In the hyped-up debut for her latest album, Reputation, Taylor Swift released the music video for the single, “Look What You Made Me Do” on Sunday.
The video opens in a graveyard, zooming in on a tombstone engraved with “Here Lies Taylor Swift’s Reputation.” From the beginning, viewers see a dark and resentful side of Swift, who rises from the grave, quickly calling out those she’s had feuds with while also making jabs at herself.
The most infamous feuds she references throughout her song are those with Kanye West and his wife, Kim-Kardashian West, along with Katy Perry, who she also has a long-established rivalry with.
Within the first verse she makes a comment about Kanye West and his titled stage from his Saint Pablo tour. In addition, she acknowledges the “role you made me play,” when he called her a bitch in his song “Famous,” claiming he had her permission with evidence Kardashian-West leaked on Snapchat.
One of the lines in the chorus “I’ve got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined” emphasizes her pettiness, how she continues to dwell on the past and what people have said about her instead of ignoring it or letting it go.
Throughout the song, she repeats the lyrics, “look what you made me do,” which is also the song title, however, the only thing she seems to have done thus far is call out those who have wronged her and her reputation.
On the other hand, the song also has an empowering aspect to it, where Swift is forced to stand up for herself and acknowledges her flaws from the past by saying “look what you made me do.”
Not only does she poke fun at direct references to past encounters, Swift makes a point to reference include her current friends as noted on a shirt that the Taylor from the You Belong With Me era sports with names like Selena [Gomez], Ed [Sheeran], Blake [Lively], Ryan [Reynolds] and more. By showing rows of identical women with this model look in the video, Swift references how the media perceives her friends as clones.
At the end, she is dressed up as 14 former versions of herself, one being the nerdy girl from “You Belong With Me,” another as the ballet dancer from “Shake It Off,” along with her 2009 VMAs self where West dissed her and their drama began.
Her self-awareness and satirical tone with “dead” Swift mocks what critics have said about her throughout the years. such as telling herself not to make a surprised face because she can’t possibly be that surprised all the time, as well as being fake and always playing the victim. VMAs era Swift ends with, “I’d very much like to be excluded from this narrative,” prompting all other Taylors telling her to shut up.
The song continues Swift’s established role as the victim in Hollywood, which she also calls herself out for through her lyrics and in the music video. It also sets the tone for the rest of her album, which will likely be a call-out to everyone who’s helped soil her reputation, as new Taylor is forced to reinvent her reputation, since the old Taylor is “dead.”
This darker tone emphasizes that she isn’t messing around and those should think twice before wronging her because karma’s there and “I got mine, but you’ll all get yours.”
habersk15@bonaventure.edu
