Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia” Music Video YouTube Exclusive

Photo Credit: Republic Records / UMG

YouTube scores the exclusive for Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia” music video, set for release on Sunday, October 5.

Taylor Swift loves to hide Easter eggs in her work with cloak-and-dagger secrecy. With the release of her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, which notably did not feature any single releases in advance, fans are dying to know when the promised music video for its first track will debut.

“The Fate of Ophelia” is the first track on Showgirl, and Swifties are already saying the Shakespearean-inspired track defines the theme of the whole album.

That’s because the song features Swift singing about how her fiancé, Travis Kelce, saved her from the fate of Hamlet’s tragic heroine, Ophelia. Ophelia is driven mad when Hamlet rejects her after killing her father—Ophelia later drowns herself. You might have even seen some of the paintings featuring Ophelia’s fate.

“If you’d never come for me / I might’ve drowned in the melancholy,” Swift sings, fittingly, in the track’s pre-chorus.

So when is the music video coming out?

Well, fans lucky enough to catch Swift’s The Official Release Party of a Showgirl film in theaters this weekend will be treated to a sneak peek of the video. But fans who can’t make it to the theater will have to wait until Sunday evening.

Written and directed by Swift, “The Fate of Ophelia” music video premieres exclusively on YouTube on Sunday, October 5, at 7 PM ET. Notably, the release coincides with Travis Kelce’s 36th birthday.

And that’s important, because Swift’s relationship with Kelce is central to the theme of the whole album.

Moreover, the Swift-Ophelia connection doesn’t end with “The Fate of Ophelia.” The album cover of The Life of a Showgirl shows Swift partially submerged in water, which is clearly a reference to Ophelia and the many famous paintings that feature her lying in a river.

According to Swift in an interview with BBC Radio 1, the music video for the track was also inspired by the John Everett Millais painting, arguably the most famous depiction of Ophelia.