reputation

For better or worse, “The Life of a Showgirl,” Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, is unlike anything the megastar has done before.

On the 12-track album, which dropped Friday to mixed critical reception, Swift is uncharacteristically risqué and, for possibly the first time, indulges her inner theater kid without reservation. In that sense, much of the pop record is daringly new.

Still, on each track are sonic echoes from the 14-time Grammy winner’s decades-spanning discography — from the verve of “Reputation” to the romantic whimsy of “Lover.”

Swifties are sure to be playing “The Life of a Showgirl” on repeat today. But if that gets a bit tiresome after the 13th time, here is a list of Swift sister songs to try instead, based on your favorite track from the new album.

(Some song pairings are based on sound, while others are based on shared themes.)

“The Fate of Ophelia”

“Showgirl’s” opening track has a sultry groove and low pulse that could easily be the soundtrack to a flirty nightcap or the series finale of a dark comedy.

Find the same alluring melody with an extra dash of spice in “I Can See You,” a vault track from 2023’s “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).” And for bonus points, head to the music video for a dose of the Swift-signature theatricality dripping from “The Life of a Showgirl.”

“Elizabeth Taylor”

This allusive track boasts the album’s most sweeping chorus, anchored by Swift’s mesmeric alto and a masterfully orchestrated rhythm that uses moments of quiet to its advantage.

“Reputation‘s” slow-burn hit “Don’t Blame Me” follows a similar playbook, using a killer choral backing to achieve the same hymnal quality that complex vocal layering creates on “Elizabeth Taylor.”

Plus, both songs share a secret weapon: Swift’s irresistible enunciation of the word “baby.”

“Opalite”

An immediate inductee into Swift’s “Glitter Gel Pen” song Hall of Fame, “Opalite” is for dancing around your kitchen with a glass of orange wine in hand.

Fuel that infectious joy with the most twirl-worthy — and arguably most underrated — track of Swift’s career, “Sweeter Than Fiction.” Swift released this shimmering tune in 2013 for the “One Chance” film soundtrack, and true to its title, it is sweet as a peach.

Honorary mention: If you prefer a tambourine to a synth, try “Lover” B-side “Paper Rings,” perhaps more suitable for kick-stepping than spinning but nonetheless another “Opalite” lookalike.

“Father Figure”

The natural choice here would be “The Man,” another song wherein Swift adopts a masculine persona to prove just what a boss she is.

But I have no more sage advice than to head to George Michael’s original “Father Figure” (1987), which recently got a streaming boost after being featured in the 2024 erotic thriller “Babygirl.” Swift used an interpolation of Michael’s song in her track of the same name — with a gleeful sign-off from the late singer’s estate.

“When we heard the track we had no hesitation in agreeing to this association between two great artists and we know George would have felt the same,” George Michael’s estate wrote Thursday on his official Instagram.

“Eldest Daughter”

It doesn’t feel entirely fair to compare these two — especially given one of them has Phoebe Bridgers and the other one has the line “I’m not a bad b—, and this isn’t savage” — but “Eldest Daughter” and “Nothing New (Taylor’s Version)” share the same grief for a younger self that a woman in her 20s knows best.

If you need a good cry, these two are here for you.

“Ruin the Friendship”

Speaking of debilitating nostalgia, this one might feel a bit out of place in this album’s universe, but it’s a heartrending gem nonetheless.

For a similar remorseful trip into the past, minus the boppy bass line, try “We Were Happy,” a vault track from “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” about young love lost.

“Actually Romantic”

While this alleged Charli XCX diss track may be more scathing than usual for Swift, the singer is no stranger to shade, as evidenced in “Reputation” B-side “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” — a perfect pairing for “Actually Romantic.”

In both songs, Swift is unapologetically petty, offering her foes a metaphorical bouquet of flowers thick with thorns.

These tracks aren’t everyone’s speed, but every misfit has its fans. And in the case of “Actually Romantic,” Nicki Minaj seems to be one of them.

