Taylor Swift Throws Shade in “Look What You Made Me Do”
On Sunday, August 27th, at the Video Music Awards, Taylor Swift debuted her music video for “Look What You Made Me Do.” Since then, articles about the singer and her new video have piled up. Her song featured hard-to-forget lyrics such as, “Taylor Swift can’t come to the phone now. Why? Cause she’s dead.”
But who killed her? Swift seems to be throwing shade at all sorts of people that she’s had issues with throughout her career.
She certainly showed some harsh disdain for Katy Perry. In the video, Swift crashes a Lamborghini — the same car Perry drove in her own music video, “Waking Up in Vegas”. Swift exited the vehicle holding a Grammy, something Katy Perry notoriously hasn’t won. What a burn!
And who could forget the infamous relationship between Swift and Kanye West? Everyone knows there’s been beef between the two since the incident when he interrupted her acceptance speech at the 2009 VMAs. Swift portrays many versions of herself in her video, one of them saying “What’s with that b*tch?” This is in reference to Kanye’s song “Famous”, in which he referred to Swift as such.
Apparently, Swift and Kanye had spoken on the phone and she had given permission to Kanye to call her a “b*tch” in his song. Later on, Taylor denied that claim and Kanye’s wife, Kim Kardashian, posted a video of the phone call.
In another scene, Swift is in a bathtub full of jewels, and among them is a single dollar bill. That lone dollar bill is referring to her lawsuit win against David Mueller, a former DJ in Colorado who was convicted of sexually assaulting her.
In 2013, Mueller lifted up her skirt and grabbed her butt. Yet, in 2015, the DJ sued Taylor for defamation for 3 million dollars when he lost his job at KYGO. Taylor then sued him for a dollar because to her, it wasn’t about the money but the principle. She wants the counter suit to be an example to other women who may resist publicly reliving similar outrageous and humiliating acts. Also, Taylor will donate any awarded damages to charities.
Taylor does take the time to make fun of herself. In one of the scenes, she wears a cat mask, reminiscing how she used to joke about becoming a crazy cat lady. There’s also a scene showing her dancing with eight men, each wearing an “I <3 T.S.” shirt.
She seemingly has no problem with her reputation of being in love way too many times. The eight men elude to her multiple famous heartbreaks. Her high-profile exes include Tom Hiddleston, Calvin Harris, Harry Styles, Conor Kennedy, John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Taylor Lautner, and Joe Jonas.
The video is becoming so popular that she is about to beat Adele’s record on Vevo. According to Vevo’s Youtube channel, the video is at a record 325,409,462 views. The video has been watched 1.5 million times every hour since Sunday. Adele’s “Hello” video owned the record previously, with 27.7 million views on its 2015 release date. Taylor is dominating pop culture right now, and fans are left to wonder what sorts of backlash she’ll face for such a controversial video.
Check it out below, and tell us what you think about Swift’s newest single!
Eric Gonzalez is a second year ACC student. He was born in Miami, Florida on August 27th, 1997. He moved to Castle Rock, Colorado in 2003. He graduated from Douglas County High in 2016 and is planning on transferring to CU Boulder...