This week, Taylor Swift dropped a brand new single, entitled "Look What You Made Me Do" and it is seventy-five levels of savage as frick. Merely days after releasing this single, the music video for the single came out, and it is a beautiful creation with so many tiny details that she put massive amounts of effort in. I'm going to highlight some of the details she added to this video, and see how many you actually caught!
First, you can watch the video on your own, and then we will go through it together!
1. At 0:10 seconds in, the lights spell out the letters "TS"
I bet you can't figure out why!
2. At 0:14 seconds, you see two Taylor Swift headstones
The first is obviously the one with the giant T on top that has center screen and has "Taylor Swift's Reputation" written on the front... But the second one has a less well-known name on it. It belongs to "Nils Sjoberg" which is the pseudonym Tay used to write on ex-boyfriend, Calvin Harris', song "This Is What You Came For."
3. Zombie Taylor is LITERALLY digging her own grave.
At around 0:28 seconds, Out of The Woods zombie Taylor has burst from the ground and begins to dig Taylor's grave. It's T Swizzle's way of really showing us that the old Taylor is dead. She's gone, and this new Taylor is out for blood.
4. Next, we see Taylor in a HIGHLY uncomfortable bath of diamonds and other jewelry, and a dollar...
Now, that dollar is actually super significant to Taylor. It is believed it's supposed to be the dollar she won in her lawsuit against the DJ that groped her in 2013, and then sued her for libel and defamation. So look out for that at approximately 0:34 seconds into this video.
5. At around 0:52 seconds in, we see Taylor surrounded by snakes
Not only is she chilling with snakes, but she and the snakes are on such good terms, one of them is actually serving her tea. This is supposedly relating back to the Kimye drama, and Taylor's newfound reputation (get it, it's the name of the album?) as a snake. This is her way of showing the haters they won't get her down, and she is gonna own her reputation.
6. At 1:08, a bizarre scene goes down where T Swizzle has crashed her gold car into a pole with a cheetah and a Grammy
I don't have much to elaborate on this one, but to me, it reads that the media has been so focused on the negatives in Taylor's life lately, she feels the bad parts have overshadowed the good she's done.(Although, like I said, this is just me speculating. I could very well be wrong)
7. The Masked Cat Burglars feat. Taylor Swift?
At 1:42 Taylor is on screen, wielding a bat, surrounded by stacks of money and gold, with a female group of cat-head wearing thugs behind her. Then, they travel to a Streaming service headquarters, where they appear to have just robbed the company. That itself is a massive diss, considering Taylor's long time feud with all music streaming services (See Taylor's boycott of Spotify for years due to their refusal to compensate artists, and also her open letter to Apple Music for their insufficient compensation of musicians
8. The Cats
Taylor is kind of a cat person. First the cat burglars, and then at like 1:52, Tay seems to be like, evil dictator, and totally has the giant screens behind her flashing between cats and the word "squad." Which is actually the next self-inflicted burn. Taylor first debuted her #Squad during the music video for "Bad Blood" and spent literally the entirety of the 1989 Tour parading her squad around all the most glamorous cities with some extremely #aesthetic photo ops. However, many people gave the queen some serious trouble because her friend group seemed to all look relatively the same. So Tay responds to these criticisms via creating a squad army in her new video. #TaylorSquadTakingOver (Let's get it trending guys, this is hashtag gold).
9. Her Backup dancers
At around the 2:10 mark, Taylor has collected a bunch of backup dancers, all wearing the same crop top with "I <3 TS" on the front. The same message that was on a shirt Tom Hiddleston was caught wearing while out on the beach in Rhode Island with Taylor.
This started a whole bunch of drama for Taylor, where people accused Taylor of only hanging out with people willing to wear her name for publicity. Which is why Taylor fired back with these guys.
10. Battle of the Swifts
At 2:27 we see the new Taylor standing on top of her former selves. Including fan favorites, like the "You Belong With Me" Taylor, and the Taylor in the silver flapper looking dress from the VMA's who was cut off by Kanye, and the Taylor in the white swan costume from the "Shake It Off" video. Basically, all the Taylors are fighting underneath new Taylor. It seems like they are all fighting to be revived, but T Swizzle 2.0 isn't letting it happen (Hint: "Old Taylor can't come to the phone right now.. Why? *laughs* Cause she's dead!)
11. Dance Break
From Mount Taylor, we move into a rather out of place dance break. Taylor probably incorporated this dance break to fight the reputation she has as a bad dancer, due partially to her own contributions (See: Shake It Off), and also partially from the various award shows she has attended and appeared on camera randomly while "dancing" a.k.a. wiggling around like an inflatable tube guy.
12. Finale
Finally, the ending of the video, in which so many burns are dished by Taylor, to Taylor... 100% literally. First, Zombie Swift throws "You Belong With Me" Swift some shade by telling her to "stop making that surprised face, it's so annoying." Which prompts White Swan Swift to add "You can't possibly be that surprised all the time." Which is something Taylor was made fun of for all the time during that time period. She realizes now she way overdid it and isn't afraid of laughing at herself.
Next, a little bit of dialogue occurs, prompting Top Hat Taylor to tell Guitar Swift that she is "so fake." This causes Guitar Swift to burst into tears, and then Biker Swift chimes in with "There she goes, playing the victim again." Which is yet another common comment about Taylor.
Then we get to the juicy stuff. Cheetah Taylor is on her phone and is asked what she is doing, to which she replies "Getting receipts. I'm gonna edit this later." Which is a dig at the Kimye situation, which is possibly what a lot of this whole album will be talking about, since it is the reason so many people turned on her. Finally, we have VMA Taylor, who chimes in with the infamous "I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative." Which was something she had said very early into her issues with Kanye, and was heavily mocked for by many online.
13. 13
Another nifty tip bit from the final scene with all the Taylors... In the upper right corner before it zooms in on the dialogue, you can vaguely make out a 13. Which is the number of Taylor's in this final scene... So that's pretty cool.