Taylor Swift and Sugarland's "Babe" Video Is a Heartbreaking Examination of an Affair

Taylor Swift Sugarland — (Image credit: YouTube)

The full video for Taylor Swift and Sugarland's collaboration "Babe," is here and it will wreck you like the collapsing marriage it focuses on.

On Wednesday, the artists released a trailer for the video that hinted at the storyline—a "perfect" married couple in the 1960s whose marriage is torn apart by an office affair.

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"Babe" delivered on the promise of its trailer and then some. In the full video, we see Jennifer Nettles, as the blonde wife, break down (and rise back up) upon the realization that her husband (played by Brandon Routh) is the cheating on her with a woman at work (played by a red-haired Swift). By the end of the video, Swift's cold-hearted Other Woman character is in the same place as Nettles, realizing that she can't trust the man she's been seeing.

Watch the full video below:

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Swift wrote the song, which she has said was written during her Red era. She also, apparently, wrote the treatment for the gripping video. Sugarland's Kristian Bush and Nettles talked about Swift's hands-on involvement in developing the video at the CMT Awards on Wednesday.

"She actually reached out to us and said, 'I’ve got a great idea for the video,' and she wrote the treatment," Nettles told People.

"And we looked at it, and said, 'Oh my gosh, this is awesome,'" Bush added.

And, if the '60s-inspired video gives you major Mad Men vibes, that's understandable (and intentional). According to People, it was shot on the Mad Men set in Los Angeles.

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Kayleigh Roberts is a freelance writer and editor with over 10 years of professional experience covering entertainment of all genres, from new movie and TV releases to nostalgia, and celebrity news. Her byline has appeared in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Allure, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, Bustle, Refinery29, Girls’ Life Magazine, Just Jared, and Tiger Beat, among other publications. She's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.