How Taylor Swift's Blank Space video redefines music, politics and everything else ever

Last week, Taylor Swift redefined the entertainment industry by withdrawing from Spotify. This week she’s released a new video and literally changed the world for ever by smashing every paradigm

1 Taylor redefines the role of the horse in music

Twelve seconds into the video for Blank Space, a black-clad Taylor sits on her bed, clutching a white cat. Flanking the bed are two white horses. Previously horses have had been best known in music for their metaphorical role – the Wild Horses that couldn’t drag Mick Jagger away – or as slang term for heroin, for decades the drug of choice for people who admire the makers of Wild Horses too much. By placing the horses so centrally, so early in the video, Taylor sends out a stark and unignorable message about equine rights. And, almost certainly, makes reference to the death of Emily Davison, the suffragette trampled to death by the king’s horse at the 1913 Derby. This is groundbreaking stuff. Later on, there’s a deer in the house. To be honest, that’s probably just the result of leaving the doors open.

2 Taylor rides a bicycle indoors

The average arena or stadium tour creates more CO2 in three gigs than the entire Chinese coal industry does in a decade. That’s scientific fact [subs: please check]. By riding a bicycle indoors, after 38 seconds, Taylor sends out a stark and unignorable message about the need to move away the internal combustion engine, and possibly start using pedal power to generate electricity for homes, even mansions (especially mansions) if humanity is to survive. But what’s even more clever is that this comes just seconds after she’s featured a vintage sports car, driven by the man who’s clearly feckless and no good. By showing that car, Taylor sends out a stark and unignorable message that car usage and fecklessness are linked. And that cycling is a feminist issue.

In a very real sense, Taylor is sending a stark and unignorable message that she will not stand for the objectification of women in pop music a minute longer. So, record company executive, you think women are no more than a pair of breasts? Well, see how you like it when you are reduced to being nothing more than a pair of breasts. Alternatively, she is sending a stark and unignorable message that the boyfriend in this video is so stupid he puts on the shirt even though it is clearly missing both nipples. Which itself is almost certainly a metaphor for cuts to public services in an age of austerity: for what is healthcare in both the US and the UK but a nippleless shirt?