Pop icon Taylor Swift's "Life of a Showgirl" is the 12th record of her career, recorded with the same produces that collaborated with her on hits like "22" and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."
The 12-song album was released less than 24 hours ago at midnight and already has millions of downloads.
To learn more about the album and what it says about Swift as an artist, Scripps News speaks with Harvard University English professor Stephanie Burt, who teaches courses on Swift's work and has written the book "Taylor's Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift."
Swift "is much more interested at this point in her life on how to write different kinds of stories, on how to push back and how to find your people, and how to make the life for yourself that you need, and then how to reach out and help other people do that, too," Burt says.
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"That's what she's trying to do with a lot of this album, which is so much fun and so much more aesthetically and sonically varied that a lot of us had expected or indeed feared," Burt says. "She's doing that with her Shakespeare story. She's doing that on "Eldest Daughter," which is the one that speaks most directly to me. You know, as an eldest daughter, as an only daughter — I've got some younger brothers — I think a lot about meeting expectations and doing what institutions and doing what adults want you to do. And for some of us, that's the right path, but it's also exhausting. And it does seem like Taylor has found the life partner as well as the songwriting partners who will let her — not relax, because she doesn't do that — but let her really experience a kind of confidence that she hasn't had before."
Watch the full interview with Burt in the video above.
