Taylor Swift’s “I Can See You” is proof that the superstar has been writing “Vigilante Shit” type songs way before Swifties could imagine. Yes, we might have gotten a toned down version of “Better Than Revenge,” but we did get what is undoubtedly the oldest nearly-explicit Swift song to be released. And she had to rescue it from the vault with the help of some old friends, and an ex.
You know what? Let’s go back to the beginning and dissect the song first before we even attempt to unravel all the Easter eggs from the video. Spoiler alert: the clues are more than we can count, but we’ll try.
You know those dirty thoughts that spring to mind when you meet someone hot that just happens to be your type? Well, Swift has put it in song form for us to enjoy. “But what would you do if I went to touch you now? / What would you do if they never found us out? / What would you do if we never made a sound?” she sings, and if you thought she was only going to stay in the suggestive lane, she adds, “And I could see you up against the wall with me.” Yes, young Tay wrote that.
This “better than revenge” song was soon accompanied by a music video that sees Swift reunite with Joey King and Presley Cash (the kids from the “Mean” video) and her hot ex Taylor Lautner.
“I wrote this video treatment over a year ago and really wanted to play out symbolically how it’s felt for me to have the fans helping me reclaim my music. I had my heart set on @JoeyKing, Taylor Lautner and @IAmPresleyCash starring in it. Joey and Presley had been in the video for ‘Mean’ when they were 9 and 13 and they are back and so ridiculously bad ass!!,” Swift tweeted about the video.
She added: “Taytay is INCREDIBLE in this (didn’t have a stunt double!) and shout out to Tay Lautner for being so awesome to hang with on set. The Tale of 3 Taylors 😆 I always wanted to direct fight scenes/a heist storyline and had the most incredible time plotting this out with my amazing DP Jonathan Sela.”
In case we missed the meaning of “The Tale of 3 Taylors” line, she shared a picture of her, Taylor Lautner, and Taylor Lautner’s wife (first name Taylor, as well) pointing at each other Spider-verse style.
In the video, we see King break into a secure facility on a rescue mission. Along the way, she is joined by Lautner, with Cash directing the mission from a van. Swift is locked in a vault, where she gets to discover a portrait of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) cover. When Lautner and King break the vault door to rescue her, she runs out holding the portrait. At the back of her hand, we see the famous 13, and along the length of her arm are lines from “Long Live.”
Fans have since been calling this music video one of Swift’s best in recent years, praising it for its movie-like feel.