“Wi$h Li$t”

Showcasing this album’s gentler side, “Wi$h Li$t,” which Swift said may be her personal favorite, is a tender tribute to her fiancé Travis Kelce, backed with ethereal synth sounds and soft vocalization from a clearly smitten showgirl.

“I just want you” is also the mission statement of “Glitch,” a short and sweet pop number from 2022’s “Midnights.” Turn this one on, and in no time you’ll find yourself swaying side to side, daydreaming about the love you never expected but can’t imagine letting go.

Honorary mention: For a more upbeat option, go for “Gorgeous,” a bubblegum–pop anthem just as swoonworthy as the aforementioned tracks.

“Wood”

This raunchy disco track had jaws dropping across the globe upon its release, and for good reason.

While not as high on shock factor, Swift’s “I Think He Knows,” a lesser-known track from “Lover,” is equally dancy and down bad. On top of that, it’s famously set at a perfect strutting pace. What more could you ask for?

“CANCELLED!”

This is the second song in Swift’s oeuvre featuring a title with an exclamation point (we’ll get to that later), and it’s not the best one.

But if you like the dark energy Swift has going on here, you can get plenty more of it in her live rock ’n’ roll version of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” which she pulled out for the 1989 World Tour and hasn’t played since.

Here’s hoping the country crossover artist has another genre hop in her.

“Honey”

True to its title, “Honey” is a welcome salve for some of this album’s more sour numbers and shares striking sonic similarities with Swift’s best song adorned with an exclamation point, “‘Slut!’”

The “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” vault track, like “Honey,” uses a name-calling motif to paint a rosy portrait of her romantic partner. Neither is lyrically complex, but if “‘Slut!’” is any indication, “Honey” is sure to wind up a true fan favorite.

“The Life of a Showgirl (feat. Sabrina Carpenter)”

Finding a song that sounds like “The Life of a Showgirl” is a tall order, if not an impossible one.

So for a theme-based pairing, try fellow album closer “Clara Bow,” which caps off the original edition of “The Tortured Poets Department” (2024) with a mournful commentary on the constant churn of young female stars.

As Swift and Carpenter say, “You don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe, and you’re never gonna wanna.”

Honorary mention: For another Swift track about the pitfalls of fame, try “The Lucky One,” off 2012’s “Red.”

Former state Sen. Ronald Calderon, once the most powerful member of a politically influential family, was sentenced Friday in Los Angeles to 42 months in prison after he pleaded guilty in a federal corruption case.

The Montebello Democrat, who served in the state Senate for eight years ending in 2014, admitted in a plea deal in June that he had accepted tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from undercover FBI agents and a hospital executive in return for official favors.

Federal prosecutors had asked for a five-year sentence for a charge for which the maximum possible penalty was 20 years. U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder, who handed down the sentence to Calderon, said five years was too severe but that a significant prison sentence was needed to punish Calderon and send a message to other elected officials that corruption will not be tolerated.

“The crime is significant,” she said during the court hearing. “This is a true public corruption case.”

In addition to three and a half years in prison, Calderon was sentenced to one year supervised release and 150 hours of community service, but no fine. Instead of having Calderon taken into custody immediately, Snyder granted him a reprieve, allowing him to surrender to prison officials in January.

“Mr. Calderon betrayed the public trust,” said U.S. Atty. Eileen Decker. “A basic premise of our society is that elected officials will not exchange their votes for monetary gain and that’s what Mr. Calderon did.”

Mark Geragos, Calderon’s attorney, suggested during the court hearing that his client should serve no time in prison. He alleged that the government had entrapped Calderon and raised the former lawmaker’s poor health. The former state senator’s legacy has been ruined by his guilty plea in the case, he added.

“This is going to be the opening paragraph of his obituary, unfortunately,” Geragos told Snyder.

When Snyder rebuffed Geragos’ appeal and said Calderon needed to spend some amount of time behind bars, Geragos switched tactics, asking her to consider a two-year sentence.

Striking a defiant tone throughout, Calderon, 59, refused to admit any wrongdoing or to apologize.

