"Look What You Made Me Do" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and the lead single from her sixth studio album, Reputation (2017). Big Machine Records released the song on August 24, 2017, following an approximately year-long hiatus due to the controversies that affected Swift's public image in 2016.
Written and produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, "Look What You Made Me Do" has an electronic production combining electropop, dance-pop, progressive pop, and synth-punk with elements of hip-hop, electroclash, industrial, and electro. It contains an interpolation of "I'm Too Sexy" (1991) by the English pop group Right Said Fred, whose members received songwriting credits as a result. The melody incorporates strings, plinking piano, and synthesizers, and the chorus consists of drumbeats and rhythmic chants. The lyrics are about the narrator's contempt for somebody who had wronged them. Many media publications interpreted the track to be a reference to the controversies that Swift faced, including the Kanye West feud.
The accompanying music video premiered at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards and contains various implications of Swift's celebrity that received widespread media speculation. Both the song and the video broke streaming records on Spotify and YouTube upon release. "Look What You Made Me Do" polarized music critics: some deemed it a fierce return and an interesting direction but others criticized the sound and theme as harsh and vindictive and opined that it strayed away from Swift's singer-songwriter artistry. Critics have considered "Look What You Made Me Do" a career-defining comeback single for Swift.
Commercially, the song charted at number one in Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Israel, Lebanon, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Scotland, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom. In the United States. "Look What You Made Me Do" debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100 with the highest sales and streaming week of 2017. The single received multi-platinum certifications in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Swift performed the song on the Reputation Stadium Tour (2018) and the Eras Tour (2023–2024).
Background and release Taylor Swift released her fifth studio album, 1989, on October 27, 2014; it sold 10 million copies worldwide less than three years after its release, and its singles received heavy rotation on radio for one year and a half, leading to Billboard describing its success as "a kind of cultural omnipresence that's rare for a 2010s album". The album propelled Swift to pop stardom, and her fame was accompanied by increasing media scrutiny on her image.
Her once-wholesome "America's Sweetheart" reputation was tarnished by short-lived romantic relationships and public celebrity controversies, including a publicized feud with the rapper Kanye West and his then-wife, the media personality Kim Kardashian, over West's song "Famous" (2016), in which he claims he made Swift a success ("I made that bitch famous"). Although Swift said she never consented to the said lyric, Kardashian released a phone recording between Swift and West, in which the former seemingly consented to another portion of the song. After the West–Kardashian controversy, Swift became a subject of an online "#IsOverParty" hashtag, where online audiences used the "snake" emoji to describe her. Detractors regarded Swift as fake and calculating, a conclusion that surmounted after years of what they saw as a deliberate maneuver to carefully cultivate her public image. Swift became increasingly reticent on social media despite a large following and avoided the press amidst the commotion and ultimately withdrew from public appearances. She opted to take a hiatus after The 1989 World Tour concluded in December 2015, stating "I think people might need a break from me".
On August 18, 2017, Swift blanked out all of her social media accounts, which prompted media speculation on new music. In the following days, she uploaded silent, black-and-white short videos of CGI snakes onto social media, which attracted widespread press attention. Imagery of snakes was inspired by the West–Kardashian controversy and featured prominently in Swift's social media posts. On August 23, she announced on Instagram a new album, titled Reputation. The following day, she unveiled the lead single from the album, "Look What You Made Me Do", which was released for streaming and download on digital platforms by Big Machine Records. A lyric video was released simultaneously; it was produced by Swift and Joseph Kahn and created by ODD. The lyric video features prominent snake imagery, depicting the chorus with an ouroboros, and its graphics were influenced by the aesthetics of Saul Bass for the 1958 film Vertigo. It was viewed over 19 million times within the first 24 hours on YouTube, setting a record for the most-viewed lyric video in that time frame. "Look What You Made Me Do" was released to US contemporary hit radio on August 29, 2017. Media publications regarded "Look What You Made Me Do" as Swift's comeback after her year of hiatus from the public spotlight.
Production and music Swift wrote and produced "Look What You Made Me Do" with Jack Antonoff, who also programmed the track and played its instruments, recorded at Rough Customer Studio in Brooklyn. Other musicians on the track included Evan Smith (saxophone), Victoria Parker (violin), and Phillip A. Peterson (cello). Laura Sisk engineered the song, and Serban Ghenea mixed it at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The track was mastered by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound in New York.
