Back in August, when it was announced that Taylor Swift would be making a rare podcast appearance—mind you, it was her fiancé, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s incredibly popular pod, New Heights, that she was appearing on—the Swifties knew something big was about to happen. And boy, were they right. Swift announced on the podcast that she was releasing her 12th original studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on October 3.
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In the over 2-hour interview with Kelce and his co-host, big brother Jason, Swift got candid about her latest release, which comes less than two years after her last album, The Tortured Poets Department. For starters, it was recorded in Sweden during the European leg of the Eras Tour and would include only 12 songs. “I tend to love to write lots and lots of music,” she explained, but this time around she “wanted to do an album that was so focused on quality and on the theme and everything fitting together like a perfect puzzle. ” So, no, don’t expect any additional Showgirl songs to drop anytime soon. “There’s no other songs coming,” she confirmed.
The music would be more “upbeat” than her previous record, with “melodies that were so infectious that you’re almost angry at it,” she said. Travis, who had already heard the entire album, agreed. “It’s just so much fun to listen to, man,” he teased on the following episode of New Heights. “I’ve been dancing all throughout the house.” (His personal favorite track? “Opalite.”)
Swift has yet to debut any new music, but did share an official Life of a Showgirl-inspired playlist that could provide a clue as to what #TS12 might sound like. The Spotify mix, “And, baby, that’s showbusiness for you!,” features some of Swift’s most pop-heavy hits off of her earlier albums Red, 1989, and Reputation. These 22 tracks had one thing in common: they were all produced by the Swedish duo Max Martin and Shellback, who she last worked with in 2017.
Knowing what a mastermind Swift is, it’s worth looking at how her relationship with the duo, who are her sole co-producers on The Life of a Showgirl, could influence her new album—and, more importantly, a new era.
Who are Max Martin and Shellback?
They are two of the biggest producers and songwriters in pop music, but they’re also quite mysterious. Max Martin (né Karl Sandberg), who notoriously does not do interviews, is behind some of the biggest hits of the last three decades, working with Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, The Weeknd, and Ariana Grande. Last year, he notched his 24th Billboard Hot 100 hit with Grande’s “Yes, And?,” breaking the record for most No. 1s among producers in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, surpassing recording legend George Martin, who produced 19 of The Beatles’ record 20 chart-topping singles.
In 2008, at the age of 22, Johan “Shellback” Schuster joined Martin’s production company and the two, who each got their start playing in heavy metal bands, began working together, creating hits for Pink, Ed Sheeran, Maroon 5, Adele, and, of course, Taylor Swift.
When did Max Martin and Shellback first work with Taylor Swift?
In 2012, Martin and Shellback teamed up with Swift for her Red hits “22,” “I Knew You Were Trouble,” and “We Are Never Getting Back Together,” which became her first song to hit Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. (They also worked on “Message in a Bottle,” which appeared on her 2021 re-recording of Red and is, hands down, one of the best tracks to come out of the Vault.)
After being the sole songwriter on her first three records, Red marked the first release in which Swift enlisted outside help. She told Songwriter Universe in 2012 that the reason she brought in additional songwriters for Red was simple. “I don’t ever want to get into a comfortable groove and continue just coasting on that,” she said. “I just always want to challenge myself and stretch further in different directions. It’s just fun to paint with more colors.”
Martin and Shellback helped Swift find an entirely new palette, helping her create the most pop-forward tracks on the folk-tinged album that featured additional production work from Butch Walker, Jeff Bhasker, Nathan Chapman, Dann Huff, Dan Wilson, and Garrett “Jacknife” Lee.
What effect did Max Martin and Shellback have on Taylor Swift’s sound?
Martin and Shellback helped her officially go pop—and she hasn’t looked back since.
With her first four records, Swift dominated the country music charts. (Her 2006 self-titled debut is the longest-charting country album on the Billboard 200 for the 2000s, according to The Boot.) But with the follow-up to Red, she felt as if she needed to go in a new direction. 2014’s 1989 was, according to Swift, her “first straight-up pop album”—it was also career-changing.
Named for the year she was born and the decade that inspired her new sound, the record combined ‘80s-inspired synths, drum machines, and sing-along choruses that would go on to dominate mainstream pop radio. In the two years between the release of Red and 1989, Swift had evolved both as a person and an artist and in turn, the music she wanted to make had changed too. She told fans during a 2014 live stream that the album was “a bit of a rebirth for me.”
To complete the transition from country superstar to pop powerhouse she needed to bring in the big guns. Her collaborators on 1989 are a who’s who of pop music hitmakers then and now that include OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, Jack Antonoff, and, of course, Martin and Shellback, who “were the last people I collaborated with on Red,” she told Billboard in 2014, “and I wished we could have done more and explored more.”
With 1989, she got her chance. The duo co-wrote and co-produced seven of the album’s 13 tracks including the anti-haters anthem “Shake It Off,” which featured a sick beat that Martin and Shellback created with Swift by stomping their feet on a wooden floor. It would become not only a number one hit for Swift, but one of the best-selling singles of the 2010s.
Martin was Swift’s first choice to co-executive-produce 1989 because, as she told TIME in 2014, she knew he could help her create a “sonically cohesive” album that wouldn’t straddle genres. But he ended up doing so much more. “He volunteered to record pretty much all the vocals — even things he didn’t write or produce,” she told Billboard that same year. “He would come in and spend his day away from his kid, away from his wife, and volunteer his time and not ask for anything. And the more that he did that, the more I realized that he deserved credit for that.”
