“Look What You Made Me Do”: The Art of the Viral Music Video
Sam Clayton - January 25, 2023
Swift in “Look What You Made Me Do.” Image: TaylorSwiftVEVO.
The music video for Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” was meticulously engineered to break the Internet. Dropped with little warning to initiate Swift’s return to society (and new album, Reputation) after her 2016 Twitter cancellation and one-year hiatus, the song and video controversially put forth a sexier, funnier, bitchier Taylor persona for the public to digest. Though critical and fan reception of the song itself was generally lukewarm, the unforgettably fun music video became its calling card. In the video, Swift attempts to undermine tabloid depictions of her as pop culture’s frigid, two-faced arch-villain by leaning into these narratives with biting humor. The video consists of a series of heightened tableaux featuring sumptuous, Easter Egg-laden mise-en-scène, snappy editing and cinematography, and a fantastically snarky performance from Swift. The video’s textual elements coalesce to create a final product that exemplifies the skyrocketing power of gimmicky, endlessly re-watchable viral music videos in a social media-dominated digital reception context.
Though a handful of fun transitions add to the video’s richness, the key role of editing in this video is to create a strong, conspicuous visual rhythm that locks the viewer into the song’s thumping downbeats—particularly in terms of the lyric “Ooh.” The editing of each chorus follows a particularly interesting pattern. The uncharacteristically apathetic, spoken-word lyrics—which interpolate the rhythm of Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” and accompany a major beat drop—are as follows: “Ooh/Look what you made me do/Look what you made me do/Look what you just made me do, look what you just made me—ooh.” (Maybe not Swift’s strongest lyrics, but I digress). Nearly every time she hits the sarcastic “ooh” downbeat, the editing matches her delivery with a visual twist that shapes the rhythm and highlights key themes. The first “ooh” features an abrupt cut to a slow-motion shot of Swift crashing a gold-plated car into a lamppost. The second, a wide shot of Swift in the wrecked car, dramatically feigning injury for the paparazzi. The first cut signals the genuine darkness and intensity of Swift’s thirst for revenge, while the second is a visual punch line that demonstrates how far Swift’s media-created alter ego is willing to go for attention.
We see this repeated and varied in the next chorus. Just before the beat drops, Swift delivers a tortured variation on the “ooh”: “Ah!” This is paired with a quick, arresting close-up of Swift in a full latex dominatrix outfit, suggestive of a sexual element previously unseen in Swift’s videos. Then, the beat drops into another “ooh” that brings us to a tightly choreographed dance sequence. The next “ooh” is a quick cut to Swift sawing the wing off a golden airplane with a chainsaw. Once again, each “ooh” image offers a strong trademark visual for Swift’s new persona—sexy, fierce, approachably unhinged. Making these key cuts on this lyric is a strong editing choice that highlights Swift’s coyly pissed-off new attitude, clues the viewer into key visual moments in a dense video, and creates thumbnail-like signposts for viral fame. Carefully editing each of these shots directly on the beat is an all-important textual strategy for the video’s success.
Throughout each of the video's twelve settings and presentations of Swift, its mise-en-scène (the physical elements of production design such as set, costuming, and props) retains a sumptuous, unreal, and often absurd nature.The conspicuously fabricated mise-en-scène signals that Swift is presenting an exaggerated caricature of her media portrayal rather than truly re-inventing herself. One exemplary choice occurs in the setting that features Swift sitting atop a golden throne, surrounded by golden CGI snakes.
Swift’s snake-enthroned persona. Image: TaylorSwiftVEVO.
The setting is dark with gleaming gold accents, impossible to place as any location in the real world and instead resembling a theatrical set design. Swift’s styling also has an unreal quality; her sharp acrylic nails, oversized snake jewelry, regal red dress, and slicked-back hairstyle are all strikingly uncommon new choices that position Swift as a fragmented, exaggerated version of herself. The presence of CGI snakes ties the scene together thematically. Swift was infamously branded a “snake” in the press and on social media after an unsavory incident with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West in 2016. In making this scene and most of the others so fantastical, Swift attempts to disavow the “snake” label by highlighting its absurdity. The same process occurs on an even larger scale in the buildup to the second chorus, which takes place in an abstract warehouse and is meant to disavow the popular rumor that Taylor Swift’s elite “squad” of friends was a sham. In an abstract pink warehouse, Swift is presented as a dominatrix/cult leader, brainwashing a legion of glossy female cyborgs into being part of her “squad.” This process is not-so-subtly indicated through large screens in the room that read “Squad U.” Later, Swift is shown laying among the mangled bodies of several cyborgs, cracking her riding crop. Similarly to the snake scene, the outlandishness and unreal quality of the mise-en-scène serves two key functions. It creates enticing visual controversy certain to provoke passionate social media responses while also critiquing allegations against Swift.
A second aspect of the mise-en-scène is Swift’s heavy inclusion of “Easter eggs,” which can be thought of as fan-oriented clues and secret messages regarding Swift’s personal life, public feuds, and previous work. Mise-en-scène is the primary site of Easter eggs, as they are often hidden in the production design, costumes, props, or blocking. Since Easter eggs are a prominent feature of Swift’s marketing campaigns, “Look What You Made Me Do” audiences were primed to pore into its dense mise-en-scène, frame-by-frame, to unearth the coded external references. Of the video’s dozens of Easter eggs, a particularly salient one is a blink-and-you-miss-it reference to Swift’s feud with streaming platforms. During the second verse, the camera zooms in on Swift standing in a cracked-open bank vault, stealing wads of cash. For a brief, blurred moment amidst the camera motion, a stock market ticker that reads “STREAM CO.” is visible in the set design.
Swift’s streaming service heist. Images: TaylorSwiftVevo.
