tortured Poets Department smashed two streaming records on Spotify, achieving 300 million plays in one day and one billion over five days, and also made her the first artist in history to secure the top 14 spots on the Billboard Hot 100.

She holds the record for most No 1 albums in the US by a female artist in history, and is also the first artist ever to have won the Grammy for Album of the Year four times.

Earlier in the episode, Swift reflected on how Travis wooed her, joking: “This podcast got me a boyfriend, ever since Travis decided to use it as his personal dating app about two years ago.”

She added that when they first spoke, she realized “he’s the good kind of crazy.”

Travis famously sang Swift’s praises on his podcast before the pair met, while admitting he was disappointed they hadn’t met when he attended one of her concerts.

She said the clip, which went viral, felt almost like “he was standing outside of my apartment, holding a boom box saying, ‘I want to go on a date with you’”.

This was exactly the moment she had “been writing songs about, wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager”, she said.

“I knew that he wasn’t crazy the first couple of times that we talked,” she continued. “I was just like, he’s truly getting to know me in a way that’s very natural, very pure, very normal. Just the way that he could make me laugh so immediately about normal things. Travis is a vibe booster in everyone’s life that he’s in. He’s like a human exclamation point.”

The track list for The Life of a Showgirl is as follows:

The album was produced by Swift with Max Martin and Shellback, with whom Swift has previously collaborated on albums including 2012’s Red, 2014’s 1989 and 2017’s Reputation.

She described Swedish pop svengali Martin as her “mentor” and noted how he and Shellback had helped craft some of her biggest hits, from “We Are Never Getting Back Together”, “22”, “Shake It Off”, “Blank Space”, “Style” and “Delicate”.

“We’ve made songs that I am so proud of, and so basically we’ve never actually made an album before where it’s just the three of us,” she said.

“It felt like catching lightning in a bottle, honestly.”

She revealed that Martin attended one of her Eras shows in Stockholm where she told him she wanted to make an album that made her as proud as the Eras tour, “and for the same reasons”.

“He was like, ‘Do you understand what kind of pressure that is,’” she recalled, laughing.

Swift first announced her new record in a preview clip from the episode posted earlier this week. The album is now available for pre-order and will be shipped before October 13, according to Swift’s website.

The multi Grammy-winning pop star’s previous album was The Tortured Poets Department, released in 2024. In the same year, she ended her Eras Tour, which sold tickets worth an estimated $2.2 billion (£1.6bn) in its nearly two-year run, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time for two years in a row.

She has not yet mentioned whether she plans to tour the new album.

Chaos in the Cotswolds as protests erupt against JD Vance’s holiday

A quaint Cotswolds village has found itself at the centre of national attention in recent days, as protesters descend on the quiet hamlet to protest JD Vance’s holiday.

Dozens of people gathered in the usually quiet Oxfordshire countryside this week to tell the US vice president that he was “not welcome” in the area.

Mr Vance is staying in a Grade II listed country manor in the hamlet of Dean, sparking a “circus” in the vicinity of the 6-acre site as residents face roadblocks and police door knocks.

Despite the sniffer dogs and police presence, protesters still gathered in the village for a “not welcome” party, equipped with banners, cake and plenty of pictures of an unflattering meme of the vice president.

Local media described a crowd of between 50 to 100 people gathering in the nearby village of Charlbury, as they said he was “simply not welcome here”.

Many placards referenced Mr Vance’s own words, with a woman holding a sign saying “Cotswolds childless cat ladies say go home”, and many quoting his 2016 statement that he was a “Never Trump guy”.

“He’s simply not welcome here,” one woman told The Guardian: “That’s not what we’re about. We don’t want anything to do with people like him.”

A number of protesters referenced the US government’s support for Israel amid the starvation and bombardment of Gaza, with several placards reading “end the genocide” and calling the vice president a “war criminal”.

One protester told The Guardian: “That wouldn’t happen without this US government.”

When meeting with the UK foreign secretary David Lammy last week, the US vice president questioned the UK’s plans to recognise a Palestinian state.

He said both the UK and US wanted to “solve” the crisis in Gaza, but “may have some disagreements about how exactly to accomplish that goal, and we’ll talk about that today”.

Another protestor described his treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky as “disgusting” and that the confrontation between the pair in the White House was “disgraceful”.

Other more satirical signs read “JD Vance claps when the plane lands” and “JD Vance’s Netflix password is ‘password’”.

One picture was everywhere – an edited picture of a bald Mr Vance, which has become a commonly used meme on social media.

As well as being on a number of placards, a van was seen driving around the area with a giant screen displaying the image on its side.

US Homeland Security officials were forced to deny claims by a Norwegian tourist in June that he had been denied entry into the United States after agents found a version of the meme on his phone.

Local residents have described the major disruption his holiday has brought to their usually sleepy villages.

Road closures, sniffer dogs, police and a number of blacked out cars have all been spotted in the area, a marked difference to the usual calm and quaint atmosphere of a Cotswold country retreat.

Though the village is no stranger to high-profile faces, with it being the home to former prime minister David Cameron, the level of security has prompted the owners of the manor to apologise to locals “for the circus”.

Locals have described being stopped at road blocks and questioned by police, which some have described as a waste of resources.

Toby Bull, 18, told the Oxford Mail at Tuesday’s protest: “He is using up the police resources when the only major police stations nearby are in Oxford and Banbury.”

He added: “We’re very used to having celebrities and famous people around here. This protest shows how particular unhappy we are with him coming here.”

Mr Vance and his family are renting the luxurious home from of its owners Johnny and Pippa Hornby, who bought the property in 2017 and have since received plaudits in Tatler for having transformed its Edwardian garden into a “waterworld” with an impressive swimming pool.

During his stay, Mr Vance can enjoy the two cellars, tennis court, rose garden, gym and Georgian orangery all set within the six-acres of land the house sits on.

The 18th-century home offers pre-arranged visits to its gardens, which are set behind stone walls with “an abundant and varied selection of climbing/rambling roses, clematis and hydrangeas”.

When Mr Vance arrived for his visit, he said: “It is great to be here… my wife and I love this area of the UK and we were actually here a couple of years ago. We love this country.”