Taylor Swift’s ‘The Fate of Ophelia’ music video: All the details and Easter Eggs you might have missed

• Taylor Swift released the music video for her new single, “The Fate of Ophelia,” on Sunday.
• The video originally premiered in theaters in “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl.”
• The video includes references to the famous painting “Ophelia,” the Eras Tour, and Travis Kelce.

After giving devoted moviegoing Swifties the first look over the weekend during her movie theater event, “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” Taylor Swift released the music video for the lead single off her album “The Life of a Showgirl” online Sunday night.

As is Swift’s tradition, “The Fate of Ophelia” music video includes plenty of Easter eggs and references to her inspirations and her personal life. Keep reading for a rundown of the key details you might have missed.

The video opens with a reference to famous paintings of Ophelia.

In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” Ophelia drowns either by tragic accident or suicide.

The play does not make Ophelia’s cause of death clear, since it takes place offstage. But for his famous pre-Raphaelite painting, Sir John Everett Millais seemed to take inspiration from Queen Gertrude, who describes Ophelia’s body in the water as “mermaid-like” and “like a creature native and indued unto that element.”

“Ophelia,” which Millais painted in the early 1850s, is on display at the Tate Britain. It’s arguably the most famous depiction of the character.

However, Swift’s dress and pose in the music video more closely resemble Friedrich Wilhelm Theodor Heyser’s painting of Ophelia’s death from 1900.

Another scene includes a loaf of bread, a peach, a string of pearls, an orange bird, and a cat statue.

In a behind-the-scenes clip included in “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” Swift reveals that she baked the loaf of bread that appears in the “Ophelia” music video.

Fans know that Swift is an avid baker and that she enjoys gifting loaves of sourdough to friends. She often labels these gifts with song puns, like “The Fate of Dough-phelia” and “It’s a Loaf Story.”

In the music video, a single peach sits next to the loaf of bread, likely as a nod to lyrics of the album’s title track. In the chorus, Swift adopts the persona of an entertainer named Kitty, whose advice is to avoid the showgirl lifestyle: “You’re sweeter than a peach / But you don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe / And you’re never, ever gonna.”

Alongside the loaf and the peach, a string of pearls also sits on the table. In the bridge of “The Life of a Showgirl,” Swift sings from her own perspective, “I took her pearls of wisdom, hung them from my neck / I paid my dues with every bruise, I knew what to expect.”

The orange bird that perches on Swift’s hand may be a nod to the 2017 “Look What You Made Me Do” music video, which depicts Swift dressed in orange, trapped in a massive bird cage.

This scene also includes a cat statue in the corner that resembles Olivia Benson, one of Swift’s three cats, which she named after the “Law and Order: SVU” detective.

There’s a photo of Travis Kelce in Swift’s dressing room.

Swift got engaged to Travis Kelce, her partner of two years, weeks before “The Life of a Showgirl” was released.

Swift described the video’s concept as “a journey through all these different time periods and different characters.”

Swift embodies a new kind of showgirl in each scene of the “Ophelia” music video, exploring how the title could look different for various icons and entertainers across time.

“You could be a showgirl by being a cabaret burlesque club performer,” Swift explained in her release party film, “you could be a theatrical actor putting on a performance, you could be a Vegas showgirl, you could be one of the girls in the Busby Berkeley screen-siren era of the ’30s and ’40s — you could be a pop singer on the Eras Tour.”

Swift reassembled her Eras Tour crew to costar in the music video.

For those who attended the Eras Tour or watched the concert film, familiar faces will pop up in the “Ophelia” music video: Swift’s dancers, bandmates, and backup singers appear as extras and costars.

Swift said they filmed each scene in a single take to mimic the feeling of performing onstage.

The life ring props are a cheeky nod to Ophelia’s death.

In Shakespeare’s play, Ophelia’s untimely death is the culmination of a tragic series of events in her life, almost entirely caused by men — namely, Hamlet, who used to be in love with her, but ends up shunning Ophelia and killing her father.

In the release party film, Swift confirms that she chose life rings as music video props because Ophelia drowns, joking that a similar buoy would’ve saved her life.

In the song, Swift sings of a different kind of savior (presumably Kelce), who arrives just in time to restore her sanity.

“I just love the idea that like, ‘You saved me from love driving me mad,'” Swift explained on BBC Radio 1.

The clapperboard contains references to Swift’s lyrics and her family.

The “Ophelia” music video uses a film clapperboard to transition from scene to scene, underscoring the theme of Hollywood glitz and show business.

The clapperboard reads, “Sequins are forever,” a lyric from “The Life of a Showgirl.”

It also says “featuring Kitty Finlay,” another reference to the album’s title track. (“Her name was Kitty / Made her money being pretty and witty.”)

Finlay is the surname of Swift’s maternal grandmother, who previously inspired the “Evermore” track “Marjorie.”

Kitty is also the name of Swift’s mom’s dog.

The “Showgirl” tracklist appears in the background.

In one scene, Swift appears wrapped in ropes, apparently belonging to a theatrical rigging system.

Behind Swift, the “Showgirl” tracklist is written on the wall in chalk. You can see “RTF” written under the number six (“Ruin the Friendship”), “AR” written under the number seven (“Actually Romantic”), and so on. The list ends with “TLOAS” written under the number 12 (“The Life of a Showgirl”), perhaps reinforcing Swift’s claim that no deluxe tracks are coming.

The lyric “Sequins are forever” also reappears in this scene, written on a black-and-white poster.

Swift’s pop star outfit recalls the “Lavender Haze” music video.

Swift wears a sparkly minidress and fuzzy jacket in the “Ophelia” music video’s hotel party scene.

The jacket closely resembles one Swift wore in the music video for “Lavender Haze,” a single from the 2022 album “Midnights.”

Swift also wore different versions of the faux-fur jacket during the “Midnights” segment of the Eras Tour.

The chihuahua in a purse is a reference to the album’s seventh track, “Actually Romantic.”

In the brazen kiss-off “Actually Romantic,” which fans theorize was inspired by Charli XCX, Swift sings of her adversary’s insults, “Like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse / That’s how much it hurts.”

Swift catches a football as a clear nod to Kelce.

Swift catches a football as she sings the lyric, “Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes.”

Kelce, Swift’s fiancé, is a star football player for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Swift also walks through a door in the hotel marked with No. 87, the same number on Kelce’s jersey.

The video ends with a recreation of Swift’s album cover.

In the release party film, Swift confirms that the shot of her in a bathtub, partially submerged in water, is a reference to Ophelia’s death.

She also told Kelce and his brother on their podcast, “New Heights,” that the album cover represents her behind-the-scenes routine during the Eras Tour.

“My day ends with me in a bathtub, not usually in a bedazzled dress, but we try to keep it decent, you know?” Swift explained. “I wanted to sort of glamorize all the different aspects of how that tour felt, and that’s how that felt to be at the end of the night, when all this has gone down, you won’t be able to get to bed ’til 4 in the morning after this. But you had to jump through 50 million hoops in this obstacle course that is your show, and you did it. You got two more in a row, but you did it tonight.”

Read the original article on Business Insider

The post Taylor Swift’s ‘The Fate of Ophelia’ music video: All the details and Easter Eggs you might have missed appeared first on Business Insider.