Every musician/celebrity reaches that point in their career where they wonder if, as Madonna once said on the first bookend to Ray of Light, they “traded fame for love without a second thought.” Even though only just now seeking to address this phenomenon, Taylor Swift was probably at that point long ago–maybe somewhere around the infamous “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative” tweet that further propelled the war between her and Kanye that would spawn a continued existential crisis within both of them, and ultimately be responsible for the theme and content of reputation.
“Look What You Made Me Do” established this premise quite thoroughly in both shitty song and much more preferable video format, not to mention set the tone for Swift’s penchant for borrowing visuals in the latter. With the fourth single to feature accompanying video after “End Game,” “Delicate” brings us back to Swift’s softer, more “vulnerable” and “playful” side, with many outlets comparing the first portion to Britney Spears’ signature 2000 video for “Lucky” as she puts on her best plastic form to face the paparazzi and the public. And it’s true, there are certain very overt comparisons (in addition to the ones being made to Spike Jonze’s Kenzo ad)—and it wouldn’t be the first time Swift copped Spears’ style—especially as Swift stands forlornly on the red carpet answering questions with as much interest and as fake of a smile as she can muster.
After someone passes her a note she seems to think is quite special while wading through the flashbulbs, Swift grapples with the pratfalls of being sought after, and how it can often transform into being seen right through–regarded for nothing more than a space with which to funnel one’s own false projections into. Just the way Madonna is in the “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” video as the people around her become hen-pecking distortions. The note Swift is handed, seeming to possess the magic gift of suddenly—and very literally—freeing Swift from ever being seen, then alters the entire course of the “narrative,” as it were. For now that she’s liberated from the burden of scrutiny as Britney seemed to feel once she could just take her shoes off and walk into a public restroom while pregnant (subsequently being hospitalized after stepping on a hypodermic needle), Swift, too, dismounts from her heels and takes to the streets in a joyous beeline–as there is no greater illicitness than being barefoot in public as an adult. But the street and subway jaunt sans shoes comes a little bit after doing her best version of a female Kevin McAllister going H*A*M in a deluxe hotel by dancing somewhat too gawkily (long legs are never ideal for litheness, unless one happens to be a flamingo) throughout.
It is when she smiles at a woman staring right at her who she suddenly realizes is actually just looking in the mirror that Swift starts to realize that maybe being invisible is possibly far worse than being overly examined–that maybe the tradeoff for being grossly lauded and obsessed over is that rare gift bestowed upon so few of us who inhabit this earth: that of being seen… by someone–even if it means a million pairs of other eyes in addition. It’s sort of the inverse revelation of Madonna’s in “Drowned World/Substitute For Love,” in which she unearths that the adulation she thought she once craved from the masses is now concentrated in the purest form of love there (reportedly) is: that between mother and daughter. It also deviates from Britney’s in “Lucky,” whose dissatisfied protagonist remains so after winning an award and the praising oohs and ahs of fans as she walks toward her car to go home to no one. So, one supposes, in this way, Swift defiantly proves herself to be unabashedly vacuous in her concession to, at heart, truly relishing fame (once the magic note leads her back to being visualized), in a way that, admittedly, makes running around barefoot look slightly more elegant than Britney did in the gas station days.
