It’s only been a week since Taylor Swift released Midnights, but the record-breaking album is already undergoing a slight change. After it was swept up in controversy, Swift’s “Anti-Hero” music video has been edited to remove a controversial moment with a scale that had some viewers believing the scene to be fat-shaming in nature.
The controversial scene in question appeared roughly two minutes into the music video, which was written and directed by the singer, as Swift stepped onto a scale as her inner critic looked on. As Swift looked down at the scale, rather than showing a number, it read “fat.” The moment immediately sparked discussion on social media, with some praising Swift for her honesty while many others criticized the scene for being “anti-fat,” with some dubbing it fatphobic. Amid the criticism, though, Swift, who previously opened up about her battles with body dysmorphia and disordered eating, seems to have listened. The “Anti-Hero” music video on Apple Music and YouTube no longer shows the scale, and instead simply cuts to her anti-hero clone’s look of disappointment.
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Released Oct. 21, the 13-track Midnights is among Swift’s most intimate and emotionally vulnerable albums yet as Swift does a deep dive into her inner thoughts and croons lyrics about realizations, reckonings, growing up, and relationships. “Anti-Heroes,” the third track on the album and the first single from Midnights, is about Swift’s own insecurities. In a video posted on Instagram on October 2, Swift told fans that the song “is one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. I don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before.” She added, “his song is a real guided tour throughout all the things I tend to hate about myself… I like ‘Anti-Hero’ a lot because I think it’s really honest.” When she dropped the music video, Swift told fans in a separate post that the video allowed fans to watch her “nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts play out in real time.”
Despite the controversy surrounding “Anti-Hero,” Midnights has had no issue securing Swift even more records. The album, Swift’s 10th studio album, has not only become the most-streamed album in a single day in Spotify’s history and the all-time record for the biggest album ever released globally in Spatial Audio on Apple Music, but also enjoyed the biggest streaming week of the year so far, with 357 million on-demand official streams, within just the first four days of its release. According to Billboard, Midnights also sold more than 1.2 million album units in the US during its first three days of release.
In addition to the 13 tracks on Midnights, Swift also released seven additional tracks, dubbed the 3am tracks, which are available to stream. The singer released the second music video for the album, for the song “Bejeweled,” on Tuesday.
