Taylor Swift's 'Fortnight' music video has a surprise 'Dead Poets Society' cameo: Watch
The opening chapter to "The Tortured Poets Department" is complete. And it's brought more clues for Swifties to decipher.
Taylor Swift released the music video for "Fortnight," her collaboration with Post Malone and the first single from her already record-breaking new album.
The four-minute video keeps a monochromatic color scheme, with Swift opening the video wearing a dress similar to the white thigh-high slit gown she wore to this year's Grammys. She's on a hospital bed in a topsy turvy room and a faceless person comes to give Swift her “Forget Him” pill. As she wipes her face clean with a towel, tattoos appear (the same ones Malone has in real life).
The only colors appear as Swift and Malone sit at typewriters, spilling their hearts onto the page and igniting auras of peach and blue that burn as they meet. Swift looks at a book with permanent marker that says “US” as a youthful reference to Swift’s “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” song “Story of Us.” The silhouette of Swift's head in the zoomed out camera shot overlooking the couple at 1:58 is a nod to the effect used in her "Style" music video from the "1989" era.
After a brief love affair, in which Malone tenderly cups Swift's face in his hands, Swift is whisked to a Frankenstein-style laboratory. Actors Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles (in a “Dead Poets Society” crossover) are doctors as a black dog (the name of a "TTPD" track) runs through the room. If acting great Robin Williams were still alive, there's no doubt he would have joined the men in their laboratory coats.
In the last scene we see Post Malone calling from a phone booth that Swift is on top of in the pouring thunderstorm rain. At the end he comes out of the booth and grabs her hand. They’re on top of a cliff isolated from society. “The End!” is another nod to “Story of Us,” in a more mature but similar themed wrapping of her previous work.
The 'Fortnight' Challenge
Swift shared a 14 day recap on YouTube Shorts showing videos of her making dinner with Travis Kelce, exercising, sewing, signing notes, frosting cinnamon rolls, sporting a Kansas University sweatshirt, zooming in on her cat Benjamin Button, capturing the "Garden Rhapsody" lights in Singapore, playing pickleball with a Kansas City Chiefs paddle, blowing out a bubble-smoked cocktail, toasting on a yacht and showing some behind-the-scenes picks from the "Tortured Poets" music video. In the caption, Swift encouraged fans to share their "fortnight" recap with #ForAFortnightChallenge.
What is 'Fortnight' about?
The haunting melody about a suburban wife who lives next door to a married man she longs for. The two shared a fortnight of embraces, but even the “good neighbor” pleasantries wear off and Swift’s character flees to “Florida!!!”
Post Malone sings backup harmonies until the end of the song. His smooth vocals come in for a last verse. He’s calling, but Swift’s character won’t pick up. She’s calling, and he won’t pick up. Wires crossed, she escapes in a getaway car to the state she sings about in Track 8.
“Florida!!!” is a song about escaping a toxic relationship in Texas to get lost in drugs and fantasies of being taken out by a hurricane in Destin, Florida. Swift collaborates with Florence Welch from Florence + The Machine.
What has Taylor Swift said about 'Fortnight'?
On Thursday, ahead of the album, Swift posted on Instagram that the first track would be the first single. "I’ve been such a huge fan of Post because of the writer he is, his musical experimentation and those melodies he creates that just stick in your head forever. I got to witness that magic come to life firsthand when we worked together on Fortnight."
On Friday, she posted, "I was writing the Fortnight music video, I wanted to show you the worlds I saw in my head that served as the backdrop for making this music. Pretty much everything in it is a reference to one corner of the album or another."
“I’m still laughing with getting to work with the coolest guys on earth, Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles (tortured poets, meet your colleagues from down the hall, the dead poets),” she wrote on Instagram.
Contributing: Jennifer McClellan, USA TODAY
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Taylor Swift's 'Fortnight' music video has a surprise cameo: Watch