On Sunday night, Taylor Swift won the prize for female artist of the year at the iHeartRadio Music Awards. She wasn’t there to accept in person, which is no surprise — the pop megastar has been mostly out of the public view for many months.
“Hey, guys, I just wanted to say thank you so much for this award,” Swift said to the audience in a pretaped video, explaining she couldn’t attend because she is in rehearsals for her upcoming world tour. “But in my absence and to show my gratitude, I really wanted to show you my brand-new video for my new single, ‘Delicate.’ ”
“Delicate,” the fourth single from her latest album, “Reputation,” is Swift’s most direct song about her . . . well, reputation, which has suffered over the past 18 months or so, after much-dissected feuds and relationships and people’s frustration with her refusal to speak out about current events. As Swift explained to fans at a private event last fall, “Delicate” — about stressing over a new crush — explores the question: “What happens when you meet somebody that you really want in your life and then you start worrying about what they’ve heard before they met you?” (Sample lyric: “My reputation’s never been worse, so you must like me for me.”)
So it’s fitting that the video may offer a clue as to why Swift has recently shunned the spotlight. Aside from a handful of brief concert appearances around the holidays, Swift has gone underground. She’s avoided the media and gave zero interviews to promote “Reputation” when it dropped in November. While unnamed “sources” assure the tabloids that she’s doing quite well with her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, they’re rarely seen in public together. Her social media used to be filled with pictures of her BFF “squad,” but she wiped all of her accounts clean last year and now uses them only for album promotion.
In that sense, the opening of the “Delicate” video is jarring because it’s an image of Swift no one has seen in awhile: She’s on the red carpet. In the first scene, Swift has a glazed expression as she gazes off in the distance. She quickly snaps out it as reporters shove microphones at her and dozens of camera lights flash in her face. In the chaos, a mysterious figure slips Swift a small piece of paper. This will become important later.
Next, Swift walks into a fancy hotel lobby. Everyone turns and stares as she walks by, surrounded by four bodyguards. Swift stops and tries to take a selfie with fans, except a crazed bellhop tries to grab her. Security intervenes. Rolling her eyes, Swift walks away in the middle of her security team, as they shadow…
