While eras and adversaries may come and go, there’s one constant in Taylor Swift’s discography: emotional track fives. It’s long been a tradition for that coveted spot to be reserved for the most personal and vulnerable song of each album, and “Eldest Daughter” takes that slot on The Life of a Showgirl. But there’s another factor impacting each song’s placement on the track list. Fans with too much time on their hands realized that when center-justified, the song titles form the shape of the Eras Tour stage — which Swift soon confirmed was deliberate. That means that rather than solely crafting a track list that flowed well and took listeners on a carefully mapped out journey, it’s an Easter egg. Luckily for “Eldest Daughter,” its placement as the fifth track fit that puzzle. But did the song earn it? The piano ballad certainly sounds like a track five musically but lacks the depth we’re used to, and any emotional gut punch is stifled by cringey lyrics. The album’s true track five, spiritually at least, is found just one song later in “Ruin the Friendship” — which undeniably has the biggest emotional gut punch of the record and exists much more symbiotically with the other songs.
Listen, there’s a time and place for cringe every once in a while (“ME!” apologists, rise up!), but not on track five. She sings about finding love amid the downsides of fame but does so with a perplexing choice of words. “I’m not a bad bitch, and this isn’t savage,” she sings, sounding like a parody of “I’m not a princess, this ain’t a fairy tale” off of another track five, “White Horse.” That song, off of Fearless, is one of the many that proves her ability to write timeless lyrics, which makes hearing her sing about “memes,” “trolling,” and looking “fire” so painfully distracting.
Plus its placement immediately after “Father Figure,” a song largely about being a savage bad bitch, creates a jarring contrast. On that one, she’s taking on the voice of an all-powerful kingmaker with a mob-boss mentality, then she abruptly pivots to singing about mean comments hurting her feelings. It feels like an attempt to let down the mask, but because it’s a mask she has on for so much of the album, it feels less revelatory and more like she’s pulling the rug out from under those other songs.
A retrospective look down a road not taken, “Ruin the Friendship” takes us back to Swift’s roots as she does what she does best — singing about second period. High school is where Taylor Swift thrives, and hearing her sing about what could have been with a childhood friend is a welcome dose of nostalgia. The signature fifth-track devastation comes near the end of the song when she reveals the death of this crush, adding depth to this reflection and explaining why it’s on her mind now.
While her track fives tend to feel more present than retrospective, it’s otherwise personal and raw, like “All Too Well” and “my tears ricochet” before it. She’s not only singing about the regret of not kissing her friend when she was a teenager, but more importantly, how that regret has shaped her and the way she operates into adulthood: “My advice is to always ruin the friendship / Better that than regret it for all time.”
It’s a departure from the rest of the album, one that contextualizes this showgirl’s life before fame and reminds us of who she was when we first met her. But she just had to make the track list a shape poem.
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But Taylor Swift just had to make the track list the shape of the Eras Tour stage.
