Taylor Swift - ‘Opalite’ music video

[LadyxGaGa 3,134]

3 hours ago, elegidadedios said:

She is lowkey saving the art of music videos from dying... Now that streams on YouTube don't count anymore on Billboard do you really think labels will put out there efforts to keep MV a thing? I don't like her music but I'm glad she's looking up for new ideas to maintain music videos alive 

no this exactly like she is still putting in so much money into her craft and making sure the quality is up to the tswift standard 

[Petie Estie 5,643]

8 hours ago, LGAte said:

Yeah and for someone who touts themselves as a mastermind and a poet she couldn’t have seen that conclusion drawn?
 

Put yourself in the position of the black woman that was his ex hearing that she was “darkness” before he met his “Opalite” dream white girl….

 

are we pretending Taylor is dumb now????

 

also contextually Taylor started openly hanging out with a lot of MAGA people and I don’t care how much she donates (rich people donate to both democrats and republicans allll the time), it’s weird to choose this as a metaphor when you know how the MAGA people you are around would eat this narrative up of the white girl being the dream and the ex being the darkness.
 

maybe just don’t even write a song about his exes and enjoy your man? 
 

it’s just a very odd thing to me to claim you are growing as an artist and trying to be a good person and intelligent and everything….and then you so blatantly write a song like this with disregard to the context of the black women and how they might feel differently.

I didn't really know travis' dating history until this moment. I GUESS there's something to that. The more I think about it the weirder it is to write a song like this about how your partner's exes are all horrible. Why would anyone care about that lol.

okay did some research: travis' exes all accused him of cheating or financial ...rudeness, publicly. He's probably upset about it, and Taylor believes him that these girls are just liars. So she's painting them in a bad light. I don't really think it's because they're black, but, hey, I guess you can't say for sure. 

[Teletubby 159,960]

9 hours ago, LGAte said:

Put yourself in the position of the black woman that was his ex hearing that she was “darkness” before he met his “Opalite” dream white girl….

 

are we pretending Taylor is dumb now????

She's not dumb, but the people who interpret the lyrics of this song that way are.

she's comparing onyx to being depressed and opalite to being happy and it has nothing to do with his ex.

[LadyxGaGa 3,134]

18 minutes ago, Teletubby said:

She's not dumb, but the people who interpret the lyrics of this song that way are.

she's comparing onyx to being depressed and opalite to being happy and it has nothing to do with his ex.

god thank you as we further get into this unfortunate thing we call democracy racists don’t have to be covert about their racism anymore if you suspect someone to be racist they will let you know 

 

[Antonio 27,821]

14 hours ago, LGAte said:

I think this song dog whistles pro-whiteness. 

and I think people who say that’s a bad take….should consider how smart Taylor is…and how weird it is to write a song about this in that way.
 

Let’s be very clear. because I know people will come for me….but even if “Opalite” wasn’t written with intentional racism, it is still deeply ignorant, and that matters even more when you are someone with the power, wealth, platform, and self-proclaimed “mastermind” status of Taylor Swift. Context matters. This is a song about a man whose dating history was primarily women of color. Then he dates Taylor. Suddenly his life becomes “opalite,” a white, translucent, glowing gemstone associated with purity and light. That framing is not neutral. The narrative becomes: he dates Black and brown women, then he dates Taylor, and now his world is luminous, rare, elevated, purified. You do not get to write that and pretend it exists in a vacuum.

This is classic aestheticized whiteness. Not overt racism. Not slurs. But symbolic hierarchy. Whiteness as restoration. Whiteness as upgrade. Whiteness as glow. And before anyone says “she didn’t mean it like that,” here’s the thing: Taylor wants credit as a high-brow lyricist. She markets herself as hyper-intentional. She dissects metaphors. She plants easter eggs. She controls narrative. She literally calls herself a mastermind. A real high-brow lyricist thinks about cultural context. A real high-brow lyricist asks how this reads in the real world, what it implies, and what it reinforces, especially when you are a white billionaire writing about a man’s romantic past with women of color.

