Y’all Are Doing Way Too Much With Taylor Swift's The Encore

When Taylor Swift announced her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, in August 2025, she made a point of clarifying that TS12 would contain only 12 tracks. Unlike her previous albums Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department, there would be no special deluxe editions with an abundance of new songs to accompany the main album after its release.

Just a couple months later, she changed her mind, and like a true showgirl, she said “the show must go on.” Swift released The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore on Sept. 25, featuring four new songs created with her Showgirl collaborators Max Martin and Shellback: “Patient Zero,” “Cleveland!,” “Pink Clouding,” and “Babylon.”

The tracks are fun to dig into, mixing Swift’s classic synth-pop, Folklore-like storytelling, trip-hop healing, and whatever “Cleveland!” is supposed to be. But some fans and critics are treating The Encore as if it were a whole new album, and even using scathing criticism as an excuse to tarnish the entire Showgirl album, no matter what their opinions might have been nearly a year ago.

You guys, it’s four bonus tracks. It’s not that serious.

That’s not to say that different opinions about Swift’s four new songs aren’t valid (yes, “Cleveland!” is cringe, but that’s also part of its charm to me). The singer is the first person to say that she’s not the “art police,” and she actually takes constructive criticism well, often addressing critiques on her next project. (Her follow-up to Tortured Poets’s 31 songs? Showgirl’s concise 12-song tracklist.)

If the bonus tracks are not for you, guess what? You don’t have to listen to them ever again. But at the end of the day, The Encore is exactly what an “encore” should be — a few special songs that extend but also conclude the Showgirl era, which Swift simply felt like creating after the album’s historic success. The Encore doesn’t define The Life of a Showgirl, and indicates nothing about the state of Swift’s artistry or what direction she may be heading next.

This is not like when Swift revealed that Tortured Poets was actually a double album, with its second half, The Anthology, having enough songs to be considered a separate album (and it was rightfully reviewed as such). The Encore is a fun treat, and reacting this strongly to songs Swift may not even acknowledge on her next tour is taking everything way too seriously.

Now, if you want to call out Swift for not announcing Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version) yet for her debut album’s 20th anniversary, be my guest. At least that would be a worthy cause.