"Look What You Made Me Do" is 3 minutes and 31 seconds long. It is written in the key of A minor and has a tempo of 128 beats per minute. The track begins with string swell and plinking piano keys and progresses into an electronic production; The New York Times wrote that the opening strings and piano were melodramatic and evoked a "dark, fantasy-film" atmosphere, whereas The Daily Telegraph Sarah Carson described the strings as "Hollywood"-inspired.
The verses and chorus are built on a minor-key motif, electronic tones, and hip-hop-inspired beats and vocal cadences. The pre-chorus incorporates piano and synth-simulated brass, and the bridge incorporates strings that swell over a reverberating crescendo. During the second verse, Swift delivers a Kesha-influenced rap verse. The chorus consists of drumbeats and rhythmic chants of the title, which is repeated eight times with different tones of delivery. The melody contains an interpolation of "I'm Too Sexy" (1991) by the English pop group Right Said Fred, leading to its members Richard Fairbrass, Fred Fairbrass, and Rob Manzoli receiving writing credits. The Fairbrass brothers were contacted one week before the release of "Look What You Made Me Do" and were asked whether a "big, contemporary female artist who hasn't released anything for a while" would be able to use a portion of their song for her latest single; they found out that the artist in question was Swift after the song was released.
The New York Times Jon Pareles commented that the piano and strings in the pre-chorus and bridge gave them a "melodramatic, emotional" feel, whereas Swift's repeating the title in the chorus sounded "vindictive, mocking, dismissive, even a little playful". Music critics described the genre as electropop, dance-pop, progressive pop, and synth-punk. The production incorporates retro elements of electroclash, mid-1980s and 1990s industrial and electro, and mid-2000s pop. Some critics commented that the track showcased a "darker" soundscape compared to Swift's previous releases; Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone attributed this effect partly to the "dark techno" of Britney Spears's 2007 album Blackout, while Maura Johnston in The Guardian said that the atmosphere evoked Spears's "Piece of Me" (2007) and the beat was reminiscent of Peaches's "Operate" (2003).
Lyrics and interpretations With the key themes being betrayal and vengeance, "Look What You Made Me Do" was developed by Swift as a poem about her feelings and realizations that she could not trust certain people and could only rely on a few. The verses contain lyrics such as, "I don't like your perfect crime/ How you laugh when you lie"; according to Pareles, these lyrics resemble a nursery rhyme, and they could be interpreted as referring to either the celebrity feuds or the feelings after a romantic breakup. Swift's character resents that her enemies set her up for humiliation ("You said the gun was mine/ Isn't cool, no, I don't like you"), affirms that she remembers all the wrongdoings ("I got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined/ I check it once, then I check it twice"), and reassures that her enemies will get what they deserve ("Maybe I got mine, but you'll all get yours").
In the pre-chorus, Swift's character asserts that she became wiser and hardened, "I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time." The chorus is made up of the title, "Look what you made me do", repeated eight times; Swift said that this part came when "the beat hit" and the production team decided to "edit out the rest of the words". In the bridge, Swift's character threatens to give her enemies nightmares ("I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me/ I'll be the actress, starring in your bad dreams") and tells that the old version of her was dead, delivered through a sound effect that resembles a telephone call: "The old Taylor can't come to the phone right now/ Why?/ 'Cause she's dead"; Swift said that these lyrics were the most important part of the song.
According to Swift, the song used some tropes from the TV series Game of Thrones: the "list of names" was inspired by Arya Stark's "kill list", and the "vibes" were inspired by the characters Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen. Although "Look What You Made Me Do" does not mention any particular person, many publications interpreted some of its parts as references to the West–Kardashian controversy: "I don't like your tilted stage", "the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now". Swift confirmed in a 2019 Rolling Stone cover story that the "phone call" lyric referred to "a stupid phone call I shouldn't have picked up". There were also comments that some parts referenced Swift's fallout with Katy Perry or her ex-boyfriends Calvin Harris and Tom Hiddleston.
According to Carson, the songwriting contains some of the "storybook lyricism and fairytale tropes" that Swift had employed before, such as the imagery of kingdoms and dreams and the idea of revenge, which recalled songs like "Should've Said No" (2006), "Better than Revenge" (2010), and "Bad Blood" (2014); Billboard Tatiana Cirisano said that the dreams imagery evoked the songs from 1989 such as "Blank Space" or "Wildest Dreams".
Critical reception Upon release, "Look What You Made Me Do" polarized music critics. Some considered the single a fierce return and an interesting move for Swift to reclaim her public narrative, whereas others found the production and themes vindictive, harsh, and off-putting. USA Today said that the polarized reaction to the song illustrated Swift's position as a "ubiquitous cultural force".