Swift’s first official pop record—and her most successful one to date—earned her a second Album of the Year Grammy in 2016, becoming the first woman to do so. In her acceptance speech, she gave a special thanks to Martin, who, she said, “has deserved to be up here for 25 years,” but had only received his first Grammy one year earlier. Now a five-time Grammy winner, Martin has won three of those statues for collaborations with Swift.
When did Taylor Swift last work with Max Martin and Shellback?
After helping Swift reinvent her sound on 1989, Martin and Shellback returned for her next record, 2017’s Reputation, her much maligned (at least, at the time) sixth studio album that took on the perils of superstardom and joy of all-consuming love over 808 drums and trap beats. They co-wrote and co-produced nine of Reputation’s 15 tracks, including “…Ready For It?,” “End Game,” “Delicate,” and “Don’t Blame Me,” a dark synth pop track which included her first real expletive—“sh-t”—a word that has become more commonplace on her most recent records.
While not everyone loved the pop princess’s bad girl makeover, Reputation was a commercial success, selling 1.2 million copies in the U.S. in its first week. Still, the negative reception had a real effect on Swift, who told Rolling Stone in 2019 that the period after Reputation’s release was “the most transformative emotional experience of my career.” It led her to “disengage from some part of public perception I used to hang my entire identity on, which I now know is incredibly unhealthy.”
In the eight years since Reputation, Swift’s relationship with the public has changed. Most notably, she’s taken control over her persona, becoming one of the most successful musicians in history, thanks in no small part to her record-breaking Eras Tour, which became the first tour to surpass $2 billion in gross revenue.
When TIME interviewed Swift in 2023 when she was named the magazine’s Person of the Year, she said, “This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been.”
It appears Swift is still riding the high of the Eras Tour and everything that she experienced both on and off stage, according to her interview on New Heights. Life of a Showgirl is “exuberant and electric and vibrant,” she said on the pod, and it “just comes from the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life and so that effervescence has come through on this record.” Her goal with the new record was to build on the success of her game-changing tour, “to be as proud of an album as I am of the Eras Tour and for the same reasons.” To do that, Swift reunited with Martin and Shellback, the “geniuses” who once helped her become the pop star she knew she could be. Could their return mean she is looking to reinvent herself once again?
What should fans expect from Taylor Swift’s latest collaboration with Max Martin and Shellback?
Color has always been a huge part of Swift’s iconography, with each album getting its own unique palette that helps fans understand where she is mentally, emotionally, and sonically.
She chose purple to represent her dreamiest album, Speak Now. While the raw and vulnerable Red was, well, red, a color synonymous with passion and pain. The color associated with Life of a Showgirl is orange. “It feels like kind of energetically how my life has felt,” Swift told New Heights when asked about why she chose the bright hue, which symbolizes creativity and happiness. “And this album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour.”
Swift had a lot going on at that moment. From March 2023 to December 2024, she was selling out arenas all over the globe, boosting the economy in every city where she played. When she wasn’t causing literal earthquakes—better known as “Swiftquakes”—she was also falling in love with Travis Kelce.
On the podcast, she talked about how the two were getting to know each other by experiencing the world together. “When we first started dating, he was like, ‘I always wanted to go and really vacation in Europe and see Australia and go to Asia,’” Swift said of Kelce on New Heights. “And I was like, ‘Well, I got a tour for that.’”
Now, Swift is looking to turn those tour moments that fans didn’t see into full-fledged bangers. To do that, she knew she needed to get back in the studio with Martin and his protégé Shellback. With those guys by her side, fans have already predicted that Life of a Showgirl will not only usher in Swift’s new pop era, but become “another pop Bible” in the vein of 1989. Some believe her latest release could be her most romantic record since Lover, while others think, based on Travis’ New Heights comments, that she could be going full dancing queen á la ABBA with this one. After all, Martin and Shellback are Swedish.
So, what will The Life of a Showgirl sound like?
Swift appears to be saving that reveal for the big screen. The official Life of a Showgirl release party, hitting theaters October 3-5, will include the premiere of the music video for the album’s lead single, “The Fate of Ophelia,” along with behind-the-scenes footage from the music video shoot, brand new lyric videos, and interviews with Swift breaking down the new album.
But she has made it clear that re-teaming with Martin and Shellback is not a nostalgia play. She told New Heights that the music she made with them earlier in her career was “some of my favorite songs that I’ve ever done before,” but all three of them have grown up a lot in the last eight years. Shellback and Swift were in their early 20s the last time they worked together so “it was very much like we were the ingenues, and Max was the mentor,” she explained. This time she felt as if they “were carrying the same weight as creators.” adding that “there’s no other collaborators. It’s just the three of us making a focused album.”
This marks the first time in 11 years—and as many albums, if you include all of Taylor’s Versions—that she isn’t working with her go-to guy Jack Antonoff. But that doesn’t mean she’s moving away from what has made her who she is as an artist. “Max was like ‘I loved Folkore. I loved the storytelling on Folklore. I don’t want that to change just because we’re making these infectious anthems. I don’t want you to leave that behind,’” Swift told New Heights, admitting she couldn’t stop writing confessional songs if she tried. “I’m married to that kind of writing.”
For Swift, the combination of her “vivid, crisp, focused, and completely intentional” lyrics with Martin and Shellback’s pop production, was something rare. “It felt like catching lightning in a bottle, honestly,” she told New Heights. Life of a Showgirl not only includes “the best ideas we’ve ever had,” but it’s “the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time.”
That’s quite a tease, not to mention a lot of pressure to put on her 12th release. “But I don’t care,” Swift said, “because I love it that much.” Now, the only question is: are you ready for it?