base talk Why didn't Taylor Swift make any music/tour/lyric/… video for "Cruel Summer"?

[JoeAg]

this means Taylor ha Station to Station era is coming

[Rotunda]

Maybe it felt a little gratuitous to create new content for a years old sleeper hit when she has no trouble racking up hits/accolades? 

[DevilsRollTheDice]

God, reading these comments gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling. Cruel Summer's organic rise was truly so satisfying in every way. One of my favorite Swiftie memories. YEARS spent bitter that Taylor loved sabotaging her own (fortunately unsabotagable) career. She tried to lock her beauty away, but Cinderella found her carriage despite the evil stepmother's efforts 

 

OT: I understand not filming a true video (though ugh, what a slay that would've, could've, should've.mp3 been), but a tour video from the movie would be nice. It's an iconic performance. 
 

With that said, if we had to sacrifice a video for it all to work out this way (not the lead single, Eras tour revival) it was worth it. 

Edited Thursday at 03:53 AM by DevilsRollTheDice

[getback]

2 hours ago, DevilsRollTheDice said:

God, reading these comments gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling. Cruel Summer's organic rise was truly so satisfying in every way. One of my favorite Swiftie memories. YEARS spent bitter that Taylor loved sabotaging her own (fortunately unsabotagable) career. She tried to lock her beauty away, but Cinderella found her carriage despite the evil stepmother's efforts 

 

OT: I understand not filming a true video (though ugh, what a slay that would've, could've, should've.mp3 been), but a tour video from the movie would be nice. It's an iconic performance. 
 

With that said, if we had to sacrifice a video for it all to work out this way (not the lead single, Eras tour revival) it was worth it. 

it's literally THEE perfect song to dump her usual tour music video on instead of ICDIWABH  

Cruel Summer - tour video

ICDIWABH - extra low budget video, hell even another tour video would be okay too

 

[Arrows]

Releasing a video in, say, august 2023 would've made the song feel "old" quicker. Instead of the entire world discovering the song at once, she let it happen gradually over a whole year, extending its life and making it feel fresh for longer. I think it was a smart decision!

[Teneo]

Being sucessful means having good budget management skills. Cruel Summer was coming off her latest video being a big underperformance and some other disappointments in her  latest MV releases (reach, acclaim, impact, etc), while the song was doing great with no visuals. The cancelled video from 2020 was also too much of a hassle to resume production and producing a new concept for a song that was already smashing while she was on tour was complicated. Money was spent somewhere else (early production of a 1989 TV video and TTPD project expenses). The fact that songs like Cruel Summer, Enchanted, Is It Over Now and more exceeded expectations with zero effort on the visual front promoted the thought that MV were not making much of a difference nowadays. Which is a shame, because I personally thought that she should have done videos for Down Bad, Guilty as Sin and So High School pre-release. 

Edited Thursday at 10:30 AM by Teneo

[ericcartman]

She wanted copy Beyonce in the no visuals department 

[Dante Silva]

Out of all the songs she has wrote, It simply wasn't a personal favorite of hers. 

[HarajukuPrincess]

12 hours ago, Cruel Summer said:

I think she sort of knew it wouldn't really do anything. Cruel Summer happened almost entirely without her trying to make it happen, apparently derailing actual plans she had for a Speak Now TV single, and became a once-in-a-career hit all on its own, with the fans starting it and the label eventually capitulating by sending it to radio. It was essentially the purest crystallization of Taylormania and it was out of her hands entirely. If she tried to make more of it, nothing would have really been different, so it would have been a sunk cost for no reason. I think it was smart to let it run its course mostly naturally, the odd live version or remix notwithstanding.

 

11 hours ago, umich said:

No sense in wasting money on promo when the Eras Tour did all the work for it to smash.

 

 

9 hours ago, JoeAg said:

it was her Rock n Roll Suicide moment (released as a single well into another album cycle after several other eras had already passed, didn't need a music video to be a success, fed into her contemporaneous success in the zeitgeist…)

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm kind of joking but also kind of not because it's a similar type of situation. they did release singles back in the day after the era of the original album the single appeared on had already faded so there are similarities if you think about it

 

  

3 hours ago, Teneo said:

Being sucessful means having good budget management skills. Cruel Summer was coming off her latest video being a big underperformance and some other disappointments in her  latest MV releases (reach, acclaim, impact, etc), while the song was doing great with no visuals. The cancelled video from 2020 was also too much of a hassle to resume production and producing a new concept for a song that was already smashing while she was on tour was complicated. Money was spent somewhere else (early production of a 1989 TV video and TTPD project expenses). The fact that songs like Cruel Summer, Enchanted, Is It Over Now and more exceeded expectations with zero effort on the visual front promoted the thought that MV were not making much of a difference nowadays. Which is a shame, because I personally thought that she should have done videos for Down Bad, Guilty as Sin and So High School pre-release. 

 

 

These sum it up well. It definitely kinda became the [unofficial?] theme song of her ERAS TOUR era/TAYLORMANIA 2023-2024. 

 

One thing to note about visuals, now that virality is a thing, the visuals can now come from fans/influencers/content creators, in a sense.

Edited Thursday at 01:37 PM by HarajukuPrincess

[Sad Serenade]

Honestly music videos don't have a big impact anymore but I wish she did more for this song.

It was a huge smash and it's quite impressive because it started only because of stans loving it and streaming.

Edited Thursday at 02:28 PM by Sad Serenade