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Taylor Swift has debuted the first music video for her polarising new album.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The US pop star, 35, dropped a \u201cjaw-dropping\u201d film clip for The Fate of Ophelia<\/i> \u2013 the lead single on her twelfth studio album The Life Of A Showgirl,<\/i> which lobbed to a mixed reaction on Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n In possibly her most experimental and visually breathtaking shoot to date, Swift \u2013 who also directed the video<\/a> \u2013 is seen taking on the titular doomed 16th century character who is driven mad by love in William Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet.<\/i><\/p>\n MORE: Inside Taylor Swift\u2019s $230m property empire<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n Opening with Swift laying in a pond in a vintage white gown and lengthy blonde hair, the forest set backdrop is pulled apart as her character then transitions into a Marilyn Monroe-esque look, entering a dressing room before hitting the stage in various iterations of her bedazzling showgirl persona.<\/p>\n In a sophisticated video leaning heavily on stylish production, Swift dons up to a dozen showgirl-inspired looks in a theatre setting, before the music video ends on Swift laying idle in a bathtub, per the album\u2019s cover imagery.<\/p>\n Swifties have flooded the comment section during the video\u2019s YouTube debut, with dozens dubbing it her best music video to date.<\/p>\n \u201cI just LOVE the storytelling! One of Taylor\u2019s best music videos ever, it\u2019s such a great production,\u201d one wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cYall, it is JAW DROPPING AND AMAZING,\u201d another said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is 100% one of her best ones ever,\u201d a third added.<\/p>\n A fourth wrote, \u201cArt in motion, visually stunning and captivating.\u201d<\/p>\n Swift previously explained the inspiration for the song, saying she wanted to rewrite Ophelia\u2019s tragic fate and create her own ending.<\/p>\n \u201cI just have this fixation on Shakespeare characters that I fall in love with and I can\u2019t stand to see them meet a tragic demise,\u201d she told Hits Radio UK. <\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t. I don\u2019t want that to be what happened to them.<\/p>\n \u201cKind of going back to the song Love Story<\/i>, which I wrote when I was a teenager, I was just like, \u2018I can\u2019t watch Romeo and Juliet not work out. What do you mean they both die?\u2019 They don\u2019t in my version of things \u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a little bit like that, where The Fate of Ophelia<\/i> talks about how, you know, Ophelia was driven mad by love. The hook says, \u2018You dug me out of my grave and saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia.\u2019 So it\u2019s a love song.\u201d<\/p>\n Commercially, the 12-track album has proved a runaway success. The Fate of Ophelia<\/i> broke the single-day streaming record for a song on Spotify, breaking her own record set by 2024\u2019s Fortnight,<\/i> the latter of which had 25 million streams in a day.<\/p>\n The Life of a Showgirl<\/i> also registered the highest single-day sales in US history with 2.7 million copies sold.<\/p>\n But unlike her last few albums, which have been largely critically acclaimed, Swift has generated a deeply mixed reaction to her latest release, which she earlier announced on fiance Travis Kelce\u2019s New Heights<\/i> podcast in August.<\/p>\n Critics have described some of the lyrics as \u201ccringe\u201d, particularly after the mastery of 2020\u2019s folklore<\/i>, with further complaints the melodies were largely forgettable following Swift\u2019s promise the music was all \u201cbangers\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n After that bold declaration, many were anticipating a reimagined version of 1989<\/i>, Swift\u2019s 2014 album littered with a flurry of enduring earworms from Blank Space<\/i> to Style<\/i> and Wildest Dreams.<\/i><\/p>\n In one of the most damning reviews, The Guardian<\/a><\/i>\u2019s Alexis Petridis found there were a \u201cdistinct lack of undeniable hooks and nailed-on melodies. The songs are well turned, but in terms of genuinely memorable moments, Showgirl<\/i> evinces just one killer chorus (Elizabeth Taylor)<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n