--- title: Taylor Swift Gets Zombie Makeup for Look What You Made Me Do description: For her "Look What You Made Me Do" music video, Swift went full zombie with elaborate graveyard makeup. canonical: https://time.com/4947807/taylor-swift-zombie/ author: Raisa Bruner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-09-19T15:26:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:47:23.321Z og:title: Check Out How Taylor Swift Transformed Into a Zombie og:description: Here's how Swift went full zombie for the "Look What You Made Me Do" music video og:url: https://time.com/4947807/taylor-swift-zombie/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt197b6565d1fcc306/6988db7e656a3f63adbd1760/taylor-swift-music-video-07.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1788 og:image:height: 1006 og:image:alt: taylor-swift-music-video-07 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Check Out How Taylor Swift Transformed Into a Zombie twitter:description: Here's how Swift went full zombie for the "Look What You Made Me Do" music video twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt197b6565d1fcc306/6988db7e656a3f63adbd1760/taylor-swift-music-video-07.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Check Out Taylor Swift's Transformation Into a 'Straight Up Dead' Zombie > Sponsored content. 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It curates the day's top headlines with TIME's reporting and analysis across politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. It is free to join at time.com/newsletters. #### How do I sign up for The Brief? The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=e8ae2edf-9d24-4c92-90db-c028575ce8ea&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1)  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Sep 19, 2017 3:26 PM UTC   by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Sep 19, 2017 3:26 PM UTC Taylor Swift’s return to the [top of the charts](http://time.com/4927212/taylor-swift-despacito-billboard-charts/) was marked by an unexpected new persona: that of a zombie. In her music video for [“Look What You Made Me Do,”](http://time.com/4918411/taylor-swift-look-what-you-made-me-do-music-video-references/) the _1989_ singer decided to take a cue from pop culture’s obsession with the [_Walking Dead_](http://time.com/4869678/season-8-walking-dead-trailer-comic-con/) (and, perhaps, Michael Jackson’s iconic “Thriller” video), transforming herself into a decaying, animated corpse. With a made up gaunt face and bedraggled hair, Swift opens the video in a nighttime graveyard, clawing her way back to the surface to wreak havoc on all her enemies. But of course, it’s not easy to turn a normal human into a zombie, even if just for a video shoot. So Buzzfeed is giving fans a peek behind the scenes to see just how Swift got into character in the makeup chair. “This is definitely a revolutionary look in beauty. It’s called, just, you know, straight up dead,” Swift notes in the [behind the scenes footage](https://www.facebook.com/pg/BuzzFeedEntertainment/videos/), her face already eerily caked in deathly prosthetics. “You know what’s weird? When you look this gross, you just have no physical insecurities. Like none. They’re gone. It’s freeing. I encourage everyone to look like a corpse at least once,” she added drily. The video tracks the activity of a team of makeup artists who apply some kind of mask to Swift’s face and even use faux nails and weird bits of fluff to turn her whole body into its post-grave look. Lucky for her, Swift doesn’t spend all of the music video looking this “gross,” in her own words. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4947807/taylor-swift-zombie/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4947807/taylor-swift-zombie/"},"headline":"Check Out Taylor Swift's Transformation Into a 'Straight Up Dead' Zombie","datePublished":"2017-09-19T15:26:57.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:47:23.321Z","description":"For her \"Look What You Made Me Do\" music video, Swift went full zombie with elaborate graveyard makeup.","url":"https://time.com/4947807/taylor-swift-zombie/","keywords":["Newsfeed","celebrities","Taylor Swift"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt197b6565d1fcc306/6988db7e656a3f63adbd1760/taylor-swift-music-video-07.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Raisa Bruner","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt197b6565d1fcc306/6988db7e656a3f63adbd1760/taylor-swift-music-video-07.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"taylor-swift-music-video-07","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4947807/taylor-swift-zombie/","name":"Check Out Taylor Swift's Transformation Into a 'Straight Up Dead' Zombie"}}]}] ```