Being a huge fan of Taylor Swift, you can imagine my excitement over her debuting the music video for her new single, Bad Bloods. My anticipation was likely heightened due to how much I enjoy the song itself; every time it popped up on my iTunes Radio Top 50 Pop station, I couldn’t help but get giddy and/or dance. It’s a shame then that this music video is just so incoherent. I mean, what the hell just happened here?
Right off the bat, I knew something was rotten in the state of Denmark by the addition of rapping, done by Kendrick Lamar. It’s not entirely unexpected for songs to add verses of rapping once they transition over to the pop music station, the problem is the lyrics added to the song by way of this musical approach just aren’t that interesting. A major part of Swifts appeal as an artist is the fact that the lyrics for her songs typically resonate on an emotional level, whereas the verses Lamar delivers are just supremely generic.
Meanwhile, there’s the video itself, a hodgepodge of various genres that doesn’t really make sense from a story perspective. We start off with Swift as an assassin being betrayed by a comrade in arms, a fine way to visually represent the lyrical content dealing with hurt over duplicity. The problem is that, after this opening, a random assortment of sequences occur that don’t have much of a connection to each other. It’s as if the creators of this video came up with the idea of a snow-set fight scene or Swift duking it out in a boxing ring and tried to create a music video centered around those concepts.
Credit where credit is due though, the music video is a visual treat. These guys and gals have obviously done research into the intricate visual mechanics of the various types of films (boxing, sci-fi, action, etc.) they’re recreating, and it helps the sequences spent in the various environments the numerous guest stars encounter feel authentic. Speaking of those guest stars, despite the lengthy social media promotion Swift gave to the various celebrities (like Cindy Crawford and Hailee Steinfeld), they really don’t leave much an impression here, despite some of the actors popping up here having extensive amounts of talent.
Taylor Swift is responsible for so many pieces of high quality music, and the original version of Bad Blood is certainly part of that group. The music video? Ehhhhh, not so much. There just needed to be more cohesiveness in this music video, because there’s certainly the visual splendor and the talent in the actors cameoing to at least make something memorable. Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes, and they’re certainly not gonna fix this mess of a music video.