“My goal was always to do the right thing for California,” he said. “At no point did I intend to break the law.”

Faced with the prospect of going to trial on nearly two dozen charges that could have sent him to prison for many years, Calderon said he had been put in a “tough situation” when the government proposed its plea agreement.

He said he ultimately decided to plead guilty to one count of mail fraud in order to spare his family the ordeal of a trial, but persisted in his innocence, saying he never agreed to any quid pro quo to benefit himself or his family.

Calderon, his voice wavering with emotion at times, then told Snyder of the toll the case has taken on him and his family, saying he had “learned a hard lesson.”

Unemployed and tens of thousands of dollars in debt, he said he was not only banned from running for public office again but had been stripped of his real estate license and had been unable to get a job. His wife, he said, would likely have to declare bankruptcy and sell their house.

“I had so much potential for life after politics,” he bemoaned.

Professional relationships had been ruined as had his relationship with his brother, he said.

“My reputation is destroyed,” Calderon said.

Snyder was unmoved.

“I did not really hear Sen. Calderon accept responsibility or apologize,” she said. “It was really about himself.”

Snyder said that after listening to Calderon she was tempted to tack on several months to his sentence, but chose to stick with the 42 months.

Calderon learned his fate a month after his brother former state Assemblyman Tom Calderon was sentenced to a year in federal custody for laundering bribes taken by his brother.

Updates from Sacramento »

As part of the plea, Ronald Calderon admitted accepting trips to Las Vegas, jobs for his adult son and daughter and cash for him and Tom Calderon.

In exchange, Calderon advocated for legislation that would help a hospital owner. He also acknowledged that he had pushed for a law to give tax credits to independent films while an undercover FBI agent posing as a film producer showered him with bribes.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Mack E. Jenkins wrote a blistering brief urging the federal judge for a prison sentence for the former state senator, who had asked to be allowed to serve time in home detention or be released after the brief time he already served in jail.

“Here, defendant’s trafficking in his legislative votes (for, by contrast, over $150,000 in benefits) caused a reverberation of negative effects throughout California and put a stain not just on his career, but on the reputation of the state legislature,” Jenkins wrote.

“Here, defendant sold his vote not just to help pay for the expenses of living beyond his means, but for the more banal and predictable aims of corruption — fancy luxuries, fancy parties and fancy people,” Jenkins wrote, attaching to the file a photo Calderon took with rappers Nelly and T.I. at a Las Vegas event.

The Calderon family was a political dynasty for decades in California. A third brother, former Assemblyman Charles Calderon, was not implicated in the corruption scandal. Ronald Calderon’s nephew Ian Calderon is a state assemblyman and the last family member in state elected office. He was not alleged to have any part in the scheme.

The indictment of Ronald Calderon in 2014 was part of an ugly chapter for the state Senate, which saw two other members also suspended after being charged with crimes.

Former Democratic Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco was sentenced in February to five years in prison for doing political favors in exchange for campaign cash in a separate scheme. Former Democratic state Sen. Roderick D. Wright served a brief jail sentence in 2014 after he was convicted of eight felony counts, including perjury and voting fraud, for lying about living in his state Senate district.

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) said Friday that with the sentencing of Calderon, “the Senate can close the book on a very dark period in its history.

“But its lesson will not be forgotten — that those who seek to trade a sacred trust for self-enrichment will be disgraced and punished,” he added. “There is no room for corruption in this house of democracy.

Good government advocates, including Kathay Feng of California Common Cause, were generally supportive of the judge’s decision. “The sentence of three [and a half] years sends a message that bribery does not pay,” Feng said.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), whose district overlapped Calderon’s and who had been first to call on Calderon to resign, said, “Today, our community received some justice for his crimes,” She added that the “dark cloud over our community will live with us longer than” Calderon serves in prison.

Patrick McGreevy reported from Sacramento and Joel Rubin reported from Los Angeles.

