Taylor Swift‘s “The Fate of Ophelia” music video is now streaming on YouTube, following an exclusive early release to movie theaters in the U.S. on Friday (Oct. 3).
Written and directed by Swift herself, the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” made it online Sunday night (Oct. 5). The reference-filled visual has the pop star playing several parts, or showing several sides — among them the once ill-fated Ophelia of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the lead in a Golden Age Hollywood movie musical, a frontwoman to a 1960s girl group, and the modern Swift showgirl that audiences know and love.
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Of course, Swift’s single imagines an Ophelia who makes her way out of a destined tragic ending.
In the accompanying music video (seen below), Swift crawls out of an on-set version of a Sir John Everett Millais painting circa the 1850s that famously depicts Ophelia’s drowning. She performs different iterations of a “Fate of Ophelia” show — in homage to the likenesses of Marilyn Monroe in one scene and Ronnie Spector/The Ronettes in another, and center soundstage in an Anything Goes-inspired ensemble — and ends up soaking in her bathtub by the clip’s end. She’s presumably exhausted after playing all the parts, but still quite alive.
“The Fate of Ophelia” music video wraps with the image that became the official album cover for Swift’s newly released The Life of a Showgirl.
Earlier on Sunday, Swift’s team posted a short interview clip that has the singer-songwriter explaining how the album art came to be.
“There was this moment in the photo shoot [with photographers Mert Alaş and Marcus Piggott] right at the end of the day, the last setup, I’m in this bathtub in this bedazzled dress,” she said. “They take my picture. I see it on the monitor. I see it pop up. Even though it was at the weirdest angle, and I’m in the bathtub, I’m just like, ‘That’s the cover.’ And it was.”
She added, “I went and looked at the picture like, ‘Yeah. That’s it.’ I think it represents to me that you’ve done all this work, you’ve done a three-and-a-half hour show, you’ve done the lead-up to it, you’ve done the warm-ups, you’ve gotten through it. Anything that could’ve gone wrong, you sidestepped. You finally get back, what do you do? You take a bath.”
“That’s what I do in those situations,” she said. “It’s like that moment of relaxation. That moment the cameras are down, the lights are off. What do you have to say? What’s your story? Who are you then? That’s really the story of this album.”
Opening-day album sales for The Life of a Showgirl, as reported by data tracking firm Luminate, reached 2.7 million on its first day of release (Oct. 3). That tally counts traditional album sales (physical and digital purchases) across all versions of the album. It marks Swift’s biggest week ever, and the second-largest sales week for any album since Luminate began electronically tracking data in 1991; Adele currently holds the largest sales week with 25. Further news of Showgirl‘s first-week building sales and streaming activity will be available in the coming days.
“The Fate of Ophelia” music video was first shown in theaters as part of The Release Party of a Showgirl, Swift’s theatrical event that opened at No. 1 at the box office this weekend. The screening featured the music video premiere and behind-the-scenes footage from making it, plus Swift’s commentary on all 12 songs from The Life of a Showgirl and a first viewing of each track’s lyric video. It also revealed an unexpected co-star appearing in “The Fate of Ophelia” video: a loaf of Swift’s homemade sourdough bread.
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