Sorry, the old “Look What You Made Me Do” can’t come to the phone right now. Why? ‘Cause the song has been fully updated and re-recorded ahead of Taylor Swift‘s upcoming Reputation (Taylor’s Version), and it got its premiere in the latest episode of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
The song comes at the very beginning of the new episode, which opens with the handmaids staging an uprising led by June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) against the Commanders. Soundtracked by the revamped version of the pop star’s Reputation lead single — featuring re-creations of Jack Antonoff’s original synths and thrumming drum beat, plus a new vocal take from an older, more experienced Swift — the women of the show remain stoic as they walk in formation, with June at one point barely escaping into the back of a truck as explosions go off behind her.
Emmy-winning Handmaid’s star and executive producer Elisabeth Moss tells Billboard in an exclusive statement that this musical moment has been a long time coming.
“I’ve been wanting to use a Taylor song for many years on the show and we finally found the perfect spot for a track from her, and I’m so glad we waited because there could not be a more perfect song for a more perfect moment,” says Moss, who attended a Toronto stop of The Eras Tour alongside her Handmaid’s co-star Bradley Whitford last year. “Taylor has been such an inspiration to me personally. As a Swiftie myself, and I think I can speak for [co-star] Yvonne [Strahovski] and our entire cast as well, who are all Swifties, it’s such an honor to be able to use her music in the final episodes of our show.
“I said to my editor, Wendy, ‘I really want to find a place for a Taylor track in the last 2 episodes of the show’ and we wanted to find a music queue for the opening of 9, and all the credit goes to Wendy for picking this track for this moment!”
Emmy-winning Handmaid’s Tale editor Wendy Hallam Martin said sometimes music synchs are just “meant to be,” as they agree this one was.
“In trying many songs for this specific moment in our series and knowing how much Lizzie wanted a strong female voice and message, Taylor was really the artist that delivered both lyrically and tonally,” Hallam Martin tells Billboard in an exclusive statement. “Our badass main character June in this scene, really was saying ‘look what you made me do’ and the song couldn’t have been more on point. A perfect pairing. When I laid the song up against the scene, it just landed perfectly thematically, rhythmically and magically hit all the edit points which sometimes happens if it’s meant to be. I shared it with Lizzie and we both knew immediately that this was the one!”
Watch the opening scene of season 6, episode 9 of The Handmaid’s Tale — and listen for the new version of “Look What You Made Me Do” — below.
The feature marks one of the first tastes of Reputation (Taylor’s Version) that Swifties have gotten — and it’s a big one at that. The entire sequence includes the full first and second verses of “Look What You Made Me Do,” plus two choruses.
Released in 2017, “Look What You Made Me Do” was the starting point for Swift’s edgy Reputation era. The track spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, while the album topped the Billboard 200 for four weeks.
Along with the 14-time Grammy winner’s self-titled 2007 debut album, Reputation is just one of two LPs Swift has yet to re-record as part of her ongoing mission to reclaim the rights to her first six albums’ masters. So far, all four of the re-recordings she has completed — Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) — have debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
This October will mark two years since Swift last dropped a Taylor’s Version album, with the 1989 re-record, leaving fans antsy for the next one in the sequence. As far as Reputation (Taylor’s Version) is concerned, the musician has only given out a few breadcrumbs so far; in March 2024, she premiered a brief snippet of the revamped “Look What You Made Me Do” in an episode of Apple TV+’s The Dynasty: New England Patriots, and in August 2023, she contributed “Delicate (Taylor’s Version)” to Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty.
Thanks to a string of possible clues on the pop star’s website and social media accounts. However, a lot of Swifties are convinced that she’s going to announce something — possibly a release date for Reputation (Taylor’s Version) — at the American Music Awards on Memorial Day (May 26).
