Taylor Swift says record label ‘didn’t know about The Life of a Showgirl’ until album was finished

Taylor Swift’s recently released album, The Life of a Showgirl, was kept under wraps until it was fully finished.

The songwriter confirmed not even her record label knew the album had been made, with Swift telling select few people about the making of her album. No singles were released to promote The Life of a Showgirl, which was released on Friday, October 3. In an interview with BBC Radio 2 presenter Scott Mills, Swift confirmed only a few friends knew about the making of the album, and that her label wasn’t informed of new material until she had finished the album “in-house”. Swift recorded The Life of a Showgirl in Sweden and says part of the secrecy is in having friends who “don’t rat” her out for working without announcing her projects.

Swift said: “The label didn’t know at all. Until we had, until the record was done and we had made and we’d shot all of the art, we’d done everything, we do keep that close to the vest because, you know, I think it’s fun to surprise them, honestly, it’s really fun. 

“We do a lot of things in-house, my team, so I think it’s easier for them when the label can really just focus on what they have to do in terms of distribution, we have an amazing team that do that, so, yeah.” Swift was then asked whether code names and in-house language is used to keep a project under wraps, which Swift went on to confirm.

She added: “Oh, we do all of it, everything. All of that. And if I tell you what it is, then it’s like it’s easier for people to figure it out. But I just, you know, I really want my music to be a surprise for my fans.

“And I really want to figure out how to do those surprises in ways that are clever and fun for them and feel like entertainment and also if you don’t need Easter eggs then you can disregard that and that doesn’t need to happen. You don’t need to do math if you don’t want to but if you want a little extra layer of entertainment like I like to be able to do that and that’s why we’re so shrouded in secrecy.

“Yeah they found out a really fun one the other day which is that if you line up all of the titles of the songs on the album, in the centre, it makes the shape of The Eras Tour stage.” The Life of a Showgirl was released on Friday, October 3.

In a one-star review of the album from Cult Following, Swift’s work was described as “measly offerings from an artist who, at this point, should know better and write better than she does.”