Taylor Swift’s collaborations with veteran music video director Joseph Kahn have thus far included the star-studded, action blockbuster–esque “Bad Blood” and the Gone Girl-esque “Blank Space,” and their new video for the fifth single off 1989 is no less cinematic.
The clip, for the Lana Del Rey–esque “Wildest Dreams,” debuted before the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night, and this time it shows Swift playing a classical Hollywood star. To play up the Golden Age–era vibe, they even got Scott Eastwood, who looks a lot like his father Clint—or is he doing Clark Gable in Mogambo?—as he struts about the African Savanna. Things soon get dreamier, appropriately, and I won’t spoil the twists from there, except to say the video does a good job matching the song’s theme of lingering on with someone “even if it’s just pretend.”
All Swift’s other singles from 1989 have gone to No. 1 with the lone exception of “Style,” whose music video was mostly only notable for resembling the credits of True Detective. This one is a lot more engaging than that, and if Swift can use it to drive her fourth 1989 single to No. 1, she’ll only be one smash away from the record for most No. 1s off one album, set by Michael Jackson (who scored his quintet of chart-toppers with Bad) and Katy Perry (who had five No. 1s with Teenage Dream).
