The call is coming from inside the house in Taylor Swift’s new music video for “Anti-Hero” from her just-released new album Midnights.
The video, written and directed by Swift, appears to be a vulnerable and creative portrayal of her relationship with her inner critic and body image issues.
Opening with Swift running around a house haunted by sunglasses-clad bedsheet ghosts, she attempts to pick up the phone, only to find that it’s been disconnected from the wall. She runs screaming around the vintage-decor bedecked home, only to open the front door to her doppelgänger, who proclaims: “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” The duality of the two Taylors appears to be a representation of the destructive power of one’s inner critic.
There’s Lilliput-esque scenes, where a giant Swift crawls on her hands and knees through a tiny house with tiny humans in it. Perhaps the most powerful moment of the entire video comes when Swift stands on the scales only for the display to show the word “fat” rather than a numerical figure. (Swift spoke out about having an eating disorder and body image issues in the Netflix documentary Miss Americana.)
Viewers will notice a few familiar faces in the video too: Mike Birbiglia, John Early, and Mary Elizabeth Ellis who portray her grown sons and daughter-in-law who are arguing over Swift’s will at her funeral. Dark?
The video was written and directed by Swift, and cinematographer Rina Yang was the video’s director of photography.
As well as being pretty profound, the song is also (predictably) an absolute banger. We’d expect nothing less, of course.
