Country queen Taylor Swift heads to the Ivy League in her brand-new "The Story of Us" video premiered Tuesday night on MTV, just before participating in a live chat with her fans. The song was the last song from her latest album, "Speak Now." Swift composed the track regarding the time when she encountered an ex at the awards-show. "I just felt so empty, like we were both fighting this silent war of pretending we didn't care that the other was there. And I went home, and I wrote this song about it. And at that point, I had this gut feeling, and I knew the album was finished."The Noble Jones-directed video in which Swift reminisces about a college relationship. it begins as Swift opens 'The Story of Us' book to Chapter 1 and starts in on a tale about love lost. In the first few takes, a geeky, nerd-chic Swift and her love interest are wrapped in each other's every move, totally lusting in the Vanderbilt library. But as relationships often do, theirs quickly goes downhill. A very distressed Swift sings about the pain she feels as the pair tries to pretend not to notice each other in the same crowded study room, while she tugs at her hair and screams out the lyrics to her life among the books. The broken couple's fellow students have no idea that a life story is unfolding around them. While it depicts a love story, as many of Swift's song/video combos do, "The Story of Us" video sets a more somber mood with a mature Swift and less bright colors.
After the premiere of her "The Story of Us" video, the 21-year-old country/pop superstar opened up to MTV News about her creative process behind writing the tune, and how it felt to watch the video and relive the emotions behind the "Speak Now" song, which was inspired by a seriously awkward awards-show encounter with an ex. "Anytime I'm onstage or watching the music video, the first thing that comes into my mind is the person I wrote the song about," she said. "It's like the first thing that you think of is the moment that inspired the song, which is that excruciating, awful moment when you run into an ex for the first time."
Since the very beginning of her career, Swift has always played the ingenue; she is eternally innocent, endearingly wholesome, even when she has been epically wronged. And so, not surprisingly, her music videos have largely reflected that: Swift as the chaste, credulous creature forced to come to terms with those who have hurt her, usually heartbreakingly so. But Swift has also grown as an artist and her recent videos have mirrored that maturation. And her new video "The Story of Us," continues the themes of both her early days and her more recent work. It is, of course, a love story, but there's a complexity to it too. It's her Music Video Evolution, a voyage that's taken her from wide-eyed country girl to equally wide-eyed international sensation and, fittingly, back again. She is, of course, always the ingenue.
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