Having not released a second of music or video imagery from “Midnights” prior to that album’s release four nights ago, Taylor Swift is making up for lost time. She’s released the second music video for a song from the album just days after the first, with “Bejeweled” hitting the Swift-isphere hot on the heels of “Anti-Hero” at the stroke of 12 (ET) Monday night. Watch the full clip, which co-stars Laura Dern, Dita von Teese and the three Haim sisters, below.
It’s a Cinderella story, although a prince — played briefly by producer/writer Jack Antonoff — figures into it even more briefly than in most versions of the fairy tale. Swift plays “House Wench Taylor,” who first appears as she is scrubbing up the vomit “Lady Este” (Este Haim) left behind after her drunken outing the night before. “Stepmommy” (Dern) and Ladies Alana and Danielle antagonize the suffering star even more rudely than in Disney’s versions — there’s no telling what Uncle Walt would have thought of the promise of “diamond tassel nipples” — before Swift transforms herself in a starfield made up of diamonds. She then ghosts the barely glimpsed Antonoff, maybe all the better to return to the giant cocktail glasses she was cavorting in with “Fairy Goddess” von Teese. Pat McGrath, one of the world’s most famous makeup artists, also puts in a cameo.
Discussing the video on “The Tonight Show,” airing on the east coast roughly around the same time the video was premiering on YouTube, Swift told Jimmy Fallon there are “a psychotic amount” of Easter eggs embedded in the visuals. “We have a PDF file for the Easter eggs in this video, because there are so many we could not keep track.”