Yahoo Lifestyle Ethan Hawke and Post Malone experiment on Taylor Swift's mind in surreal 'Fortnight' music video
The first video for her new album, "The Tortured Poets Department," was directed by the Chairman herself.
"Fresh Out the Slammer"? In Taylor Swift's video for "Fortnight," it's more like fresh out the asylum.
The visual, which the singer wrote and directed, stars her and the track's featured artist, Post Malone, and shows Swift in what looks like an asylum. She is shown chained to a bed and being forced to take pills in the surreal video, which is shot like an old-timey silent film, title cards and all. Then from the asylum into the Tortured Poets Department she goes, where she encounters Post Malone, and the two share a melding of the minds.
It also features Swift and Post Malone swapping tattoos — at one point she wipes her clean face to reveal what looks like his tattoos on her visage, and later in the video he is shown briefly without them. We see some sweet memories between the two: her running to him and them embracing.
Back at the asylum, Dead Poet Society costars Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles make surprise appearances as mad scientists doing experiments on Swift, as Post Malone watches from the side in a scene that feels like something out of Poor Things.
"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," Swift explained in a follow-up Instagram post. "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 the perfect visual representation of this record and the stories I tell in it."
She continued, "@Postmalone blew me away on set as our tortured tragic hero and I’m so grateful to him for everything he put into this collaboration. I’m still laughing from getting to work with the coolest guys on earth, @ethanhawke and @mrjoshcharles (tortured poets, meet your colleagues from down the hall, the dead poets). I still can’t believe I get to work with the unfathomably brilliant @rpstam on cinematography."
Hawke and Charles took to their own Instagram accounts to celebrate the collaboration and its ties to the 1989 film (yes, that's yet another 1989 connection for Swift!).
"'Todd' & 'Knox' from DEAD POETS SOCIETY are now PhDs in THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. It’s quite an honor," Hawke wrote. "Thank you @taylorswift for the opportunity to be in the music video for your song FORTNIGHT feat. @postmalone. carpe diem!"
"I’ve admired Taylor for a long time, but meeting her in person took my fandom to a whole new level," Charles wrote in his own post. "Genuine, kind, approachable, and just an all around stellar human being - Not to mention a kick ass director to boot!"
Shortly after the music video went live, Swift shared her #ForaFortnightChallenge YouTube short, which features behind-the-scenes glimpses of the making of the video, including a color version of her tattoos and a sweet snap of her and Hawke making silly poses. It also boasts homemade cinnamon rolls and cameos from her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and Swift's cats being goofs.
"Fortnight" is the first track on Swift's just-released 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, and also its first single.
In a social media post announcing it, Swift said of her collaborator, "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 on 'Fortnight.'"
During the iHeartRadio Album Premiere Special With Taylor Swift on Friday, the songstress explained that the song features a lot of the themes that define the album — fatalism, longing, pining, and lost dreams. "I think it’s a very fatalistic album in that there are lots of very dramatic lines about, you know, life or death and I love you, it’s ruining my life," she said. "These are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say. But it’s that kind of album — it’s about a dramatic, artistic, tragic kind of take on love and loss."
She added that she always imagined the song taking place in a town where the narrator's American Dream didn't pan out the way they thought it would. "You ended up not with the person you loved, and now you have to just live with that every day, wondering what would've been, maybe seeing them out," Swift said. "And that's a pretty tragic concept, really. So I was just writing from that perspective."
The Tortured Poets Department is out now. Watch the full "Fortnight" music video above.
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