After weeks of dropping pastel-hued hints all over her Instagram, Taylor Swift finally released the music video for her latest single “ME!” featuring Panic at the Disco’s Brendon Urie last night – and it’s a lot to take in. Rainbows! Hearts! Butterflies! The top line? The Grammy-winner is going back to her roots in more ways than one. Below, an exhaustive (and, frankly, exhausting) breakdown of every coded message hidden in her rainbow-filled world.
The Title
In “Endgame”, one of the biggest singles from the Reputation album, Swift sings the line: “My reputation precedes me.” See what she did there? Meanwhile, a lot of the lyrics to “ME!” reference previous tracks. Most notable might be the line about a “fight out in the rain”. Swift has crooned about precipitation in an enormous number of her songs. See the chorus of “That’s The Way I Loved You”, featuring the refrain “I miss screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain”.
The Snake
The video opens on a snake which proceeds to explode into a mass of butterflies – a clear sign that Swift’s darker Reputation-era persona has officially been retired. Naturally, the butterflies also suggest that Swift is about to undergo a personal metamorphosis. In fact, the world within the video seems to be set within a giant chrysalis.
The Christmas Tree
The opening of “ME!” recalls Panic at the Disco’s video for “But It’s Better If You Do”, although the dialogue is in French. Swift and Urie play lovers who have a ridiculously melodramatic fight in their apartment while a Christmas tree glitters in the background. Swift was raised on a Pennsylvania farm that sold Christmas trees and loves the festive season.
The Dixie Chicks
As Swift croons about there being “a lot of cool chicks out there”, the video focuses on a portrait of The Dixie Chicks hanging on the wall – implying that the trio have worked with Swift on her seventh album. There are other signs her next record will be a return to her country roots too (not least the fact that she’s wearing cowboy boots in the video). Most notably, she recently shared that Panic at the Disco reminds her of driving around Nashville as a teenager – and chose to be in Tennessee for the announcement of the single.
The Phone
Swift’s tagline for her Reputation era was: “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now.” In “ME!”, she sings “I know that I went psycho on the phone,” answering a giant fuchsia telephone as she does. In a nutshell, the old Taylor is back, albeit in a fresh guise.
The Briefcases
After marching away from Urie and being followed by what looks like an angry snake cloud, Swift prances around in a buttercup-coloured suit while her dancers twirl around her. In their hands? Seven briefcases – a nod to the fact that her next album will be her seventh.
The Neon Sign
At one point, Swift is sitting on a giant unicorn, wearing a dress that somehow turns into a waterfall, while men with umbrellas descend from the sky. I mean, why not? Tear your glance away from all of that for a moment, and you can spot a neon sign in the background that reads Lover – likely the title of her next single.
The Cat
The most important takeaway from the music video by a significant margin is that Swift got another cat. Not only does Urie present her with a kitten after their lovers’ quarrel, but Swift commissioned a special butterfly mural from the artist Kelsey Montague to be painted in Nashville for the release – and it has three cats in it.
The Heart Kaleidoscope
Shortly after presenting Swift with said cat, Urie opens his floral blazer to reveal a heart-shaped door in his chest, which turns into a giant kaleidoscope. (Stay with me here.) This is a pretty clear allusion to a lyric from 1989’s “Welcome to New York”, which reads “Walkin’ through a crowd, the village is a glow / Kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats under coats”.
The Skyline
In Swift’s fantasy world, the skyline morphs between Washington D.C. and London. The former nods to the fact that Swift found her political voice last year shortly before the midterm elections in America – coming out in support of Democratic candidates Phil Bredesen for the Senate and Jim Cooper for the House of Representatives. London, meanwhile, is the home of Swift’s boyfriend Joe Alwyn. Love(r) is in the air.
The Band Uniform
Cowboy boots aren’t Swift’s only throwback fashion moment in the video. She also dons a mint green outfit for a giant dance-off that recalls her marching band look from the video for “You Belong With Me”, one of her most joyful, girly songs and likely a template for her next chapter.
The Clock
While there’s no official release date for Swift’s next album yet, fans quickly spotted a clock in the apartment that’s set to 8:30, indicating that it might well drop on August 30 – because, let’s face it, nothing is an accident when it comes to Miss Swift.