She could have chosen literally any metaphor. She chose a white gemstone. That is not accidental in outcome, even if it was accidental in intent. And intent does not erase impact. What makes this worse is the privilege baked into it. Taylor lives in a bubble where she gets to romanticize her own desirability without ever having to sit with how that story lands for Black women. The song centers her elevation while implicitly downgrading the women who came before. That is textbook white feminism.

It is also why people are right to side-eye who she’s aligning herself with this era. When your art starts leaning into purity imagery, hierarchy narratives, and romanticized superiority, people are allowed to ask questions. Especially in a political climate where MAGA aesthetics thrive on coded language rather than explicit statements. Dog whistles do not announce themselves. They arrive wrapped in poetry.

So no, this is not about calling Taylor a cartoon villain or pretending she is wearing a hood. It is about acknowledging that she used imagery that reinforces a racialized hierarchy, failed to interrogate it, and released it anyway. If you want the praise of being a serious lyricist, you also inherit the responsibility. She missed that responsibility here, and that deserves to be called out.

girl you sound crazy

[weed 78,077]

Excited to see, love the debut on streaming services lmao but I also hate that bc it's giving Billboard even more power.

[FFXIV WhiteMage 6,197]

The song was fine but the tiktok dance was just purely atrocious 

[LadyxGaGa 3,134]

i’m ngl i was rly hoping TFOO would stay at number one and the only time it would get knock down was when she released Opalite but im happy regardless l!! 

[liamgaga 782]

Refreshing to see lots of people praising her (even if im not a fan) I expected people to be dragging her on this thread lmao 

[TheMontebello 1,005]

22 hours ago, LGAte said:

I think this song dog whistles pro-whiteness. 

and I think people who say that’s a bad take….should consider how smart Taylor is…and how weird it is to write a song about this in that way.
 

Let’s be very clear. because I know people will come for me….but even if “Opalite” wasn’t written with intentional racism, it is still deeply ignorant, and that matters even more when you are someone with the power, wealth, platform, and self-proclaimed “mastermind” status of Taylor Swift. Context matters. This is a song about a man whose dating history was primarily women of color. Then he dates Taylor. Suddenly his life becomes “opalite,” a white, translucent, glowing gemstone associated with purity and light. That framing is not neutral. The narrative becomes: he dates Black and brown women, then he dates Taylor, and now his world is luminous, rare, elevated, purified. You do not get to write that and pretend it exists in a vacuum.

This is classic aestheticized whiteness. Not overt racism. Not slurs. But symbolic hierarchy. Whiteness as restoration. Whiteness as upgrade. Whiteness as glow. And before anyone says “she didn’t mean it like that,” here’s the thing: Taylor wants credit as a high-brow lyricist. She markets herself as hyper-intentional. She dissects metaphors. She plants easter eggs. She controls narrative. She literally calls herself a mastermind. A real high-brow lyricist thinks about cultural context. A real high-brow lyricist asks how this reads in the real world, what it implies, and what it reinforces, especially when you are a white billionaire writing about a man’s romantic past with women of color.

She could have chosen literally any metaphor. She chose a white gemstone. That is not accidental in outcome, even if it was accidental in intent. And intent does not erase impact. What makes this worse is the privilege baked into it. Taylor lives in a bubble where she gets to romanticize her own desirability without ever having to sit with how that story lands for Black women. The song centers her elevation while implicitly downgrading the women who came before. That is textbook white feminism.

It is also why people are right to side-eye who she’s aligning herself with this era. When your art starts leaning into purity imagery, hierarchy narratives, and romanticized superiority, people are allowed to ask questions. Especially in a political climate where MAGA aesthetics thrive on coded language rather than explicit statements. Dog whistles do not announce themselves. They arrive wrapped in poetry.

So no, this is not about calling Taylor a cartoon villain or pretending she is wearing a hood. It is about acknowledging that she used imagery that reinforces a racialized hierarchy, failed to interrogate it, and released it anyway. If you want the praise of being a serious lyricist, you also inherit the responsibility. She missed that responsibility here, and that deserves to be called out.

I don't think this is too far-fetched because the whole album is filled with suspicious lyrics. That one song about wanting a whole neighborhood looking like her white man... Yikes

[DESTROY UR DISEASE 18,037]

22 hours ago, LGAte said:

I think this song dog whistles pro-whiteness. 

and I think people who say that’s a bad take….should consider how smart Taylor is…and how weird it is to write a song about this in that way.
 

