Nobody Warned You About Her

There was a period when you weren’t supposed to like Taylor Swift—when she was still the safe, unthreatening country blonde singing about fairytales, and the culturally approved position was vague condescension. That’s over. Shake It Off was the line in the sand, and if you crossed it still unmoved, something is wrong with your receptors.

The Bad Blood video is maximalist even by her standards: spy-film aesthetics, a cast of about fifteen recognizable faces—Kendrick Lamar, Cara Delevingne, Hayley Williams, Zendaya, Gigi Hadid, Ellie Goulding, Lena Dunham, Jessica Alba, Karlie Kloss, Selena Gomez, and several others—all running through an empty office building looking dangerous in impractical footwear. The spy-action music video has been done to death, and Swift knows it, which is why she leans into the self-awareness hard enough that it loops back around into something genuinely enjoyable. Also Selena Gomez is in it, which improves almost anything.

The song is going to follow you into every car, every elevator, and every waiting room for the next year regardless of your preferences, so you might as well make your peace with it now. I already have.