Taylor Swift’s voice memos are more than I need and less than I want

Last week, Taylor Swift sold a bunch of records and broke one: With 4 million units moved (and counting), Swift s 12th studio album, The Life of a Sh...

Last week, Taylor Swift sold a bunch of records and broke one: With 4 million units moved (and counting), Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” just hit the highest first-week numbers ever recorded for an album in the modern era - dislodging Adele’s “25,” after just shy of a decade.

Accelerating the super-viral spread of “Showgirl” are its 30-plus appropriately termed “variants” - i.e. alternative physical and digital editions of the album pressed in assorted colors, packaged with entirely different cover art, or enhanced with acoustic versions and bonus tracks.

Some of these variants spring up and peace out. On Oct. 9, for instance, Swift posted “The Life of a Showgirl (Deluxe So Punk on the Internet Version)” - an edition distinguished by its fleeting nature (it was available for only 6½ hours) and the inclusion of seven “original songwriting voice memos.”

That “So Punk” part must refer to the scruffy nature of these voice notes, recorded by Swift on her phone as she sketched out melodic and lyrical ideas for the songs that would appear on “Showgirl,” often in conversation with producers Max Martin and Shellback. For an artist whose product is so precisely polished and market tested, the memos entice with their own variant of intimacy.

Certainly, Swift is onto something. Who doesn’t love to peek behind the finished product and observe the artist at work?