Taylor Swift takes it back to the ‘90s with her new video for ‘Opalite’
By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — Taylor Swift is back in the headlines and this time it’s for something more positive than what she’s been used to lately.
The superstar singer has dropped the music video for “Opalite,” the newest single from her album “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Swift wrote and directed the video, which features an array of stars and a ‘90s vibe.
She dropped the video just before this weekend’s Super Bowl. Last year, Swift felt like a star of the event, with speculation running rampant that she could appear at the halftime show since her now fiancé Travis Kelce’s team the Kansas City Chiefs was in the game.
This year, the weeks before the big game found Swift making news for past text messages between her and actress Blake Lively, which have become part of Lively’s suit against her former “It Ends With Us” costar and director Justin Baldoni.
With a pet rock, MTV, a trip to the mall, cheesy commercials and a couple’s photo shoot, Swift’s new music video is a bit of a love letter to the 1990s.
“The idea for the Opalite music video crash landed into my imagination when I was doing promo for The Life of a Showgirl,” Swift wrote on Instagram, where she shared a series of photos from the video.
In particular, it came while she was a guest on the UK’s Graham Norton Show, “one of my favorite shows,” she wrote.
Swift appeared on the show on October 3, 2025 to promote her 12th studio album.
She appeared alongside actors Cillian Murphy, Domhnall Gleeson, Greta Lee, Jodie Smith and singer Lewis Capaldi.
During the show, Gleeson — an Irish actor best known for starring in the Harry Potter movies — joked about appearing in one of Swift’s music videos, according to the singer. Thanks to the luck of the Irish, that inspired her to include him, as well as the other guests on the show and Norton himself for what she jokingly referred to as a “school group project but for adults and it isn’t mandatory.”
“To my delight, everyone from the show made the effort to time travel back to the 90’s with us and help with this video,” Swift wrote. “You might even recognize some friendly faces from The Eras Tour.”
Opalite is a song about love, which is fitting since Kelce’s birthstone is the opal.
The video features an “Opalite spray” that has magical properties that allow it to turn inanimate objects into humans and vice versa.
In the video, Swift keeps a rock as her bff and links up with Gleeson, who is in a painful relationship with a small cactus that transforms into Swift after a squirt from the Opalite spray.
It’s the second full music video from Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” and she clearly enjoyed making it.
“I had more fun than I ever imagined – Made new friends, metaphors, and fashion choices. It was an absolute thrill to create this story and these characters,” she wrote.
The video is only available to view on Apple Music and Spotify Premium until February 8.
The-CNN-Wire
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