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.”
When I was writing the Fortnight 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. For me, this video turned out to be… pic.twitter/TLaUg9jEoo
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 20, 2024
“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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“The first single from The Tortured Poets Department is…………. Fortnight,” Swift told her fans on Instagram Thursday afternoon. “I’ve been such a huge fan of Post because of the writer he is, his musical experimentation and those melodies he creates that just stick in your head forever. I got to witness that magic come to life firsthand when we worked together.”
Swift first announced “The Tortured Poets Department” in her acceptance speech for best pop vocal album at the Grammy Awards — marking a swerve from what many fans expected would be a reveal of “Reputation,” one of the last two remaining albums in her “Taylor’s Version” re-recording project. Pre-order links promptly went up on Swift’s official website and socials.
In PvNew’s review of “The Tortured Poets Department,” senior music writer and chief music critic Chris Willman wrote that Swift’s latest “feels like it comes the closest of any of her 11 original albums to just drilling a tube directly into her brain and letting listeners mainline what comes out” and hailing it as “bracing, and wounded, and cocky, and — not to be undervalued in this age — handmade.”
Swift also surprised fans (and media members) by announcing that “The Tortured Poets Department” was a secret double album, releasing 15 extra songs in the early a.m. to make the event release that much more eventful. The artist also broke Spotify records on release day, with the album becoming the first-ever to reach 200 million streams within 24 hours.
Watch the “Fortnight” music video here.
