In 2020, Taylor Swift told us she read Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, the 1938 bestseller about a young bride haunted by the memory of her husband’s glamorous first wife. Swift described how it inspired her while she was writing Tolerate It for her ninth studio album Evermore, which came out the same year.

The song was about trying hard to impress an older partner and going unappreciated. Swift explained that she’d identified with the book’s narrator, known only as Mrs de Winter (the successor of Maxim de Winter’s late first wife, Rebecca): “She’s trying so hard […] to impress him and he’s just tolerating her.”

Six years later, Swift returns to Manderley – the fictional Cornwall estate in which Rebecca is set – with her new single Patient Zero and its self-directed music video, which was unveiled at the VMAs (the MTV Video Music Awards). It’s the latest entry in the genre of Swift gothic, a strand of her music that takes on doubles, hauntings and darkness. Gothic doubles pop up in the music videos for Anti-Hero and Out of the Woods, for instance.

Swift says her new video was inspired by “gothic ghost stories” and it’s evident that Rebecca is one of them. But this time, rather than playing du Maurier’s insecure new bride, Swift haunts the narrative........

© The Conversation