In Track 2, our showgirl finds herself living the life of her dreams yet consumed with aching loneliness and haunting anxiety.
Will any of this last? Is it possible to find enduring love in this life she’s chosen?
With no one else to ask, she reaches out to the ghost of Elizabeth Taylor: “Do you think it’s forever?”
While the song itself doesn’t provide an answer, Elizabeth’s life makes it pretty clear.
In this episode, we unpack “Elizabeth Taylor” not just as a pop song, but as a haunting conversation between two women—one living, one gone—both trapped in the spotlight. A fellow showgirl who, like her, had everything… except someone she could trust.
Emily Dickenson once wrote, “Fame is a fickle food… men eat of it and die.” Swift’s showgirl is learning this the hard way. Fame might be delicious at first, but it never fills you — and the flavor turns bitter fast. The allure of stardom, like the power of her beauty, is sharp but fleeting. As she sings in “Opalite,” “you’re starving til you’re not.”
That's the conflict introduced in this second chapter of The Life of a Showgirl saga.
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Here’s Emily Dickenson’s poem:
Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set
Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the
Farmer’s corn
Men eat of it and die
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It's not too late to snag the replay for Write Like Taylor Swift: a 90-minute immersive workshop to help you apply Taylor's most powerful techniques to whatever you already write.
Get all the LIT112 writing prompts in one place: www.maraeller.com/prompts.
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