Meta Heist
Musician wrote and directed the visual for the new Speak Now vault song
Taylor Swift reclaims Speak Now literally in her new video for “I Can See You.” The song is one of the “From the Vault” songs included her newly rerecorded 2010 third studio LP.
In the new visual, which Swift wrote and directed, her Taylor Lautner and Joey King are seen in a museum on a mission to rescue Swift from a vault, where she is trapped along with her prize possession, her framed cover art of Speak Now. The two navigate a Mission: Impossible-like scenes, with Presley Cash serving as their behind-the-scenes coms director, complete with tricky lasers and fight scenes against those who try to prevent them from absconding with what is rightfully Swift’s. The clever clip is of course a metaphor for her taking back her art from her former record label Big Machine, whose sale of her master recordings spurred her to rerecord her entire catalog before Lover.
She debuted the video last night, July 7, at her show at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri alongside its three stars.
Enlisting Lautner, who Swift once dated, and King also had extra meaning, as Swift noted on Twitter.
“WELL. SO. I’ve been counting down for months and finally the ‘I Can See You’ video is out. I wrote this video treatment over a year ago and really wanted to play out symbolically how it’s felt for me to have the fans helping me reclaim my music. I had my heart set on @JoeyKing, Taylor Lautner and @IAmPresleyCash starring in it,” she wrote. “Joey and Presley had been in the video for ‘Mean’ when they were 9 and 13 and they are back and so ridiculously bad ass!!”
She also gave props to Lautner for his stunts.
“Taytay is INCREDIBLE in this (didn’t have a stunt double!) and shout out to Tay Lautner for being so awesome to hang with on set,” she added. “The tale of 3 Taylors I always wanted to direct fight scene/a heist storyline and had the most incredible time plotting this out with my amazing DP Jonathan Sela. So proud of this one.”
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), which was recorded when she was 32, so sometime between December 2021 and ’22, also includes updated lyrics to “Better Than Revenge.”