Taylor Swift released a music video for “Elizabeth Taylor” Tuesday morning, putting visuals to her salute to one of the most recognizable and vibrant screen stars of the 20th century.
In contrast to high-concept productions like her recent video for “Opalite,” Swift has not cast herself in the video for “Elizabeth Taylor,” but rather has assembled a clip job featuring a supercut of scenes from the late actress’ movies, along with bits of newsreel footage of Taylor seen in the public eye in real life. The clips include shots from films including “Cleopatra,” “Father of the Bride,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “A Place in the Sun,” “Giant,” “Suddenly, Last Summer,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “Julia Misbehaves” and even the late ’60s cult favorite “Boom!”
For now, the music video is only available on Apple Music and the premium Spotify level, as happened with the February premiere for the “Opalite” video. (A link to the video on those two services can be found here.) Having it premiere exclusively on those premium apps would seem to be a reflection of recent changes to the Billboard charts that only allow videos on paid services to count toward streaming totals. But in the case of “Opalite,” the video made it to YouTube’s free tier two days later, so the same may hold true with “Elizabeth Taylor.”
YouTube did get a new, more generic visualizer that simply shows the cover art for the single, which is coming out as a 7-inch vinyl in April for Record Store Day. YouTube also is now streaming a “So Glamorous Cabaret” version with just piano accompaniment that was previously a part of exclusive, limited album or single variants.
When the album “The Life of a Showgirl” came out in October, Swift revealed that she had asked permission from the estate of Taylor, who died in 2011 at age 73, to put the song out. Her remark came in response to a question about whether she asked permission from her subjects to write about them. She does “if they’re real people,” she said, “and if it’s Elizabeth Taylor, we go to their family and her estate and let them know and they were lovely about it.”
Lyrics in the song include clear references to Taylor’s life and style, and also some more obscure Easter-egg-type reference. “I’ll cry my eyes violet” refers to the eye color that entranced hundreds of millions, while “All my white diamonds and lovers are forever” is a call-out to Taylor’s fragrance line, White Diamonds. The song also references some of Taylor’s favorite places, including Portofino, Italy and the Plaza Athanee hotel in Paris.
On “The Elvis Duran Show,” Swift said of the song, “”In this record, there’s a song called ‘Elizabeth Taylor,’ which is sort of my emotions and my issues with fame through the lens of cosplaying the life of Elizabeth Taylor, so you kind of meld the two experiences together. She is always someone that I’ve looked up to as being this very glamorous, very beloved, but for some reason a polarizing figure, which I found myself in that place, too.”
In a TikTok video, Swift talked about the origins of the song. “My parents sent me this clip of Elizabeth Taylor’s son saying something very flattering, that if there were one person he might compare to his mother in the modern day, in terms of persona and…the chaos around us, he said it would be me. I was so flattered by that. I just immediately started talking to Travis (Kelce) about it. I was going on and on about Elizabeth Taylor, talking about all the things about her that I loved… how she kept challenging herself late into her life. I had to get out of the car. I was like, ‘One sec, I have to get out of the car for a second,’ and I just sang this melody into my phone, got back in the car and… that’s what it’s like when it happens.”
Swift may have been referring to a 2024 interview Taylor’s son, Christopher Wilding, did with the Guardian, in which he said, “I can’t tell you how much I admire Taylor Swift. I’m now a Swifty. [Her Instagram post] at the end of that presidential debate was so f—ing great. Huge props to her. That reminds me a little bit of the same spirit my mom had.”
The music video’s end-title scroll includes a thank you to House of Taylor & the Elizabeth Taylor Trust, the Todd family and the Wilding family.
“My family loves the song, and grandma would have loved it too — I wish she could have heard it,” said Quinn Tivey, Taylor’s grandson, who is a trustee of her estate, after the song first came out. “Taylor Swift not only made a beautiful homage to Elizabeth Taylor, but it feels like she is addressing her directly while invoking her legacy in a way that is dimensional, confessional, honest, and fun. It dances across the trappings of fame and the rollercoaster of falling in love and has so many heartfelt references, from the iconic perfume White Diamonds to her jewelry and, of course, her love of love.”
“Elizabeth Taylor” marked the second time Swift referred to the actress in song. The first came in “…Ready for It?,” the lead-off track to her 2017 album “Reputation,” which included the lyrics, “”And he can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor / Every love I’ve known in comparison is a failure.”
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