Meet Taylor Swift at midnight and you’ll be greeted with the latest piece to her pop puzzle: Midnights, the visual album. Since its release, the album era has moved ahead with big chart streaks and hit radio singles, but in the midst of the nightmare Eras tour ticketing fiasco, the singer’s visual master plan has been somewhat sidelined. Now, she’s setting things back on track with the music video for “Lavender Haze.”
In the video premiered Thursday, which is written and directed by Swift. The singer is seen laying in bed with her partner while a record plays in the background. As she sits up, a cloud hangs over her head, and as she lights a match an eerie “haze” fills the room. The scene cuts to Swift in her living room watching her lover as a weatherman on television as she sings, “All they keep asking me is if I’m gonna be your bride/ The only kind of girl they see is a one night or a wife.”
Soon the room is filled with literal lavender as she moves towards the television, pulls it apart to reveal a cosmic aquarium, and soon she’s swimming in a purple pool, of course. Scenes of Swift cuddling and dancing in a room of friends ends with her cozy in a cloud as fish swim around her.
Swift first previewed the “Lavender Haze” video in a teaser trailer compiling clips from all the music videos she made for Midnights. First out the gate was “Anti-Hero,” the controversy-stirring visual that attempted to communicate the singer’s personal struggles with disordered eating, among other things, but received criticism for its use of the word “fat” in place of numbers on scale.
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Shaking off the backlash, Swift shared the shimmering visual for “Bejeweled,” a self-love anthem full of positive affirmations. In the video, she slips into the role of Cinderella, with HAIM stepping in as her mean stepsisters and Laura Dern as her evil stepmother. With Dita Von Teese as her fairy godmother, Swift stuns the crowd at a talent show, including the prince she won over before ghosting him completely.
The Midnights visuals have featured a cast of special guests from Dern, the HAIM sisters, and Von Teese to Jack Antonoff, Mike Birbiglia, Pat McGrath, and more.
