Taylor Swift has released the music video for “Opalite,” the second single off her latest album “The Life of a Showgirl,” featuring a slew of celebrity cameos — and a pet rock.
The video – which is currently only available to watch via Spotify or Apple Music — begins with a ’90s-style advertisement for Opalite, a cleaning spray promising to “magically transform your problems into your paradise. Using our state-of-the-art chemical potion, it works on friendships, couples, pets and co-workers.”
As the song “Opalite” begins to play, Swift unboxes a pet rock meant to be her new BFF. She and the rock make friendship bracelets, sing karaoke and go out to the bars together. The cameos then start coming — and there’s a pattern here, as it becomes clear that the video stars everyone Swift appeared with on “The Graham Norton Show” in October.
Greta Lee cameos as a singer-songwriter on MTV, Jodie Turner-Smith is an exercise show host and Domhnall Gleeson is in an abusive relationship with his pet cactus. Tired of the constant cuts, Gleeson orders Opalite and sprays his cactus, causing Swift to magically appear in his house. The two then begin a relationship, even taking cheesy mall photos to solidify their bond (with Lewis Capaldi as the photographer). Murphy shows up not in person, but as an Opalite spokesperson pictured on an ad that Swift and Gleeson see at the mall, and Norton himself is an Opalite salesman.
The video ends with Swift and Gleeson performing at a dance competition in sparkly mint-green-and-orange tracksuits, concluding with a meta moment in the credits showing the video’s stars on “The Graham Norton Show.”
In a post on X about the video, Swift wrote that she remembers “thinking I got ridiculously lucky” with the group she was paired with for “The Graham Norton Show” and they were “all people whose work I’ve admired from afar.”
“When we were all talking during the broadcast, Domhnall made a light hearted joke about wanting to be in one of my music videos. He’s Irish! He was joking! Except that in that moment during the interview, I was instantly struck with an *idea*,” Swift continued. “And so a week later he received an email script I’d written for the ‘Opalite’ video, where he was playing the starring role. I had this thought that it would be wild if all of our fellow guests on ‘The Graham Norton Show’ that night, including Graham himself, could be a part of it too. Like 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.”
On Wednesday, Swift teed up the release of the “Opalite” music video with a countdown on her website, much like many of the reveals in the “Showgirl” era. But this time she made it clear that the countdown was ticking toward 8 a.m. ET on Friday, when the visuals would debut on Apple Music and Spotify Premium. Those streaming services will have the video exclusively until Feb. 8 at 8 a.m. ET, when it will become available on YouTube.
“Opalite” previously debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the first tracking week for “Showgirl.” The song has soldiered on as one of the higher-performing singles from the set, most recently lodging at No. 10 on the chart in its 17th week.
During the rollout for “Showgirl,” Swift explained that “Opalite” is her fiancé Travis Kelce’s favorite song and elaborated on the meaning behind the track. “I think that’s his favorite. He loves that one,” she said. “That one was like, I have favorite words, favorite phrases, things I’ll put in an endless file of lyrics that I’m constantly going to go and cherry-pick from when I’m writing, and I had written down the word ‘opalite’ because I learned that it’s actually a manmade opal. Opal can be manmade just like diamonds, and Travis’ birthstone is opal so I’ve always fixated on that, I’ve always loved that stone and I thought it was a cool metaphor that it’s a manmade opal and that happiness can be manmade, too.”
“The Life of a Showgirl” arrived in October, selling 2.7 million copies on its first day and later outpacing Adele’s “25” as the most-consumed album in Billboard 200 history. Swift focused first on lead single “The Fate of Ophelia,” releasing a music video as part of her “Official Release Party of a Showgirl” screenings and later putting up the video on YouTube. On the Hot 100, “Ophelia” became her 13th No. 1 single and spent 10 non-consecutive weeks atop the chart.