Sugarland have been teasing us with snippets of their Taylor Swift collaboration ‘Babe‘ for a while now. Today, the video is finally here, and it’s a truly a thing of beauty – a campy, heavily Mad Men–inspired melodrama about cheating and revenge.
In the video, Sugarland singer Jennifer Nettles plays a glamorous ’60s housewife, blissfully unaware that her husband Brandon Routh is having an affair with his sultry, Joan Holloway-esque secretary, portrayed by Taylor.
Taylor Swift wrote the song for inclusion on her 2012 album Red, although it didn’t make the cut. Given the timeline and her endless propensity for skewering her ex-boyfriends in song, many fans believe that its lyrics are about Harry Styles.
The singer came up with the concept and treatment for the video herself before handing the song over to Sugarland, and the country pop duo said that working with her was “super natural”, although I’m unsure if that’s actually meant to be one word or two.
Honestly, I feel like hosing water into a pool while wearing a fancy dressing down and swigging a martini is going to be my aesthetic next summer. Go ahead and pour yourself a drink and enjoy the high drama, you’ve earned it, babes.
