At some point in her decade-long transformation from ebulliently cherubic country singer to bona fide pop icon whose face, for some godforsaken reason, currently adorns every UPS truck in the lower 48, the Taylor Swift music video release underwent a shift, too, from perfunctory buzz-generating duty to honest-to-God cultural event that briefly breaks the the Internet.
The first single from 'Reputation' is here—and it goes there.
When a teaser for the video for "Ready For It," the second single off her forthcoming album Reputation, debuted earlier this week, the detective caps and magnifying glasses came out in a hurry. The nudity is a shot at Kanye! The lighting is some Calvin Harris shade! Swifties even started breathlessly comparing stills from the trailer to stills from previous videos, as if images of "Taylor standing" and "Taylor reclining" were noteworthy potential motifs.
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Sure enough, the final product packs enough artily ambiguous images in three and a half minutes to allow fans to gleefully debate symbolism for as long as they please. (The opening scene juxtaposes the numbers 89 and 91, which are, respectively, Swift's birth year and boyfriend Joe Alwyn's birth year, so IT'S ABOUT JOE, YOU'RE WELCOME.) (I have no idea.) She apparently even took to liking certain late-night fan posts on Tumblr that took a stab at interpreting the video's True Meaning, which is a stone-cold brilliant branding stunt.
Several warring Taylors interact throughout; one swaggering around with the Assassin's Creed hoodie pulled ominously over her head; another who transforms into some kind of cyborg with a laser contraption in place of her arm; another astride a white unicorn, because, sure; and still another wearing a nude body suit that lights up at the joints, making her look like one of the Minority Report precogs crossed with C-3PO. There are also these... things that occasionally follow her around, each of which looks like something from a Tim Burton fever dream and all of which are the subjects of 10,000-word origin stories being composed by enthralled fans even as you read this sentence.
Even I, GQ's dutifully-serving resident Taylor Swift apologist, have found Reputation's three tracks released thus far to be, shall we say, uneven. The hook to "Ready For It"—especially the soaring, double-tracked version in the outro—showed some promise, but man, those rapped verses are genuinely hard to listen to. "Gorgeous," with its occasional triangle and that grim "You should take it as a compliment that I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk" first line, is kind of a letdown, too. On balance, I actually think "Look What You Made Me Do" will have the most staying power of the three, which I do not mean to suggest is a good thing.
Then again, the first trio of singles off of 1989 were a mixed bag—God, remember the first time you cringed all the way through "Welcome to New York"?—and that record still bangs. It's also true that Taylor Swift long ago became the type of mega-rich, mega-famous mega-celebrity who no longer has to make consistently good music in order to shatter streaming records and sell out 31-city arena tours every few years, which is a distinction she shares, hilariously, with her archnemesis du jour Kanye West. At this point, if she wants to put out some goofy videos and take a couple chances on every album, I guess she's earned that right.
(This year's "All the Old Taylor Swifts" group Halloween costumes are probably going to be fun, though.)