Taylor Swift released the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” — her first from her latest album “The Life of a Showgirl” — Sunday. Fans who attended a screening of the movie theater release event for the album this weekend were able to see the video ahead of time.
The video, which Swift directed, features the pop star deploying several different looks and aesthetics as she traipses across several locations, including a mansion, a stage, and onboard a ship.
Several of the scenes are inspired by interpretations of Ophelia, who originated in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
In one memorable scene, Swift falls off the ship and lands onstage wearing a synchronized swimmer outfit and flanked by others donning similar clothing — a scene that is reminiscent of the 1997 music video for Daft Punk’s “Around the World.” Later in the video she catches a football, a nod to her fiancé, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. The video ends with Swift in a bathtub with her face held above the water line — an indication she will not, as the song also suggests, suffer the fate of the character, who drowned in a river.
Swift announced the record during an appearance on Travis and Jason Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast in August.
“This album is about what was going on behind my scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” she said at the time. “I’m so proud of it, and it just comes from the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life. That effervescence has come through on this record.”
