The life of a showgirl isn’t easy — but it sure is capital-R romantic, and just a bit tragic. That is, if you’re Miss Americana, aka Taylor Swift. The superstar just released her latest studio album just months after the end of her record-breaking Eras Tour and the recent announcement of her engagement to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. With The Life of a Showgirl Swift broke another record on the release’s first day, racking up the most single-day Spotify streams for an album in 2025.
The 12-track album — which features a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter, a nod to Shakespearean tragedy, and references to Kelce — is Swift’s 12th. So while that means there are plenty of other Swift releases to go back and replay, you might be looking to exist in this particular era a little longer. Here are five movies and TV shows currently available to stream on Netflix that will give you that same The Life of a Showgirl feeling.
This 2002 rom-com by director Andy Tennant stars Reese Witherspoon as a small-town girl, Melanie, who abandons her family (and her first love) to run off to New York City and chase her fashion designer dreams. But when she gets engaged to a new man, Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), she’s forced back home to demand a divorce from her estranged husband, Jake (Josh Lucas). Their reunion is messy and imperfect, but, as Swift writes in “Opalite”: “This life will beat you up, up, up, up / This is just a temporary speed bump / But failure brings you freedom / And I can bring you love, love, love, love, love.”
“Opalite,” Swift told Capital FM, is “a man-made opal, and happiness can also be man-made, too.” The film couple’s first go-’round didn’t work out because Jake was lost and Melanie longed for more … but with time, pressure, and learning from their mistakes, they found new freedom and new happiness before reuniting. And the lyrics “You were dancing through the lightning strikes”? Anyone who’s watched Sweet Home Alabama knows the significance lightning plays in Melanie and Jake’s love story.
“I’ll be your father figure,” Swift writes in the album’s fourth track, “Father Figure.” Is there a TV mom who encapsulates both “Mother” and “Father” more than Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham)? Gilmore Girls premiered 25 years ago, but creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s story about a young, single mother and her teen daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel), has stood the test of time. When Lorelai decides to strike out on her own after having a baby out of wedlock, she becomes everything to her daughter: father, mother, sister, best friend … The bond the Gilmores share is unbreakable.
There’s turmoil in the story Swift is telling (“Who covered up your scandals? / Mistake my kindness for weakness and find your card canceled”), and Gilmore Girls isn’t without its ups and downs (Lorelai and Rory’s fights are all the more tragic for how deeply they cut). But ultimately, “You know, you remind me of a younger me,” Swift sings in “Father Figure.” At the end of the day, isn’t Rory a mirror image of her mother, in both the best and worst ways?
In “Eldest Daughter,” Swift writes that she’s “not a bad bitch … I’m never gonna let you down.” She’s “afflicted by a terminal uniqueness … dying just from trying to seem cool.”
Peak eldest daughter Lara Jean Song-Covey (Lana Condor), star of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (as well as its two sequels), is unique, kind, and tired of playing it cool. She’s a lover girl, a loyal daughter, and a good friend, but when her younger sister, Kitty (Anna Cathcart), sends some old love letters to Lara Jean’s crushes, she finds herself at the center of an epic rom-com.
In a world of people who are “so punk on the internet,” as Swift sings, the Lara Jeans of the world find wonder in “a beautiful, beautiful time-lapse / Ferris wheels, kisses, and lilacs.” So when one of those crushes, the mega-popular Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo), suggests a fake dating scheme to benefit them both in this adaptation of author Jenny Han's 2014 novel of the same name, Lara Jean tries to play it cool.
As we said, Swift’s album is romantic, but also a bit tragic. Sort of like the series One Day. In “Ruin the Friendship,” Swift sings about two people who “should've kissed” while in school together but never did, singing: “Don’t make it awkward in second period / Might piss your ex off, lately we’ve been good / Staying friends is safe, doesn’t mean you should.” The lyrics also reference a tragedy, and missing out on a kiss.
And that, friends, brings us to One Day, which tells the story of Emma Morley (Ambika Mod) and Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall), who carry on a 14-year will they, won’t they relationship that puts their friendship to the test. While they love each other in every way, they just can’t seem to get the timing right. Based on the 2009 novel of the same name by David Nicholls, which inspired the 2011 film adaptation starring Anne Hathaway, One Day shows the ups and downs of an epic romance (emphasis on the downs — keep your tissues close).
Swift described “Actually Romantic,” the seventh track on her album, as “a song about realizing that someone else has kind of had a one-sided, adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about. And all of a sudden, they start doing too much, and they start letting you know that, actually, you’ve been living in their head rent-free, and you had no idea.”
Never Have I Ever star Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) knows a thing or two about someone living in your head rent-free. Created by Mindy Kaling (The Sex Lives of College Girls) and Lang Fisher (The Four Seasons), the series follows Devi’s journey through the final three years of high school after the sudden death of her father. Devi’s passion — for school; for her crush, Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet); for her rival, Ben Gross (Jaren Lewison); and for her family and friends — gets her into a world of trouble time and again.
In her song, Swift writes, “'Cause it’s actually sweet / All the time you’ve spent on me … It’s actually romantic / You’ve just given me so much attention.” Is Devi driven by obsession? Passion? Love? A mixture of all of the above? You’ll just have to watch to find out.
