What Each Song On Taylor Swift’s Album “The Life Of A Showgirl” Could Be About

Since the release of Taylor’s last album, The Tortured Poets Department, in April 2024, there has only really been one major news story that the star has been embroiled in, and that is her friendship with Blake Lively.

For reference, Taylor and Blake have been incredibly close friends for several years, and Taylor is even godmother to one of Blake’s daughters.

As you probably know, Blake is in the middle of a messy legal battle with her It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, and Taylor ended up getting roped into the drama when Justin’s legal team subpoenaed her back in May, arguing that Blake had used Taylor’s astronomic celebrity status to put pressure on Justin to bend to her whim.

At the time, a source close to Taylor immediately denied this claim, saying that the star “never set foot on the set of the movie,” nor was she involved in “any casting or creative decisions.”

However, this explicitly contradicted a large amount of the promo surrounding It Ends With Us, as well as other evidence that Justin’s team had against Blake. The most famous example is an alleged text from Blake that Justin’s team put forward as evidence, where she references the HBO series Game of Thrones as she brands herself a “Khaleesi” and seemingly hints at her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and Taylor being her “dragons.”

In another text exchange, Justin revealed that Taylor was present at a meeting with Blake, and suggested that Blake had arranged this to pressure him into agreeing with her creative requests. 

During the press tour for It Ends With Us, Blake said that Taylor had been with her “the whole time” while making the movie, something that she reiterated in multiple different interviews. Actor Isabela Ferrer also said that Taylor had been instrumental in her landing her role in the movie, with Isabela playing the younger version of Blake’s character, Lily Bloom.

In fact, Blake even included a “special thanks” to Taylor in the film’s end credits.

Interestingly, even before the legal case, it looked as though Taylor was unhappy with how Blake was leveraging her name, as she did not promote It Ends With Us on her social platforms, despite promoting Ryan’s movie Deadpool & Wolverine, which was released at around the same time.

In June, a source told People that Blake and Taylor’s long-lasting friendship was now “fractured” and had “halted,” and how this whole mess unfolded would be the obvious inspiration behind a Taylor song with a title as explicit as “Ruin The Friendship.”