泰勒·斯威夫特：《舞女人生》是一场辉煌的流行音乐胜利巡礼

The last time we met Taylor Swift, she was spiralling.我们上次见到泰勒·斯威夫特时，她正陷入情绪低谷。

Her last album, The Tortured Poets Department, was an emotional purge - a stunned post mortem of two bitter, messy break-ups.她的上一张专辑《痛苦诗人部》是一次情感的宣泄——对两段痛苦而混乱的分手进行的一次令人震惊的事后剖析。

We found her at her lowest, "crying at the gym" and "pissed off" at wasting her youth on a six-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn, that ultimately fizzled out.我们发现她正处于人生低谷，“在健身房里哭泣”，并且因为将青春浪费在与英国演员乔·阿尔文长达六年的恋情上而“怒火中烧”，这段恋情最终不了了之。

Eighteen months later, she's back with the latest update from her bureau; and the story is very different.18个月后，她带着局里的最新消息回来了，而情况已经大不相同。

Recorded in stolen moments during the record-shattering Eras tour, it finds the 35-year-old happy, energised and newly in love with American Footballer Travis Kelce.这段内容记录于打破纪录的“时代”巡演期间的闲暇时刻，展现了这位35岁的歌手（泰勒·斯威夫特）快乐、精力充沛的状态，以及她与美国橄榄球运动员特拉维斯·凯尔斯刚刚坠入爱河的情景。

"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 vibrant," she said in an appearance on Kelce's New Heights podcast last month.“这张专辑讲述的是在这次巡演期间，我内心世界里发生的那些不为人知的故事，而那次巡演充满了活力、激情与生机，”她在上个月做客凯尔西的《新高度》播客节目时说道。

To capture that dynamic, she produced the album not with her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff – whose pillowy productions defined the sounds of Midnights, and Tortured Poets Department – but with Swedish pop masterminds Max Martin and Shellback, who previously worked with Swift on hits like Shake It Off and I Knew You Were Trouble.为了捕捉这种动态感，她没有与长期合作伙伴杰克·安东诺夫一起制作这张专辑——安东诺夫柔和的制作风格奠定了《午夜》和《痛苦诗人部》的声音基调——而是选择了瑞典流行音乐大师马克斯·马丁和希尔贝克，他们之前曾与斯威夫特合作过《Shake It Off》和《I Knew You Were Trouble》等热门歌曲。

The goal, said Swift, was to make a tight, compact album of "bangers" (that's hit songs, not sausages) with "melodies that were so infectious that you're almost angry at it".斯威夫特表示，目标是制作一张紧凑精炼的“热门金曲集”（指的是热门歌曲，而非香肠），其中的“旋律极具感染力，甚至会让你为之着迷到近乎恼火”。

But enough preamble. Is The Life of a Showgirl a rhinestone-studded success, or a chorus line catastrophe?不过铺垫得够多了。《舞女的生活》究竟是一部镶满水钻的成功之作，还是一场合唱队式的灾难？