Perhaps it’s a bad sign that the first “artistic” offering Taylor Swift has given her public after getting married to Travis Kelce is a video centered around a bluebeard type played by Colin Farrell, complete with the showcasing of a headline that reads, “Heiress Dies of Mystery Illness[,] Husband Inherits Billions[;] Spouse Inherits Estate Amid Unanswered Questions.” And yes, inferring that she’s the inspiration for the “heiress” feels all the more viable in that Swift chose “billions” instead of “millions” for that headline. Of course, Swift isn’t billing “Patient Zero” as a subconscious fear she has about the person she’s married to, but rather, as an expression of her love for “elements of gothic ghost stories, true crime [and] psychological thrillers.” (Hence, the speculation that “Patient Zero” will be on the soundtrack for Verity, further fueled by Dakota Johnson playing the lead in the video.) But if that’s what she was going for, the final visual product instead reads like an “alternate universe” form of Fifty Shades of Grey, without the “benefit” of at least having some PG-13 sex scenes.
As for the Fifty Shades tie-in, getting Dakota Johnson to star as Farrell’s latest flame/victim in the video only adds to the correlation. Apart from the fact that Zayn and Swift also provided the lead single from 2017’s Fifty Shades Darker Soundtrack, “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever.” But, in contrast, it would seem Swift and the woman she “plays” in this video would have liked to live forever (or at least past her thirties). And perhaps could have with her billions were it not for this bastard of a bluebeard. The one she speaks on in the opening verse, “If you wanna party with somebody who might know/About the devil on his shoulder under his halo/When the toxins take their hold, you’d rather die than let it go/But if you’re sick of him, I got you/I was patient zero.”
In Swift’s, once again, self-directed video (which she and her team convinced MTV to give her a VMA for in a pulled-from-thin-air category called the Artist Director Honor), she frames the “narrative” mostly around twinning with Johnson, who first met Swift back in 2015 during the SNL 40 special. Indeed, it’s simultaneously eerie and off-putting how similar they’re made to look, complete with the “ultimate basic bitch” hairstyling and wardrobe. As revealed in the opening scene wherein Johnson approaches a headstone in wintry weather (already, the clichés abound), initially standing in front of it alone until Swift appears next to her looking very carbon copy-ish. And, unfortunately, her “materialization” isn’t indicative of a Britney Spears in the “Lucky” video kind of setup, or even a Christopher Walken in Madonna’s “Bad Girl” video setup, with the “spectral presences” being more like guardian angels than what Swift is: a dead wife that’s now a ghost who takes it upon herself to observe Johnson going through the same ordeals that she did with her husband.
Farrell, who Swift cuts to in the scene following the cemetery one, is presented as a typically “dashing” sort as he finishes tying his tie in the mirror and then presents Johnson with a teacup filled with some mystery liquid (surely not tea) as she sits in bed. After he kisses her on the forehead (which should already be a red flag) before he leaves, Johnson lies back down in bed to be met with Swift’s ghostly presence yet again, both of them outfitted in the same gray tank top and shorts to further emphasize the fact that, you guessed it, the same thing that’s happening to Johnson already happened to Swift. Thus, the “poetic” title of her song (which, had she come up with it during the height of Covid, she never could have released it for reasons of “sensitivity”). Swift then continues to mirror Johnson’s activities (sometimes literally…by staring into a mirror that faces hers), occasionally taking ghostly liberties like knocking over the teacup that Farrell gave to her, wanting to spare her from death like the “beneficent” lingering soul she is.
The premise isn’t quite the same in Olivia Rodrigo’s “deja vu,” though the latter does do plenty of “spying” on the “latest model.” The one who also looks very similar to her, mostly played up by wearing the same attire, as is the case with Swift and Johnson. To be sure, Swift copping a bit of Rodrigo’s artistic vision is pretty rich considering Swift (along with Jack Antonoff and St. Vincent) was given retroactive songwriting credit on “deja vu” for its musical similarities to “Cruel Summer.” Not because Swift “demanded” it, per se, but because Rodrigo was preempting Swift’s wrath after internet callouts of plagiarism. But where are such callouts when it comes to Swift borrowing from the Rodrigo playbook here? With “Obsessed” also being centered on a man’s current girlfriend obsessing over his ex. Thus, lyrics like, “I’m so obsessed with your ex/I know she’s been asleep on my side of your bed/And I can feel it/I’m starin’ at her like I wanna get hurt/And I remember every detail you have ever told me/So be careful, baby.”
