No surprise here: “Patient Zero,” the song Taylor Swift announced Tuesday, is not an orphan or a one-off. The pop superstar followed news of the single a day later with her Wednesday morning reveal for a release that includes four new tracks and will also be out this Friday — “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore.” On social media, Swift wrote, “About a year ago, you guys did a truly unfathomable thing. Something that completely blew my mind… You gave ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ the biggest first week for an album in history.
I took a trip to Sweden to celebrate with Max and Shellback, my two collaborators on this album. Really we just wanted to reflect and take in how grateful we were for the moment we were in, but there was a studio there and we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs. I hope you love them, because they were born out of pure gratitude for your exuberance for and celebration of the album we made.
But, as fans now learn, that didn’t preclude coming up with additional material after the fact, which the singer is saying came out in a spontaneous explosion of post-release exhilaration with her two collaborators on that album. Prior to “Showgirl,” she hadn’t worked with the dynamic duo of Max Martin and Shellback since 2018’s “Reputation,” but clearly the reunion took in a big way. The new release features cover photography by the team of Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.
For now, the release of the four “Showgirl” addenda puts to bed previous widespread conjecture that Swift was certain to put out “Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version)” this fall to celebrate the 20th anniversary of her debut album. But setting that aside for an all-new collection is a tradeoff most fans will be happy with. So, “Our Song (Middle Aged Version)” can wait.
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