Mert & MarcusTaylor Swift‘s buzzy, self-referencing video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” which ushered in her Reputation era, hit a billion views on YouTube on Wednesday.
The clip, released in August of 2017, featured numerous references to Taylor’s past. There’s a parade of doubles sporting various looks from her previous eras; a gravestone with her pseudonym name “Nils Sjoberg,” which she used to co-write a song with her ex-boyfriend, Calvin Harris; dancers wearing “I Heart TS” shirts, which another ex-boyfriend, Tom Hiddleston, once wore; a car crash that vaguely references her feud with Katy Perry, and more.
There’s also the famous, “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Because she’s dead” line, signifying that Taylor was leaving her past behind.
At the end, all the Taylor lookalikes start arguing, and when one says, “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative” — something she wrote on social media in 2016 — the other Taylors yell at her to shut up.
When the video was released, it broke the record for most Vevo views in a single 24-hour period, which had been previously held by Adele‘s “Hello,” and the most views in a 24-hour period on YouTube, which had been held by Psy‘s “Gentleman.”
“Look What You Made Me Do” reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the only single from Reputation to reach the top of the charts to date.
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