For the discerning fan or critic, the hidden implication is that Swift’s stance at this time was still staunchly anti-streaming service, which would certainly have financial implications for Swift. This element of the mise-en-scène is a clear result of the new digital reception context of music videos, in which viewers can watch any video at any time and replay it to their heart’s content in search of exciting, gossip-y messages.1 Easter eggs induce virality by playing into celebrity intrigue, encouraging repeat viewing, and dropping controversial opinions in an innovative way.
The video’s cinematography privileges Swift in each frame, allowing her to dominate the video both visually and sonically. Each shot of Swift is designed to engage the viewer in the second person as the titular “you.” Swift addresses the camera directly and is always centered in the frame across a variety of shot types, angles, and frame rates. This is particularly salient in the climactic scene featuring the “real,” narrating Swift standing regally atop a writhing CGI mountain of her past selves, backlit by an enormous, crucifix-like “T.”
Swift atop her mountain of past personas. Images: TaylorSwiftVEVO.
This “real” Swift is differentiated from her caricatured past selves through the cinematography. She is shown in a tight close up that pulls out to an extreme wide view of the Taylor Mountain, and remains privileged in the frame. Another shot swoops down from above her shoulder, giving the audience an almost bird’s eye view of the real Taylor looking down upon her past selves. Twisting dynamic shots that go a bit wider highlight Swift’s powerful physical gestures. A close-up slow-motion shot heightens the visual experience for Swift’s delivery of the song’s climactic line: “I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams!”, followed by an extreme wide that shows the full scene. Through this sequence, which features brief cuts to past versions of Swift, the “real” Swift is framed and lit to appear absolutely dominant in the frame, and key lyrics are highlighted by close-ups and dynamic pans. The viewer is always addressed directly, Swift is singularly shown as the powerful figure, and the viewing experience becomes heightened and interactive.
The thread linking each of these elements together is Swift’s highly stylized performance as various stock villains and versions of herself. Swift commits fully to each characterization, anchoring the rapid, rhythmic editing, unreal mise-en-scène, and Swift-centric cinematography in a pervasive feeling of bitter humor. The performance is snarky and sexualized, but also goofy and heightened enough to signal that this is only an exaggeration of the real Swift. We see this tension in the coda to the music video, in which all of the versions of Swift line up, take bows, and sarcastically criticize each other. “Uh–I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative,” says 2009 Taylor, directly quoting herself in the aftermath of her first altercation with Kanye West at the VMA awards. “Shut up!” the rest of the Taylors reply.
Lineup of Swift’s former versions. Image: TaylorSwiftVEVO.
Swift showcases an ability to laugh at herself and demonstrates that she has a range of dubiously “real” personas. Notably, the video approaches NSFW territory, but never quite embraces it fully; it contains veiled criticisms of Swift’s enemies, but keeps things vague enough to prevent wider controversy; Swift sometimes appears threatening, but it’s all with a sexy wink. It’s a strategic career move meant to allow Swift to make a memorable online splash without damaging her public image too irreparably. It’s a work of marketing genius, provoking a viral response through controversy without permanently damaging Swift’s career.
The video's attention-grabbing formal techniques and themes fit neatly into the music video analyses of Steven Shaviro and Matthias Korsgaard, particularly concerning the subgenre of the "controversial" music video. Korsgaard notes the important “role of controversial content as a commercial attribute within the infinite stream of music videos online,” and continues that the “arguably ‘controversial’ nature of such a video is highly calculated as a strategy for speaking to and for a fan base that is attuned to the political values on display”.2 Though “Look What You Made Me Do” was not particularly political, it still attempted to tap into pop culture debate in order to cash in on views and make Swift digitally ubiquitous. Its formal elements, which work to present a rather radical new vision of Swift, were orchestrated to invite this kind of controversy and mass viewing. Shaviro’s analysis further expands on this notion of music videos as primarily profit-seeking. He writes that one of the key purposes of digital music videos is “contributing to the larger-than-life, transmedia personas of their performers”.3 “Look What You Made Me Do” offered a new vision of Taylor Swift and an unexpected reclamation of her criticism, but it was coolly calculated. We can see this at the level of the video’s construction: though Swift’s performance is unhinged and riled-up, every shot is meticulously arranged, every facet of the set design is intentional, every outfit is perfect, and every cut adds to the visual stimulation.
The “Look What You Made Me Do” video has amassed over a billion views on YouTube, spawned dozens of think pieces and listicles about Swift’s messaging, and brought the song to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Swift’s comeback from her mysterious hiatus was a memorable splash. For a few days, Twitter was aflame. But of course, the long-term relevance of a video designed to shine brightly and burn out quickly is relatively negligible. The song was not nearly one of Swift’s strongest, and it’s still certainly not a fan favorite. Swift has moved on to new aesthetics, new sounds, and new feuds, to the point where some of the video’s references would be illegible to newer fans. Since the Reputation era, Swift has released four new original albums, begun re-recording her old music, and reinvented herself several times—and will undoubtedly do it again. All of this is to say that creating a music video with the singular goal of generating viral fame may come at the cost of long-term cultural staying power and artistic merit.
1. Mathias Bonde Korsgaard, “Changing Dynamics and Diversity in Music Video Production and Distribution,” in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Video Analysis, ed. Lori Anne Burns and Stan Hawkins (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 23.
2. Korsgaard, “Changing Dynamics and Diversity in Music Video Production and Distribution,” 23.
3. Steven Shaviro, Digital Music Videos (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2017), 7.
Bibliography:
Korsgaard, Mathias Bonde. “Changing Dynamics and Diversity in Music Video Production and Distribution.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Video Analysis, edited by Lori Anne Burns and Stan Hawkins, 13–26. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Shaviro, Steven. Digital Music Videos. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2017.
