Taylor Swift welcomed fans to “The Tortured Poets Department” Friday evening, debuting a music video for “Fortnight,” her first single off of her new album.
The music video features the singer-songwriter and Post Malone, who features on the single, cast as ex-lovers who, per the lyrics, carried on an affair that only lasted 14 days. Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles, who starred in “Dead Poets Society,” also make surprise cameos as a pair of scientists carrying out tests on Swift, who overpowers the heavy machinery and sends it into electric crackling. Intertitles evocative of silent cinema bookend the 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 metaphor or a reference to one corner of the album or another,” Swift wrote in a statement on social media timed to the music video release. “For me, this video turned out to be the perfect visual representation of this record and the stories I tell in it. Post Malone blew me away on set as our tortured tragic hero and I’m so grateful to him for everything he put into this collaboration.”
“Fortnight” had been heavily teased as the first music video off of “The Tortured Poets Department,” though Swift only formally announced its debut shortly before the new album dropped Friday at midnight.
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