Ever since Sixth Form I have had a love for music videos. For my A Levels I had to create one and since then I have loved watching/creating/and critiquing. What I love is how you can create a whole story in a few minutes and it can evoke so much emotion from your audience.

On Instagram I have been following Taylor Swift for a while now. She has always been one of those women I look up to as she is so fierce and sure of herself. From following her for the last few weeks all she has posted about has been the Bad Blood music video, thus creating a lot of hype around it. You could tell this video would be huge because even twitter created a new emoji hashtag for it!

So I sat down with my ‘media head’ on and watched the video. Thankfully, all the hype wasn’t for nothing and I absolutely loved the video!

Starting with the song, what I found odd was that it wasn’t the song that was on the album. (the only version of the song I had heard) So, when I heard Kendrick Lamar rapping on it I was a little taken a back by this because it was so unexpected. Although the beat of the song was incredibly similar I also found the music video version had a bit more bass to it and fitted the rapping more.

The music video begins by throwing the audience right into the action. Taylor Swift aka ‘Catastrophe’ and Selena Gomez ‘Arsyn’ are fighting men over a suitcase. I loved being thrown straight into it because that meant I automatically knew where this video would be taking me. However, the twist is Selena takes the suitcase from Taylor and throws her out the window. Taylor lands on a car and carries on by singing the first part of the song, a bit of a jeux de position to what we had just seen on screen, I mean, shouldn’t she be dead? I’m just joking but it did seem a bit off.

As the song progresses we see Taylor work with a handful of famous faces, mainly in the music and model industries, prepare to battle against Selena. These people include Ellie Golding, a host of Victoria Secret angels (but come on, didn’t Cara Delvigne look amazing in this video?) Hayley Williams (which I found surprising as I still remember her from her proper punk days) and many more. This cast was all female which added to the empowerment of the whole thing, which I personally loved. Although I know many of these women from my endless scrolling through the internet I can imagine some people would not and so the flare of showing Taylor has so many powerful friends would be lost.

The actual video reminded me a lot of the Hunger Games. It was all about the women preparing to battle using various weapons and fighting moves. The budget for this video must have been huge because you could easily see it become a beginning to a blockbuster movie. And oh my days the editing! The editing was some of the most beautiful things I have seen in a while, from the slow motion explosion which honestly makes me want to go out and do battle myself to the pixelation of the screen to do split screens between Taylor and Kendrick. It was all so precise and perfect! You can tell they really went all out into making this music video the best it could be.

One of my favourite things however was the costumes. Although the costumes could be described as ‘skimpy’ and ‘revealing’ I think this just added to the powerfulness of the video. All the women in this video are beautiful and this just adds to that. Because all the outfits were very dark as well it really added to the feel of the video and the grittiness to it.

My favourite moment has to be the end with the explosion and the meet up between the girls and Selena’s team and Taylor’s hair! I swear she can pull anything off.

Honestly, I would love to see this video turn into a full blockbuster movie because it would be amazing! The whole video just makes me want to go strut around in high heels and red lipstick and be powerful and I think that’s a great thing to come across from a 4 minute video.

I urge you guys to watch it because it is amazing and I would love to hear what you guys think of it, so please leave a comment, it’d be great to get some other opinions.

Until next time!

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding