Taylor Swift has taken a dark turn while still attempting, to an extent, to play the victim.
Swift’s new video for her single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” was released Sunday night during the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards.
The video starts with Swift as a zombie crawling out of her grave, which reads, “Here Lies Taylor Swift’s Reputation" (very subtle).
In the next scene, we find Swift laying in a diamond-filled bathtub while donning “Blank Space” era hair and makeup — complete with long red nails that perfectly match her trademark red lipstick.
Subsequent scenes find Swift drinking tea served to her by a snake, robbing a streaming service, wearing an orange jumpsuit while being held in a bird cage and leading an army of robot women.
The best part is unquestionably the end where several Swifts from various eras (“You Belong With Me,” the 2009 VMAs, zombie Swift, young country Swift, etc.) fight with each other, saying things like, “Stop making that surprised face. It’s so annoying,” “What’s with that bitch?” “Stop acting like you’re all nice. You are so fake!” and, “There she goes, playing the victim again.”
The video concludes with Swift saying, “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative,” an excerpt from her infamous Instagram post about the Kimye drama of summer 2016 — when Swift’s reputation took its biggest hits.
The video as a whole is a lot to take in and hard to swallow. It also comes with controversy, due to the uncanny resemblance to one of the scenes from Beyoncé’s “Formation.”
“Look What You Made Me Do” is a lot to make sense of, both musically and visually, and one can’t help but wonder if Swift has finally lost it.
