Asking an artist to pick her favorite album track is kind of like asking a parent to pick their preferred child. But, alas, the Capital Breakfast crew over in the U.K. did it during Taylor Swift‘s first radio interview since Friday’s (Oct. 3) release of her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl on album release day and Swift did not hesitate.
The singer sat down with Jordan North and Sian Welby, with North getting right to the heat of the matter with a question about which of the 12 new songs are in heavy rotation for Swift’s fiancé, NFL star Travis Kelce. “I think that is his favourite he loves that one,” Swift said of the mid-tempo third song, “Opalite,” a track about dancing through the ashes of her past romances until finding the one true thing.
“I have favorite words and favorite phrases and things that I will put in an endless file of lyrics that I’m just constantly going to and cherry picking from when I’m writing,” Swift explained. “And I had written down the word ‘Opalite’ because I learned that it is actually a manmade Opal. Opal can be man-made just like diamonds. Travis’ birthstone is an opal, so I have always fixated on that, and I’ve always loved that stone. And I thought it was kind of a cool metaphor that manmade Opal and happiness can also be manmade too. So that is kind of what the song is about the kind of juxtaposition of those two.”
On the track, Swift sings, “Life is a song, it ends when it ends/ You move on/ And that’s when I told you, ‘it’s alright’/ You were dancing through the lightning strikes/ Sleeping in the onxy night/ But now the sky is opalite/ Oh-oh-oh my Lord.”
Swift also revealed her favorite song on the album is the dream manifesting “Wi$h Li$t,” on which she runs down a roster of all the things that would make her life complete, topped, of course, by true love. “That means the world to me because that might be my favorite too!” she told North when he declared it his pick to click.
Speaking to Magic Radio, Swift said she knew she had the “perfect album” lined up — while admitting that such a thing is “unattainable” — when she wrote “Wi$h Li$t,” one of the last songs tracked during the Showgirl sessions with producers Max Martin and Shellback. “It’s a very accurate stance on where I’m at in life, it was a feeling of we’re done now,” she said. “I sometimes I’ve written very sprawling albums before where I just couldn’t stop writing and there’s something to that too, if that’s the project you’re making, but this was not that.”
Elsewhere in the interview with Capital Breakfast, Swift said that this LP is different because typically when she records an album it can be up to a year until it drops, so “your life can change a lot between when you made it and when you put it out.” But with Showgirl, “it’s exactly where I’m at in my life. I’m exactly in the same spot as I was when I made this record, so it feels very accurate to my life experience right now, which feels kind of cool.”
And, because Swift is the queen of thoughtful gifts, the Capital gang got her one, an adorable opalite kitten nested in a green box inside an orange bag. “It’s the perfect present! It’s so cute,” Swift raved about Welby’s present, then freaking out again when North presented her with a sourdough loaf featuring bread-based puns on the album’s song titles, including “Actually Doughmatic” and “The Fate of Doughphelia.”
The party will carry on this weekend with screenings of the 89-minute Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, which reportedly features the music video for the album’s opener and lead single, “The Fate of Ophelia,” along with lyric videos for the other tracks and Swift’s insight on the new songs. “I hereby invite you to a dazzling soirée,” Swift wrote when sharing the news on Instagram. “Dancing is optional but very much encouraged.” The film will run during release weekend, from Friday (Oct. 3) through Sunday (Oct. 5), with tickets available on the event’s website.