She’s renowned for sharing her romantic difficulties – and settling scores – through her songs.
And Taylor Swift’s latest hit has once again revealed the pain of her relationship break-ups – with a little help from US actors Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles.
The video to Ms Swift’s song Fortnight, the lead single on her new album The Tortured Poets Department, whipped her millions of fans into a frenzy when it was posted on YouTube early on Friday.
It is the 34-year-old’s first album since the break-up of her six-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn, and he is the suspected target of much of her ire in songs such as So Long, London.
Even the title of the album – her first since 2022’s Midnights – is a mocking take on a WhatsApp group that Alwyn shares with actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott called Tortured Man Club.
Matty Healy, ‘bad boy’ frontman with The 1975, with whom Ms Swift had a short fling, also doesn’t escape – Swifties (the nickname of the singer’s most devoted fans) believe he is the inspiration behind the track The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.
The singer said the album was an anthology of new works reflecting ‘events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure’. She went on to say that period in her life was over, adding: ‘The chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.’
Her skill across her work is to keep fans guessing about hidden messages – and so it was with the release of the Fortnight video, in which she duets with US rapper Post Malone.
The video hints that Ms Swift has found love so difficult that it had sent her crazy. She appears to be in an asylum and is seen lying on a bed with no mattress while chained to the railing.
A doctor walks in with a bottle of pills with the label: ‘Forget him.’ Ms Swift takes a pill and is freed. Hawke and Charles play scientists as Ms Swift is hooked to a table in scenes reminiscent of Frankenstein.
To mark the Fortnight video’s release, the singer also shared on YouTube Shorts 14 short video clips of her life during the past two weeks, including one of her enjoying a cocktail and another of her at the gym. She challenged fans to follow her lead by copying her #ForAFortnight challenge.