Taylor Swift's 'Encore' Set a Spotify Record in a Day, and Critics Can't Agree Whether the Songs Were Worth It

Taylor Swift announced “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore” on the morning of Wednesday, September 23, and released it two days later. It adds four new songs – “Patient Zero,” “Pink Clouding,” “Babylon” and “Cleveland!” – to an album that came out a year ago. Billboard reports that the songs came out of a trip to Sweden to celebrate with collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, where, in Swift’s words, “we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs.” She called them “born out of pure gratitude for your exuberance for and celebration of the album we made.” By any commercial measure the extension worked. Spotify said “Patient Zero” was its most-streamed song by a female artist in a single day in 2026 so far, and that Swift was the most-streamed female artist of any day this year, both on September 25 alone.

This is Terrible Tuesday’s pick anyway, for a reason the streaming numbers don’t answer. The original album had the biggest first week for an album in history, 4.002 million units according to Billboard, and 12 weeks at No. 1. It also drew a divided critical response, a fact Paste’s review flags directly, calling it “both a smash success and a critical failure” that split her fans. The Encore was pitched as a thank-you to those fans. Two of the first three major reviews say it mostly repeats what already divided people.

Not everyone agrees, and it matters that they don’t. Variety’s review of the new tracks argued they “essentially constitute a new EP” more than a real addendum, and found a lot to like, including calling “Pink Clouding” “the finest of the four on first blush” and picking out lines in “Babylon” as some of the best one-liners she has written. But Consequence’s review, headlined “Doubles Down on a Forgettable Era,” called the songs “a regurgitation of the album they were reveling in,” and argued that “Swift’s songwriting isn’t where it was even five years ago,” that she is “dumbing herself down, or maybe not trying as hard, because she knows whatever she puts out will be gobbled up simply because it’s a Taylor Swift™ song.” Paste’s headline was blunter still: the four songs are “The Encore that no one asked for.” Two hard pans and one warm review is not a consensus. It is a genuine argument about whether these songs are good.

The stronger case against the Encore is not about any one song. It is that this is the format working exactly as designed. A separate Exclaim column, published in February, argued that deluxe editions are “incorporated into the sales tally of the original album,” making them “an easy way for mainstream pop artists to double dip and maximize their sales week,” while adding “This isn’t to pick on Swift, since such behaviour has become standard practice for pop stars.” That fits the rollout here. Billboard notes the focus single was also up for preorder on Swift’s website in acoustic and piano versions, each with a different cover. The album returns to the top of the conversation a year after release, with four new songs whose worth reviewers cannot settle, and a record-setting streaming day that says nothing either way about whether they are any good.

Here is the stated judgment. The music is not this week’s terrible thing; on Variety’s account it is, at worst, more of the same. The terrible thing is what the Encore shows about how albums now work. A year-old record gets a surprise extension, the extension breaks a streaming record before critics have finished writing about it, and the record becomes the argument that the extension was good. When a Spotify day is the proof and the reviews are the footnote, nobody has to decide whether the four songs deserve to exist, and that is the part worth being irritated about.

Hero image: “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore” album cover art, Taylor Swift. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.