Taylor Swift’s video director is speaking out after critics claimed that the Grammy winner’s video for her new single looks a lot like Beyoncé’s Lemonade visual album.
Joseph Kahn took to Twitter on Saturday, August 26, to hit back at accusations that Swift, 27, copied Queen Bey in the video for “Look What You Made Me Do.”
“I’ve worked with Beyoncé a few times,” he wrote. “She’s an amazing person. The #LWYMMDvideo is not in her art space. Love and respect to Bey.”
The shot that has the Beyhive up in arms is one that shows Swift wearing black and lined up next to her male backup dancers (who include Todrick Hall). Fans claim it looks like Beyoncé’s “Formation” video.
Swift, 27, is set to premiere the video during the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night. Kahn teased fans and haters with another tweet on Saturday, writing, “Also there’s something to that ‘formation’ shot I painted out and you haven’t seen yet. Stay tuned Sunday :)” He added that he is still working on post-production for the video, which was shot in May.
Kahn, 44, previously directed Swift’s videos for “Bad Blood,” “Blank Space,” “Wildest Dreams” and “Out of the Woods,” and he worked with Beyoncé on Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name” and “Jumpin’ Jumpin’”
Swift released “Look What You Made Me Do,” which is the first single from her eagerly anticipated sixth studio album, Reputation, on Friday, August 25. The lyric video for the song broke the record on Saturday for most views for a lyric video in 24 hours, clocking up 19 million views.
She revealed the cover art for the 15-track LP earlier this week after blacking out her website and social media accounts.
The single, which Swift cowrote with longtime pal Jack Antonoff and Right Said Fred’s Richard and Fred Fairbrass, tackles haters with lyrics like “I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time / Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time / I’ve got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined.”
The MTV Video Music Awards will air on MTV Sunday, August 27, at 8 p.m. ET.
