Watch Taylor Swift’s New Music Video for ‘Anti-Hero,’ the Lead Single from ‘Midnights’

Written and directed by Taylor Swift, the “Anti-Hero” music video represents her nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts.

by:
Jackie Kolgraf
October 21, 2022

As promised, Taylor Swift‘s music video for “Anti-Hero” — the lead single from her tenth studio album, Midnights — arrived at 8am ET this morning.

According to Taylor, the 13 tracks on Midnights represent the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout her life. In “Anti-Hero,” she sings that midnights become her afternoons when her “depression works the graveyard shift.” The music video, which Taylor wrote and directed, represents “my nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts [playing] out in real time,” she tweeted.

The video begins with Taylor running from (cute but scary) ghosts in her home before opening her front door to face another version of herself as she sings, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” They take shots with each other on the coffee table. This “intrusive thoughts Taylor” smashes Taylor’s blue guitar, convinces her that everyone will betray her, and even shames her for her weight. “Real Taylor” vomits in “intrusive thoughts Taylor’s” lap.


Related: Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’ Lawsuit, Explained


About halfway through the video, the music stops and we’re introduced to Taylor’s grown sons and daughter-in-law, played by Mike Birbiglia, John Early and Mary Elizabeth Ellis, respectively. They’re attending Taylor’s funeral, where they find out she’s only left them each $0.13 and her beach house is to become a cat sanctuary. The lyrics go:

I have this dream my daughter-in-law kills me for the money
She thinks I left them in the will
The family gathers ’round and reads it
And then someone screams out
“She’s laughing up at us from hell!”

Convinced Taylor must have left a secret encoded message in the will (poking fun at her own penchant for Easter eggs), the family continues reading. The will ends, “P.S. There is no secret encoded message that means something else. Love, Taylor.”

Watch and Listen

Watch the video below to explore Taylor’s take on her own intrusive thoughts, and listen to “Anti-Hero” on SiriusXM Hits 1 (Ch. 2).

Hits 1 Exclusive

In a SiriusXM Hits 1 exclusive, Taylor answered the fan question, “What drew you to the concept of creating an album based on sleepless nights of the past?”

“I think that I’ve always been fascinated with sleeplessness,” she explained. “My fans have pointed out over the years that I constantly am writing about 2am, you know, middle of the night, things like that, because I think that it’s just such a vulnerable, isolated time. It’s a time when I’ve written a lot of my songs. It’s a time when the catharsis of songwriting has helped me the most.”

Another Midnights music video will drop just next week on October 25 at — you guessed it — midnight.



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