“The Destiny of Ophelia” opens The Lifetime of a Showgirl with Taylor Swift doing what she does finest: taking a cultural touchstone everybody half-remembers from highschool English and making it about her. And truthfully? It really works.
The track itself is pure Max Martin gloss. That springy bassline, the best way Swift’s voice sits low within the verses earlier than the refrain cracks open huge.
At 3:46, it’s tight sufficient to keep away from overstaying its welcome, which is greater than you possibly can say for a few of her current album openers. That is Swift in full 1989 mode: synth-pop that sparkles with out apologizing for it.
However let’s discuss what she’s truly doing right here. Ophelia drowns in Hamlet. Swift’s model? She swims.
The entire track is constructed on this rescue fantasy (you saved me from going underneath), and relying in your tolerance for Swift’s explicit model of romantic mythology, you’ll both discover it swoonworthy or eyeroll-inducing. I’m someplace within the center.
There’s one thing compelling about reclaiming a logo of female tragedy, positive, however Swift’s been taking part in the saved-by-love card for years now.
Sooner or later, Ophelia stops being Shakespeare and begins being one other costume within the dress-up field.
The music video makes this literal. Swift directed it herself (after all), and it’s a one-take fever dream by way of speakeasy phases, that Millais portray everybody is aware of, and 9 (9!) costume adjustments.
The web’s already calling it her “showgirl period,” which feels each inevitable and barely exhausting. Sure, it’s beautiful. Sure, the bathtub scene echoes the album artwork. Sure, each body is a temper board Pinterest would die for.
However there’s a nagging query beneath all that opulence: when does pastiche turn into character?
Right here’s the place I’ll give Swift credit score: she is aware of precisely what she’s doing. The fan discourse is already fracturing into predictable camps.
Some name it “empowerment.” Shakespeare students shrug and say artists have been remixing Ophelia for hundreds of years.
A vocal minority on Reddit needs the manufacturing would breathe somewhat. All of that is by design. Swift builds songs that operate as Rorschach assessments. You see what you carry to them.
Musically, there’s craftsmanship right here that shouldn’t be dismissed. That verse-to-chorus raise, the best way the melody stays sticky whereas the lyrics do their cryptic work… it’s Martin and Shellback working on the stage that made “Clean Area” simple.
Swift’s sensible sufficient to allow them to cook dinner whereas she handles the literary Easter eggs. The road between “destiny” and “alternative” runs by way of the entire thing: in case you present up, I received’t go underneath. It’s a pact dressed as a pop track, which is classic Swift.
However I hold coming again to the core query: does rewriting Ophelia’s ending truly give her company, or does it simply swap one image for an additional?
Swift escapes the tragic heroine function by… changing into the rescued heroine. That’s not nothing, but it surely’s not precisely radical both.
The showgirl framing provides her permission to be theatrical, to lean into extra and spectacle. Positive. Nice, even. However theatricality just isn’t the identical as transformation.
What saves “The Destiny of Ophelia” from collapsing underneath its personal references is that it’s genuinely catchy.
You may argue in regards to the semiotics all day, and other people will, however the track succeeds first as a pop object.
It’s an opener that does what openers ought to: it units a tone, declares an aesthetic, and will get caught in your head.
Whether or not that tone is empowering or simply costly will depend on how a lot you’re prepared to spend money on Swift’s private mythology.
Me? I’ll take the track. I’m much less satisfied by the iconography. However perhaps that’s the purpose. Swift’s all the time labored finest when you possibly can hum alongside whereas rolling your eyes.
“The Destiny of Ophelia” doesn’t drown, but it surely doesn’t precisely break new floor both. It floats, glamorously, precisely the place Swift needs it to.
