To start, “Lavender Haze” is not Taylor Swift’s phrase — or, at least, it wasn’t before she put her uniquely Swiftian spin on it. And she was the first person to say that before Midnights, her record-breaking album, arrived in October.
“I happened upon the phrase ‘Lavender Haze’ when I was watching Mad Men, and I looked it up because I thought it sounded cool, and it turns out that it was a common phrase that was used in the ’50s where they would just describe being in love,” Swift said in an Instagram video. “Like, If you were in the ‘Lavender Haze,’ that meant you were in that all-encompassing love glow, and I thought that was really beautiful.”
And this is where she related it to her extremely private relationship with the British actor Joe Alwyn.
She continued, “I guess, theoretically, when you’re in the ‘Lavender Haze,’ you’ll do anything to stay there and not let people bring you down off of that cloud. And I think a lot of people have to deal with this now — not just, like, quote-unquote public figures — because we live in the era of social media, and if the world finds out that you’re in love with somebody, they’re gonna weigh in on it. My relationship for six years we’ve had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it. And so, this song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff.”
Swift personalized “Lavender Haze,” the opening Midnights track and one of Uproxx’s Best Songs of 2022, even more by dropping the music video on Friday, January 27.
“The Lavender Haze video is out now,” she wrote on Instagram. “There is lots of lavender. There is lots of haze. There is my incredible costar @laith_ashley who I absolutely adored working with. This was the first video I wrote out of the 3 that have been released, and this one really helped me conceptualize the world and mood of Midnights, like a sultry sleepless ’70s fever dream. Hope you like it.”
As of Friday evening, the Swift-directed video boasted over 5.3 million views. It didn’t take Swifties any time at all to start dissecting it for Easter eggs, including another nod toward Speak Now and a clever inclusion of hers and Alwyn’s zodiac signs.
Watch the “Lavender Haze” video above.