Taylor Swift has just dropped the music video for ‘Bejeweled’ and, as always, there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Her new album has already received huge critical acclaim, with Dork’s 5-star review describing it as “a late-night record and delivering an album’s worth of the hazy, fluorescent moments that peppered her big pop trio before.” On top of that, the record is currently on track to beat Arctic Monkeys to hit number one in the UK charts.
Now, as promised in her ‘Midnights Manifest’, Taylor Swift has released her 2nd ‘Midnights’ music video. It dropped last night shortly after an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Promising her fans “a psychotic amount” of easter eggs
“I was like, ‘I want to make a video that is just for the fans who like certain things, like glitter and Easter eggs and lots of little cameos’,” she declared to the TV host. “Basically, I was thinking about ‘Midnights’ the concept and was like, ‘Where do we hear about midnights a lot?’ We hear about it a lot when we talk about the Cinderella fairytale.”
The scene is set, but Taylor later reaffirms that fans should expect a ton of clues littered throughout the new music video – “a psychotic amount,” she smirks. “We have a PDF file for the easter eggs in this video because there are so many that we could not keep track.”
Commanding cameos
Star studded-cameos are obvious highlights, with Swift’s “ best friends” the HAIM sisters appearing as her not-so-ugly stepsisters, and Oscar Winner Laura Dern playing her stepmother.
Taylor’s talents impress a Queen played by “genius legendary make-up artist” Pat McGrath, after reclaiming her glamour with the help of Dita Von Teese. At this point (4:57), a portrait of actress and close friend & collaborator Zoë Kravitz can be seen on the wall. Of course, long-time collaborator and ‘Midnights’ co-writer & co-producer Jack Antonoff plays the keen prince whom Taylor soon ghosts, but she does keep his castle.
‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ incoming
The major easter egg that fans are highlighting en masse on TikTok is the hinting that Swift’s next release could be ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’.
For context, the songwriter has been rerecording her old albums to ensure that Scott Braun – who bought Big Machine Records, which Swift was signed to prior to the release of 2019’s ‘Lover’ – will not profit from the licensing of the original releases. Braun owns the masters to a bulk of Swift’s early material, but by rerecording the tracks under a new agreement with Republic records, she will own the copyright to all of the new recordings.
So – Swift dropped ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’ and ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ in 2021, and is seemingly progressing with the rest of her back catalogue, with 2010’s ‘Speak Now’ next on the agenda. The key part of this reveal can be spotted in the ‘Bejeweled’ music video, as Taylor hops into an elevator to reclaim her glamour (2:40).
On the button dial which lists thirteen coloured buttons – representing all Taylor’s LP releases to date – she clicks ‘3’. ‘Speak Now’ was Taylor’s third album and features purple artwork. The thirteenth button is also purple, which seems to suggest that her upcoming thirteenth release (including rerecordings, with 12 being ‘Midnights’) could be the aforementioned rerelease.
This theory is made more convincing by the fact that two ‘Speak Now‘ tracks can be heard during the video – the strings of ‘Enchanted‘ soundtrack her vomit-scrubbing in the cinematic intro, and if you fine-tune your ears, the instrumental for ‘Long Live’ can also be heard following her rejection of Prince Jack’s proposal.
Old era callbacks
“Bye, Snake!” Danielle Haim seethes at the beginning of the film. This is one of the main insults hurled against Taylor, as initiated by Kim Kardashian, following the drama surrounding her 2016 feud with rapper Kanye West. She went on to reclaim the serpentine imagery with her following LP, 2017’s ‘reputation’.
Swift continues to floor 5 (3:30), the blue button of which represents ‘1989’, and encounters a new character – played by one of her “favourite performers”, Dita Von Teese – with a hairstyle that is reminiscent of her own cut in the music video for ‘Wildest Dreams’, which is indeed a cut from her fifth album.
She later keeps the castle gifted by Prince Jack, which calls back to the chorus of ‘1989’ cut, ‘New Romantics’: “’Cause baby, I could build a castle / Out of all the bricks they threw at me”.
Another music video on the horizon?
Floor 13 is next, which would be the new era of ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’, but it seems she’s not giving everything away just yet. Instead, we can see a stage surrounded by gears – gears are the primary focus of the recent lyric video for ‘Mastermind’. As that track is also the thirteenth song on ‘Midnights’ – and we have yet to see all the footage from Taylor’s music video teaser trailer play out in full – it looks like we could yet see another music video for the album closer.
Timing is key
Oh, one final thing – the video was released at midnight (12 o’clock) today, accompanying a track from Taylor Swift‘s twelfth album release, ‘Midnights’. The date today is October 25th, making it exactly twelve years since the original release of ‘Speak Now’. We’re starting to see why a PDF was needed here.
If the news is true, when can we expect even more material from Swift? Well, some fans have pointed out that the fob watch counting down her exile (2:22) says 2 days remaining, with the clock hands pointing at twelve. So, 02/12? It seems pretty optimistic to expect more content by the end of the year, surely?
You can watch the official music video for ‘Bejeweled’ below:
