Taylor Swift has shared the official music video for her ‘Midnights’ cut ‘Lavender Haze’, paying homage to the purple shade with dreamy visuals.
The singer shared a teaser for the track’s accompanying clip on social media yesterday (January 26), writing: “Meet me at midnight… for the Lavender Haze music video premiere (!!!!!!!!!!!!!)”.
Now, her self-directed video has arrived, featuring Swift in an array of purple-hued settings. These include dancing in violet smoke at a house party, swimming in a milky, lilac bath, floating on a cloud in a twinkling koi fish galaxy and crawling through wildflowers in her living room.
The clip also features a cameo from Laith Ashley De La Cruz, a transgender activist and actor, who plays Swift’s love interest. Watch it below.
It’s the third track off ‘Midnights’ to receive the music video treatment, following the clips for ‘Anti-Hero’ and ‘Bejeweled’ last year. The latter of the two featured Swift as Cinderella, with cameos from Laura Dern, the Haim sisters, Jack Antonoff, makeup artist Pat McGrath and model Dita Von Teese.
Upon the release of ‘Midnights’, Swift revealed that she’d created a series of “music movies” to accompany the record and that it would be a visual album. She shared a teaser trailer showing snippets of the videos to come, with other guest stars to include Mary Elizabeth Ellis, John Early and Mike Birbiglia.
The videos for ‘Midnights’ were created with cinematographer Rina Yang, who filmed Swift’s All Too Well short film from last year’s ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’. Starring Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) and Dylan O’Brien (The Maze Runner), it premiered in Manhattan before Swift then took it to New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, saying: “it would be fantastic to write and direct a feature”.
“I love storytelling, I love songwriting, I love writing videos, I love directing them,” Swift told The Hollywood Reporter last October. “I’m really proud of what we made and I really hope you like them.”
Speaking about ‘Midnights’ in a four-star review, NME‘s Hannah Mylrea wrote: “After a foray into a different sonic world, on Swift’s return to pure pop she still shimmers.”
Earlier this month, Swift surprised fans by appearing at The 1975‘s London show, where she gave a live debut of ‘Anti-Hero’ and covered the band’s own song ‘The City’. The outfit brought another musical guest along for their Newcastle show, Lewis Capaldi, who paid homage to their previous guest with a cover of Swift’s ‘Love Story’.