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ALSO

Sen. Ron Calderon surrenders to authorities in corruption case

Ex-Assemblyman Tom Calderon is sentenced to a year in federal custody in bribery case

Former state Sen. Ron Calderon’s guilty plea in corruption case marks blow to political dynasty

UPDATES:

4:30 p.m.: This article was updated with additional quotes.

SACRAMENTO — A Riverside County lawmaker accused of driving drunk after a car crash, but cleared by a blood test, took the first step Monday toward suing the Sacramento Police Department, saying officers had tarnished her reputation.

After Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) was broadsided by an SUV near the Capitol in May, Sacramento police interviewed the 37-year-old lawmaker for hours at a Kaiser Permanente hospital before citing her on suspicion of driving under the influence. Prosecutors declined to file charges after the toxicology results of a blood test revealed no “measurable amount of alcohol or drugs.”

In an 11-page filing Monday, Cervantes alleged that officers had retaliated against her over a bill that would sharply curtail how police can store data gathered by automated license plate readers, a proposal opposed by more than a dozen law enforcement agencies.

The filing also alleges that the police treated Cervantes, who is gay and Latina, differently than the white woman driver who ran a stop sign and broadsided her car.

“This is not only about what happened to me — it’s about accountability,” Cervantes said in a prepared statement. “No Californian should be falsely arrested, defamed, or retaliated against because of who they are or what they stand for.”

Cervantes, a first-year state senator, has said since the crash that she did nothing wrong. She represents the 31st Senate District, which covers portions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and chairs the Senate elections committee.

Cervantes’ lawyer, James Quadra, said the Sacramento police had tried to “destroy the reputation of an exemplary member of the state Senate,” and that the department’s “egregious misconduct” includes false arrest, intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation.

A representative for the Sacramento Police Department declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

After news broke of the crash, the Sacramento Police Department told reporters that they had “observed objective signs of intoxication” after speaking to Cervantes at the hospital. She said in her filing that the police had asked her to conduct a test gauging her eyes’ reaction to stimulus, a “less accurate and subjective test” than the blood test she requested.

The toxicology screen had “completely exonerated” Cervantes, the filing said, but the police department had already “released false information to the press claiming that Senator Cervantes had driven while under the influence of drugs.”

The filing alleges that one police officer turned off his body camera for about five minutes while answering a call on his cell phone. The filing also said that the department failed to produce body camera footage from a sergeant who also came to the hospital.

It turns out the amount of objectifying Pete Davidson received from the tabloids took a toll on his “BDE.”

The “Saturday Night Live” alumnus told “The Breakfast Club” on Wednesday that he was “embarrassed” by the way his personal life crowded out his work.

“I brought a lot of pop culture into [SNL], like, I made it sort of like tabloid-y, like trendy thing unintentionally. … No one talked about any work I was doing,” the 31-year-old father-to-be said. “They were just like, ‘Oh, that’s the f— stick.”

The “Bupkis” star began his “SNL” career in 2014, when he was only 20, then spent eight seasons on the late-night sketch comedy show. After leaving in 2022, he came back a year later to host the show.

His dating life dominated the headlines during his time on “SNL.” Davidson dated singer Ariana Grande, actor Kate Beckinsale, model Kaia Gerber, actor Madelyn Cline and reality TV star Kim Kardashian.

The Grande and Kardashian periods attracted the most attention of course, with the singer hinting at Davidson’s alleged “BDE” and the reality mogul saying later that she was up for some of that amid her divorce from Ye — then known as Kanye West. The rapper, by the way, was not pleased with his ex’s rebound entanglement. (BDE is short for “big d— energy.”)

“I don’t want to victimize myself in any way because I’m cool, but the sexualization of me, if that was a girl, you know, [there would] be a march for it,” Davidson said.

He said the attention his track record brought affected his dating life and made him “sad.”

In July, the “King of Staten Island” star revealed that his current girlfriend, British model and actor Elsie Hewitt, is expecting their first child. She posted a series of pictures of the two of them on social media, including a shot of an ultrasound and video of her getting the scan done.

Her caption: “welp now everyone knows we had sex.”