Let’s be very clear. because I know people will come for me….but even if “Opalite” wasn’t written with intentional racism, it is still deeply ignorant, and that matters even more when you are someone with the power, wealth, platform, and self-proclaimed “mastermind” status of Taylor Swift. Context matters. This is a song about a man whose dating history was primarily women of color. Then he dates Taylor. Suddenly his life becomes “opalite,” a white, translucent, glowing gemstone associated with purity and light. That framing is not neutral. The narrative becomes: he dates Black and brown women, then he dates Taylor, and now his world is luminous, rare, elevated, purified. You do not get to write that and pretend it exists in a vacuum.

This is classic aestheticized whiteness. Not overt racism. Not slurs. But symbolic hierarchy. Whiteness as restoration. Whiteness as upgrade. Whiteness as glow. And before anyone says “she didn’t mean it like that,” here’s the thing: Taylor wants credit as a high-brow lyricist. She markets herself as hyper-intentional. She dissects metaphors. She plants easter eggs. She controls narrative. She literally calls herself a mastermind. A real high-brow lyricist thinks about cultural context. A real high-brow lyricist asks how this reads in the real world, what it implies, and what it reinforces, especially when you are a white billionaire writing about a man’s romantic past with women of color.

She could have chosen literally any metaphor. She chose a white gemstone. That is not accidental in outcome, even if it was accidental in intent. And intent does not erase impact. What makes this worse is the privilege baked into it. Taylor lives in a bubble where she gets to romanticize her own desirability without ever having to sit with how that story lands for Black women. The song centers her elevation while implicitly downgrading the women who came before. That is textbook white feminism.

It is also why people are right to side-eye who she’s aligning herself with this era. When your art starts leaning into purity imagery, hierarchy narratives, and romanticized superiority, people are allowed to ask questions. Especially in a political climate where MAGA aesthetics thrive on coded language rather than explicit statements. Dog whistles do not announce themselves. They arrive wrapped in poetry.

So no, this is not about calling Taylor a cartoon villain or pretending she is wearing a hood. It is about acknowledging that she used imagery that reinforces a racialized hierarchy, failed to interrogate it, and released it anyway. If you want the praise of being a serious lyricist, you also inherit the responsibility. She missed that responsibility here, and that deserves to be called out.

listen, I think all the things that you said make sense and in some way it could be slightly alarming, HOWEVER I'd like to point out that while she does say his past was like onyx and now that they are together the sky is opalite, she also says that same thing about her own life (and if I'm correct I don't recall any of her ex-boyfriends, or at least the ones we know of, being black) so... I'm quite sure she didn't mean it like THAT too

While I'm not going to fully defend her decision about not releasing the video on YouTube first and also her few other streaming tactics, I think you might be slightly overreacting with this one

[garbage day 11,789]

22 hours ago, Jill said:

But there's no indication of this. Sure, it's an interpretation you can make I guess, but the onyx/opalite metaphor follows up from earlier metaphors of night/day pretty explicitly: "Sleepless in the onyx night /
But now the sky is opalite" says the chorus after it's implied she didn't know love or how to love/be loved. The song is a run of the mill pop song about the ups and downs of love, like the ones Taylor always makes. Nothing in the song says anything of what you wrote.

And you can say I hate dark people in the light of day. Your rationale is nothing

[garbage day 11,789]

41 minutes ago, DESTROY UR DISEASE said:

listen, I think all the things that you said make sense and in some way it could be slightly alarming, HOWEVER I'd like to point out that while she does say his past was like onyx and now that they are together the sky is opalite, she also says that same thing about her own life (and if I'm correct I don't recall any of her ex-boyfriends, or at least the ones we know of, being black) so... I'm quite sure she didn't mean it like THAT too

While I'm not going to fully defend her decision about not releasing the video on YouTube first and also her few other streaming tactics, I think you might be slightly overreacting with this one

SAME WITH YOU. It's like you guys forget about double entendrees

[holy scheisse 22,740]

Undebut it 

[elegidadedios 4,491]

Some people are reaching new levels of reach™️ I guess

Edited February 5 by elegidadedios