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It’s a love story? No, a ghost story. Taylor Swift brought her “Patient Zero” music video to the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday night for its official world premiere, following up the release of the single at the beginning of the weekend with visuals that take the triangle in the song into more dramatic and even spookier realms than might have been anticipated, with Dakota Johnson and Colin Ferrell amping up the tension.
Fans had only seen a 13-second teaser for the video prior to its premiere on the CBS/MTV/Paramount+ telecast, and they now know which character the headstone was for in the cemetery Swift and Johnson visit.
The video is, of course, Swift’s latest directorial effort, and the occasion of her attendance at the VMAs was receiving the inaugural Artist-Director Honor.
The singer’s remarks were brief, after an introduction by Johnson. “First of all, I want to say thank you to MTV for giving this platform to music videos so long ago,” Swift began. “I got to start making music videos and being a part of music videos 20 years ago, and since then, I’ve gotten to be a part of making 60 music videos — roughly 60. Eighteen of those, I wrote and directed, and I really love writing and directing music videos. I’ve gotta tell you, though, that the main reason why I love writing and directing music videos so much is because you, the fans, make it so much fun. It’s so rewarding because you actually care about what we’re making. So, you know, I wanna say thank you to everyone who ever worked on a music video that I got to be a part of. I learned something from every single person that ever worked alongside me on these projects. Mainly I wany to say thank you to the fans.
“And rather than say anything else, I think rather than than keep talking, I would love to, if it’s OK with you, show you my latest music video, stsarring my friend Dakota Johnson and Colin Ferrell. Cinematography by Chivo.”
“Chivo” is a nickname for Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who often works with Steven Spielberg, and who was shooting a Swift video for the first time. She seems especially enamored of that collaboration; Lubezki’s name came up as the first and only onscreen credit at the end of the premiere.
The video has Johnson and Farrell portraying a couple whose relationship appears on the rocks, with Swift acting as a counselor to the woman, singing lyrics about how she is the man’s ex and can tell her exactly how things will go. Things are just a little less sinister in the song’s lyrics than in the way things play out on screen. Johnson is seen getting angry with Johnson after a banquet at which he speaks, as the music drops out for a driving scene in which he seems to be gaslighting her with accusations about her drinking, after she has become upset at the sight of him flirting with female guests.
The video cuts to flashback of similar experiences in which Swift, his then-companion, reacted more angrily to his infractions. There’s a headline that reads “Heiress dies of mystery illness — husband inherits billions,” and then we see the two women standing at a gravestone with a photo that suggests it was Swift’s character who was born in 1986 and died in 2022. Johnson places black roses on the headstone of Swift’s dead heiress character, with it left unclear whether she’s taking any lessons from Swift’s purely spectral counsel or not.
In advance of the music video’s release, Swift took to her Instagram Stories on Sunday to post a short clip of herself talking to the camera, with a dateline revealing for the first time that the “Patient Zero” video was shot all the way back in March. (Needless to say, no NDA gets respected like a Taylor Swift NDA.) It gives confirmation that she hatched the idea for a VMAs premiere half a year ago, and held onto it as a secret till this date.
Says Swift in the IG clip: “Walking through here and seeing the way that Chivo has lit this and the way the sets are and how brilliantly Ethan has done this set design, I’m kind of rethinking the release of the video. Like, I need to figure a way to get this on TV or something. I’m sort of like: ‘Google, when are the VMAs?'” A caption under the video states the obvious: “Turns out the VMAs are Sept. 27, aka today.”
In that quote, “Chivo” is a nickname for Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and “Ethan” refers to Ethan Tobman, her longtime production designer.
Beyond her nominations at the VMAs for “The Life of a Showgirl” and “The Fate of Ophelia,” Swift was given a guaranteed trip to the podium for whatever speech or unveiling she might have in mind when CBS announced that she would be receiving the inaugural Artist Director Honor. The award is given to an artist who is accomplished behind the camera as well as in front of it. Producers have described it as analogous in stature to the VMAs’ traditional Video Vanguard award, while noting that it is an unknown whether any other artists will receive this new honor in the future.
The VMAs now have CBS as their primary home, allowing Swift a much higher profile for her music video than it would have gotten prior to last year, when MTV was still seen as the show’s go-to network (although the ceremony is still simulcast on the former music network).
The song “Patient Zero” came out Friday morning, as a single and also as part of a quartet of previously unreleased tracks newly tagged on to her 2025 “The Life of a Showgirl” album for an expanded edition titled “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore.” The other three new songs are “Cleveland!” (about Travis Kelce and his hometown), “Pink Clouding” and “Babylon.”
In her announcement for the expanded edition of the album, Swift wrote that about a year ago she “took a trip to Sweden to celebrate with Max (Martin) and Shellback, my two collaborators on this album. Really we just wanted to reflect and take in how grateful we were for the moment we were in, but there was a studio there and we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs.”
Of the single itself, she said in an audio clip released to radio stations, “I was hanging out with a bunch of friends, and one of my friends told us that she had been reached out to by the new girlfriend of an ex of hers, asking for guidance on if she had had the same experiences with this guy that this new girlfriend was having. And everyone in our group just immediately started saying like, ‘Oh, I’ve been through that too’, and telling the stories of when this kind of reach out had happened for them. And I thought to myself, if this has happened to all of us, it’s such an interesting kind of angle on humanity and on relationships, and I wonder if I could write something from the perspective of getting this phone call, and really only from the perspective and the side of the phone call of the ex who’s been through it before.”
The theme of the song is summed up in the concluding lines: “So if you wanna kick it, then I’m with it, I’ve been there / Felt the reeling, done the healing, said the curses and the prayers / When the fever turns a dreamer into a pathetic ghost / If he’s killing you, I see you, I was patient zero.”
English (US) ·