At this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, Taylor Swift took home the award for Best Female Video with “I Knew You Were Trouble.”  In the video, Taylor Swift simultaneously meets and falls in love with (surprise) a bad boy musician. What starts out as a typical lovey-dovey relationship, complete with walking on railroad tracks and kissing over a plate of diner fries, morphs into one of angry confrontations and jealousy. The video has a surprisingly uncharacteristic tone of frustration and dejection. Swift is trying to convince her listeners to watch out for boys and listen to their guts––if they feel like someone is trouble, don’t get involved with them. Her fan-base of hormonal teenage girls went wild for the video, submitting vote after vote to seal its VMA victory.

The music video opens with Swift waking up alone in a littered desert. This the catches viewer’s attention right away––they wonder why she’s there, so they continue to watch. Swift, speaking instead of singing, then begins describing her memories. Images of raves, dancing, and handholding quickly flash onto the screen. She says these fleeting flashbacks are “like a kaleidoscope of memories.” This simile shows how Swift’s memories of her tumultuous relationship come back to her in no particular order. It’s effective in generating a colorful image in the minds of the viewers and showing how chaotic the mind of a confused lover is.

The music video’s director, Anthony Mandler, incorporates different imagery tactics into the video for “I Knew You Were Trouble.” He juxtaposes scenes of Swift and her boyfriend giggling and kissing with scenes of the boyfriend fighting and Swift crying in the bathroom. Also, at the beginning of her relationship, Swift’s signature blonde hair looks clean and recently brushed. She’s wearing a modest white lace top. As the relationship progresses, Swift’s blonde hair is dyed purple and it looks as if she hasn’t showered in quite a few days. Her previously feminine style turns more stereotypical punk-rocker. This external transformation parallels her internal one. She goes from being happy and carefree to being depressed and confused.

After replaying and replaying this song, I came to realize how self-deprecating its lyrics are. The listener gets the impression that Swift blames herself for her boyfriend’s problems. Even in the song’s title she blames herself. She knew he was trouble. The blame is on her.  This gets her point across that girls need to be more wary of whom they get involved with and to make sure that they feel safe with that person. By ignoring the uneasiness she felt upon meeting her would-be boyfriend, Swift got herself into a relationship that was destined to fail.