Sophia Touti

Contributing Writer

On Sept. 23, Taylor Swift posted on Instagram that she was releasing an Encore album on Friday Sept. 25 to complement her “Life of a Showgirl” album released on Oct. 3, 2025. In run order, the four new tracks released are: “Patient Zero,” “Cleaveland!,” “Pink Clouding” and “Babylon.”

As someone who is familiar with the artist but isn’t a dedicated fan or “Swiftie,” I walked into this with much skepticism and dread. I didn’t know what to expect considering her underwhelming performance in her earlier set of “Life of a Showgirl” songs released almost a year ago.

The first track, “Patient Zero,” started with the similar motif in Hadestown’s “Wait for Me,” but then it immediately jumped to lyrics about angels and devils on your shoulder which somehow leads to the title of the song. The music itself didn’t fit at all with the lyrics and the storytelling was very misleading. I had no clue what the message was or what I was supposed to take from listening to this piece when it was finished.

The second track, and the weakest track by far, “Cleveland!”, was not even close to hitting a home run and struck out in the first few seconds. I understand that Swift is dedicating this piece to her newly wed husband, Travis Kelce, but with the awkward talk-singing over a track that doesn’t syncopate well does not prove your point that you’re living a happy life in Cleveland.

The third track, “Pink Clouding,” was not a euphoric piece but just to be nice, the least insufferable piece to listen to of the four. It had a somewhat decent chorus but if you were to ask me to sing my favorite part from the song, I would tell you I can’t remember one lyric.

Finally, the last track, “Babylon” reminded me of “Patient Zero,” since both made zero sense and they randomly threw in the title of the song in a lyric in the chorus. I wish to elaborate more about the track but it was forgettable and had questionable lyrics that told a story I could not figure out.

Wrapping it up, these four tracks will never be played on any of my devices ever again and fortunately, I had a very confident feeling walking into this. On a scale from one to 10, this is a zero. I guess the “Patient Zero” title makes sense now.

If you haven’t listened to this already, stream the four tracks on any platform now. But I’d be concerned that Max Martin and Shelback collaborated with this millionaire to create whatever was released.