The best Taylor Swift music videos are the persona-defining ones, the videos that perfectly capture the imagery, drama and prevailing emotions of the specific Swiftian era in which they’re set.
In her earliest videos, she’s a Nashville debutante who’s made up to appear twice hear age (Picture to Burn) or lounging in a cornfield in a youthful fantasy (Tim McGraw). In her Fearless-era videos, she’s the princess waiting to be rescued from her royal estate (Love Story) or her high school (You Belong With Me), usually while wearing some kind of white dress. Her Red album arrived in a whirlwind of youthful drama, vividly depicted in 22‘s blissful dance parties and I Knew You Were Trouble‘s dive bar brawls. Then came the big-budget productions of her high-gloss 1989 era, the best of which is Blank Space, which winked at Swift’s jilted-girlfriend public image by casting her as a deranged man-eating debutante.
With her new Delicate video, released during Sunday night’s iHeartRadio Music awards, Swift has finally gifted fans the first of such videos from her Reputation era. It sees Swift, surrounded by cameras and onlookers, receiving a mysterious note that renders her invisible, leaving her free to dance around an unidentified…