While the ex (Swift), of sorts, is doing more of the obsessing over the current girlfriend (Johnson) in the “Patient Zero” scenario, “inversing” the concept a bit, the concept is still there nonetheless. As it also is in Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste,” released a few months after “Obsessed” in 2024. Except, in this version of the “love triangle” being addressed—an ex, a current girlfriend and a middling man—the women in the permutation have no feelings of fondness or empathy for one another…at least not at first. Though, in the video, “the other woman” to Carpenter, played by Jenna Ortega, becomes like a bestie by the end—as they’re leaving the man they “shared’s” funeral (a Death Becomes Her homage being at play throughout). As for the lyrics, however, Carpenter leaves no room for a “friendship opportunity” as she goads, “Now I’m gone, but you’re still layin’/Next to me, one degree of separation/I heard you’re back together, and if that’s true/You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you/If you want forever, and I bet you do/Just know you’ll taste me too.”
Swift is saying essentially the same thing to Johnson, even if it’s done in a manner that’s meant to come from a more “sisterhood-y”/“women have to stick together” type of place (as if Swift really means that when she writes shit like “Actually Romantic”). At the same time, Swift’s inherent narcissism even bleeds into “doing the right thing” here because, ultimately, she’s laying claim to the fact that she “did it first” (a.k.a. went through it first, therefore making her a “veteran,” someone who can “stake territory”).
In “Taste” (as it is in Rodrigo’s “deja vu”), Carpenter is also asserting herself as the “patient zero” of the situation, reminding the new girl, “Every time you close your eyes/And feel his lips, you’re feelin’ mine/And every time you breathe his air/Just know I was already there.” Swift has the same “knowing” mindset as she delivers one of the most cringily sung bridges ever recorded: “I know he charmed your family and friends/And you thought it’s ‘cause he loves you/But it’s ‘cause he loves how everybody else loves him/I know it seems like he shines so bright/But he’s bathing in your reflected light/On a free solo social climb/Take it from somebody who lost his games but won the race/Take it from someone who said all of this to his face/Someone who knows she’s more than just chase/Someone who had him and walked away.”
Of course, in the lyrical rendering of the tale, Swift isn’t poisoned to death by her “beau,” but instead chooses to escape him and his narcissistic ways (because it takes one to know one) of her own volition. In her cornball video version of things, however, Johnson plays the helpless victim as much as Swift had to while she was unknowingly poisoned (since both are “so in love” with the cad that it would be unfathomable to them that the one they thought they were closest to could ever hurt them like this). With everything reaching a kind of culmination at some “ball” where Farrell is being honored and Johnson is increasingly feeling like shit while Cara Delevingne makes eyes at him for the purposes of, mainly, revealing that she’s still a part of Swift’s “squad” (first immortalized in the 2015 video for “Bad Blood”).
Too focused on trying not to completely pass out, Johnson doesn’t pay much attention to this, even though she’s the one who should be scolding him on the car ride home. Instead, he gaslights her about how she must have had too much to drink, eventually concluding with what’s supposed to be some kind of “sick burn”: “I thought you were different.” Johnson asks suspiciously, “Different from who?” From Taylor, obviously. The one who altered her real year of birth for the sake of a headstone that reads, “Beloved Wife and Daughter Gone Too Soon 1986-2022” (putting her at the same age regardless).
The very headstone that Johnson still stands in front of as the video comes to an end (that is, once Swift offers what’s supposed to be a dramatic “mic drop” of a final line, “When the fever turns a dreamer into a pathetic ghost/If he’s killing you, I see you/I was patient zero”). And no, Swift doesn’t do much to indicate whether or not Johnson “saw the light” before it was too late and that’s why she’s visiting this grave, or if she just thought to “pay her respects” on a whim. Either way, it’s apparent that Swift borrowed from a few already established tropes with this song and video (with the plot of Verity also appearing to be an influence). Not least of which is the twisted love triangle motif featured in Carpenter and Rodrigo’s respective hits.
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