Bugs and sex appeal don’t usually go hand-in-hand.
But as the anticipation for her Life of a Showgirl album continues to ramp up, Taylor Swift just dropped some surprising new artwork — and you might never look at insects the same way again!
Yes, Taylor is striking a seductive pose on the cover of The Life of a Showgirl: The Shiny Bug Collection, a vinyl edition that will be available on her website for the next 48 hours.
‘Shiny Bug’ in massive demand
In other words, despite the fact that the album still doesn’t come out for six weeks, there’s currently a mad dash for limited edition presales.
The woman is nothing if not a master of marketing.
Taylor limited comments on the Instagram post announcing the new edition, which is probably a smart idea.
In the past, even Swifties have been critical of Taylor for creating false scarcity and cynically cashing in with multiple “limited edition” pressings of the same album.
Plus, the Showgirl artwork has proven divisive thus far, and Taylor probably feels like she doesn’t need any more criticism from fans who haven’t even heard the album yet.
Judging an album by its cover
Many online commenters have been critical of the original TLOAS cover, which seems to reference the famous painting of Hamlet’s sister, Ophelia, by John Everett Millais.
(One of the tracks on the album is titled “The Fate of Ophelia,” so the comparisons are not as random as they initially seem.)
The Shiny Bug Collection cover sticks with the unfortunate “Showtime channel” font that drew so much criticism when Tay dropped the original artwork.
And it seems that once again, fans are divided on the outfit and overall look that Taylor selected.
“Wtf is with all these covers? NONE of them look good,” one user commented on Reddit.
“Why does she look like she’s trying to see if the waxer got it all? I’ve hit sexier poses at the gynecologist,” another joked.
“The pose is once again SO bad. It’s like when people jokingly hit this pose ‘trying’ to be sexy and yet even those are sexier than how she’s doing it,” a third chimed in, adding:
“Yet again there is no neck in the photo, why is she so far away from the wall? Why is she seemingly hunched up? She looks so awkward and uncomfortable. The colors are terrible, the lighting is bad, why not use one of the better brighter other photos she took?”
You get the idea. Some folks don’t like the cover art; others are complaining about Taylor’s endless reissues of the same album, a habit that seems to serve little purpose other than lining her already fat pockets.
But at the end of the day, there’s a real demand for this sort of product, and we’re sure the Shiny Bug Collection will sell out in a matter of hours.
Here’s hoping that the bizarre title will be explained by some future lyrics.