"I'm sorry, the Old Taylor can't come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, 'cause she's dead," Taylor Swift says toward the end of her new single, "Look What You Made Me Do," her first solo effort in nearly three years. And this perfectly sums up where the singer is in her career right now: She's changing. With its gritty lyrics and even grittier, synth-heavy beats, this song feels nothing like 1989. Compared to Swift's fairytale "Love Story" days, we're in the upside down.
The message of "Look What You Made Me Do" is clear: Swift is mad. Of course, in true Swift fashion, she hasn't confirmed the subject of her anger yet—though the Internet has theories—but there's no denying her agenda. She doesn't want to shake things off anymore. Baby, we still have bad blood.
And it's seeping throughout the music video, which debuted tonight during the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards. The clip was nuts, to say the least: It was a commentary on the demise of Swift's reputation, which took several "hits" in 2016.
In the video, she winks to several of the tabloid stories that plagued her last year, including her relationship with Tom Hiddleston, the snake emoji, and the notion that she's been playing the "victim" her whole career. The clip ends with Swift's former personas quite literally dying. This was foreshadowed in the beginning, when Swift emerged from a graveyard as a zombie. Yup. There was a tombstone that said "R.I.P Taylor Swift's Reputation" and everything. Like I said: bonkers.
Check out the video, below.
The buzz around this clip really started Friday (August 25), when Good Morning America teased a snippet of it. People couldn't help but notice the parallels between it and Beyoncé's Lemonade—specifically, the "Sorry" and "Formation" videos. Joseph Kahn, however, asked fans to wait and see the full video before making judgments, calling Beyoncé's Lemonade a totally different "art space" than Taylor's.
Swift will release her sixth studio album, Reputation, on November 10. If this new single is any indication, we're in for a very fired-up ride.
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