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If you were paying super close attention to Taylor Swift’s “Opalite” music video, released in February this year, you would have noticed clues for her latest single, “Patient Zero”, scattered through it. If you had other things to be worrying about, it doesn’t matter: the song’s out now, and it might be hard for even the most zealous Swifties to stomach. It’s accompanied by three other tracks of varying quality, as part of an extended version of her 12th studio album, 2025’s The Life of a Showgirl.
Swift explained in an announcement this week that “Patient Zero”, “Cleveland!”, “Pink Clouding” and “Babylon” were written during a trip she made to Sweden, to celebrate the success of The Life of a Showgirl with producers Max Martin and Shellback. Really, these new tracks seem more like a standalone EP (Swift hasn’t released one of those since 2008’s Beautiful Eyes), so it’s a strange creative decision to tag them onto the worst-received album of Swift’s career… even if it did shatter sales records in its opening week.
As compelling as some of Showgirl’s songs were (“Elizabeth Taylor”, “The Fate of Ophelia”, “Father Figure”), the writing was shockingly uneven for an artist whose lyrics have inspired Sylvia Plath comparisons and Harvard lectures. Critics and fans also lamented the lack of quality control: there was the teeth-gritting “Wood”, the condescending “Actually Romantic” and the sickly sweet “Honey”, all of which featured lines so jaw-droppingly clumsy that they removed any potential enjoyment of the songs. The production, too, highlighted how the gold dust that producers Max Martin and Shellback once sprinkled across the Top 10 has long-since dissipated; the Swedish svengalis and Swift were all playing it very, very safe. That’s still the case now, it turns out.
Swift’s single “Patient Zero” is the musical equivalent of an “I told you so”, addressed to a woman who’s been dating her ex. “I bet he burst into your life like fireworks,” she sings in her patented low murmur. “I bet he said he loved you first.” It’s delivered over a standard, shuffling beat and a digitised, Celtic-inflected fiddle hook. In both sound and theme “Patient Zero” fits better with Swift’s 2024 record, The Tortured Poets Department, a number of songs from which are widely believed to be inspired by her brief fling with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy. Yet the songwriting here feels regurgitated, the tone borders on smug; when it comes to evoking a scene, Swift reaches for old standbys even when it doesn’t fit, singing, “When you saw another woman coming out of his place/ I bet he kissed the rain off your face.” The bigger clunker lands on the bridge, when she stumbles over: “I know he charmed your family and friends/ And you thought it’s cause he loves you/ But it’s cause he loves how everybody else loves him (uh huh).” Huh?
As for the other songs, “Cleveland!” harks back sonically to one of her greatest works, “The Last Great American Dynasty” from 2020’s Folklore, with its choppy piano intro and lilting melodies, yet pales in comparison. It’s evidently inspired by her relationship with husband Travis Kelce, whom – you may have noticed – she married this July in a “wedding of the decade” at New York’s Madison Square Garden, with 1,000 of their closest friends and family. In between her declarations of love for the Kansas City Chiefs tight end, who hails from the town of Cleveland Heights, the song retreads old criticisms Swift has acknowledged in other, better songs: “She was never a girl’s girl…. With all of that money, why’s she dressed like trash?” It’s some of her worst writing, not least when she utters: “The taste of me is acquired, but it’s his favourite dish/ He says I look like an angel, they say, ‘I hate that bi-.’”
Then there’s the perky “Pink Clouding”, in which she expresses regret at the way she treated an ex. It opens promisingly with heavenly, layered sighs, then plummets towards the ground, weighted down with more dull beats from Martin and Shellback. Swift namechecks colours – magenta, fuschia, rosewood, crimson – like she’s reading off a Dulux colour chart, in lieu of conjuring any truly evocative imagery.
“Babylon”, meanwhile, is such an improvement on the other three songs it feels like a relief. Some of Swift’s storytelling power flickers back into life, as she narrates the tale of a man fleeing his small town with expressive, intangible phrasing. The melodies soar, her voice is light and fluting above a delicately picked acoustic guitar hook. It reminds you of her ability to transport the listener, and you pine for it when listening to the other three tracks. Swift’s relentless output of late should suggest she’s on one hell of a creative streak, but the returns in the past few years have dwindled.
It’s unfortunate timing that these songs should land in the same week that Swift’s longtime friend and occasional collaborator, Ed Sheeran, deals with one of the biggest crises of his career. The British singer-songwriter is under fire for his handling of the row over Macklemore being dropped from his US tour, at the behest of billionaire stadium owner Robert Kraft. Both he and Swift have faced scrutiny for their perceived apolitical stances, and Swift is also friendly with Kraft, who owns the Gillette Stadium where she played her first stadium headline show in 2010. Sheeran’s ongoing saga throws the shallowness of (three of) Swift’s new songs into a harsher glare – you wish she’d turn her observational gifts to something more than old boyfriends, not least when this is only producing duds. Where is Swift, artistically, now? Because it sounds like she’s flailing.
