The music video for "Blank Space", and the AMA performance of the same. While it's played partly for dark laughs and a caricature of how her haters see her as, Taylor plays Ax-Crazy surprisingly well. "Got a long list of ex-lovers, they'll tell you I'm insane" indeed.
The first two videos teasing her sixth album, posted to her official Tumblr, are gritty, dark, unfocused videos of a snake's tail. Okay, a little odd, but not too bad. The third, however, features a snake lunging right at you! It's remarkably creepy for a silent ten-second clip, especially if you already have a fear of snakes.
If the snake video wasn't enough to freak you out, the first single from reputation, 'Look What You Made Me Do', just makes matters worse. The beat is very dark as Taylor sings the lyrics in a very aggressive tone. It builds right up to the kicker line "I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, 'cause she's dead!", the fact the innocent carefree Taylor is gone and in her place is a darker module is frightening, but compared with the rest of the song, this line is said calmly with no malice at all, which is very eerie and disconcerting. The fact that the phrase "look what you made me do" can easily be a Trauma Button to people who were abused and then blamed for "making" the culprit hurt them doesn't exactly make the song any less scary either.
The official music video for "Look What You Made Me Do" isn't much better. Highlights include a zombified version of Taylor crawling out of her grave (complete with Jump Scare late into the video), and the mountain of past Taylor Swift appearances desperately crawling towards the new, darker version only to be dropped to their presumed deaths. The sheer vitriol doesn't help either.
The snakes appear in the Reputation Stadium Tour, and one is a giant mechanical snake with glowing red eyes. If you are going but have a fear of snakes, then good luck.
The beginning of the full "ME!" video (as seen on Taylor's website) begins with a CGI-animated snake crawling around a pastel-covered brick road; at the end the snake again lunges towards the viewer, as in the reputation Tumblr videos, but at that moment, explodes into a sea of butterflies.
Something about "mad woman" is utterly unnerving, especially since it's such a gentle-sounding track with Taylor delivering the extremely angry lyrics in a calm almost-whisper, which arguably makes it even more effective than "Look What You Made Me Do."
There's nothing like a mad woman. What a shame, she went mad. No one likes a mad woman... You made her like that. And you'll poke that bear 'til her claws come out, and you find something to wrap your noose around...
"no body, no crime" is a Murder Ballad, and a very good one at that.
It opens with sirens and the guest singers HAIM whispering, "He did it..." The story itself is unsettling because it's completely plausible. Imagine if your best friend told you she suspected her husband was cheating on her and she was going to confront him, only for her to vanish without a trace soon after. The cops get nowhere, and with no corpse, you can't prove any crime was committed. So you decide to take matters into your own hands.
I've cleaned enough houses to know how to cover up a scene.
Even if the narrator's victim had it coming, she still murders a man in cold blood, gets away with it, and her gloating about this is very unsettling. As she sings, "She thinks I did it but she just can't prove it," you can hear her smiling smugly.
If you subscribe to the theory that "right where you left me" is narrated by Este, the murder victim of "no body, no crime," it becomes both more heartbreaking and rather unnerving, as it's not just about a bad breakup, but a deceased soul trapped in the worst moment of her life forever. "Help, I'm still at the restaurant, still sitting in the corner I haunt" becomes her desperately crying out to the living world around her, begging for someone to notice her and set her free.
You've left me no choice but to stay here forever!
