Directed by Joseph Kahn and produced by Swift, the music video for "Bad Blood" features an ensemble cast consisting of female singers, actresses, and models.

[16] Jem Aswad of Billboard described the production as "simplistic" and compared it to Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" (2005),[17] The Observer's Kitty Empire likened the "stark beats" to the music of Charli XCX,[18] and NME's Matthew Horton deemed the song a "bitter stomp" that evokes Beastie Boys.

"[14] Jon Pareles described Swift's vocals throughout the refrain as tense,[14] while Consequence of Sound's Sasha Geffen wrote that she sang "through gritted teeth".

[19][20] In an interview for the September 2014 cover issue for Rolling Stone, Swift said that the song was about a fellow female artist whom she had thought of as a close friend; she felt betrayed after this person attempted to "sabotage an entire arena tour" by "[hiring] a bunch of people out from under [her]".

[21] She wanted to make it clear that it was about losing a friend and not a lover because she "knew people would immediately be going in one direction", referring to how the audience interpreted her songs in association with her love life.

"[25] According to Chuck Klosterman, by clarifying the inspiration behind "Bad Blood" to divert the media from her love life without disclosing the subject, Swift "propagated the existence of a different rumor that offered the added value of making the song more interesting".

[39] In the week ending July 12, 2015, the single broke the record for the most single-week plays in the Pop Songs chart's 22-year history, surpassing Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth's "See You Again" (2015).

[27] Mike Diver from Clash described it as "a litany of diary-page break-up clichés set to directionless thumps and fuzzes",[61] while Jay Lustig from The Record criticized Swift's delivery as "merely petulant, howling" and the beats as "repetitive".

[72] For Vulture's Nate Jones, the song represented the peak of Swift's "Max Martin era", with its melody being expertly crafted but lyrics absent of "humanity".

[73] Reviewing the remix version featuring Lamar, August Brown of the Los Angeles Times expressed confusion towards the rapper's appearance and contended that it was a move to garner a mainstream audience after his "epic" album To Pimp a Butterfly (2015).

[29] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian dubbed the single "a masterstroke" with "potent and effective" verses from Lamar and an "even more anthemic" chorus compared to the album version.

[81] The cast include, in order of appearance: Catastrophe (Swift), Arsyn (Selena Gomez), Welvin da Great (Lamar), Lucky Fiori (Lena Dunham), the Trinity (Hailee Steinfeld), Dilemma (Serayah), Slay-Z (Gigi Hadid), Destructa X (Ellie Goulding), Homeslice (Martha Hunt), Mother Chucker (Cara Delevingne), Cut Throat (Zendaya), The Crimson Curse (Hayley Williams), Frostbyte (Lily Aldridge), Knockout (Karlie Kloss), Domino (Jessica Alba), Justice (Mariska Hargitay), Luna (Ellen Pompeo), and Headmistress (Cindy Crawford).

[82] Set in a fictional London, the video starts with Catastrophe and her partner, Arsyn, fighting off a group of men in a corporate office for a mysterious briefcase.

[85] Media publications compared the video's production to that of blockbuster movies[b] and opined that it resembled action and sci-fi films and series such as Sin City, RoboCop, Tron, Kill Bill, and Mad Max: Fury Road.

D'Addario wrote that Swift followed Madonna by "[paring] visual aesthetics with entirely unrelated songs, giving the viewer a whole new thing to talk about", and thus succeeded in promoting herself as "2015's all-around-perfect pop star".

[80] The "squad" was a point of contention: Kornhaber applauded the video as an imagining of an all-female action movie,[92] but Jennifer Gannon from The Irish Times considered Swift's "squad" as a means to build a cult of personality rather than embody female empowerment,[97] an idea corroborated by Eve Barlow of The Times, who described it as "an exclusive, Mean Girls-style clique of perfect, stalk-limbed and shiny-haired clones".

[99] Roth added that by casting Lamar as the ringleader behind the female squad, the video was "just a violent, pre-modern copy of the patriarchal structures at the office".

[115] At the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards on August 30, Swift and Nicki Minaj jointly performed "Bad Blood" and "The Night Is Still Young".

[116] Swift also sang the song during her concerts at the United States Grand Prix on October 22, 2016,[117] and the pre-Super Bowl event Super Saturday Night on February 4, 2017.

[120][121] According to The Ringer's Nora Princiotti, the mash-up improved one of Swift's weakest songs ("Bad Blood") by tweaking its arrangement and using the melody of an "early classic" ("Should've Said No").

[122] On the Eras Tour (2023–2024), Swift performed "Bad Blood" as the screen showed a house on fire and the venue lit up in red flames.

The comedians Cariad Lloyd and Jenny Bede's parody of "Bad Blood" called for withdrawal of taxation of women's sanitary products in the United Kingdom.

[125] The animated web series How It Should Have Ended in September 2015 created a parody called "Bat Blood", which satirizes the marketing of the 2016 film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

[127] The music video was parodied in the sitcom Great News, featuring a "squad" consisting of Tina Fey and Nicole Richie, which aired in October 2017.

[128] The rock band Drenge and the singer-songwriter Alessia Cara covered the song for BBC Radio 1's live sessions in June[129] and July 2015,[130] and the rapper-singer Drake used a snippet of it in an advertisement for Apple Music in November 2016.

[131] Anthony Vincent, a YouTuber and musician, covered "Bad Blood" to make it sound like it had been sung by 19 diverse acts, including the Rolling Stones, TLC, Cyndi Lauper, Barney & Friends, and Sepultura.

[138] Andrew Unterberger from Spin preferred Adams's version to Swift's, writing that it "[strips the] overbearing hyperactivity ... [and removes the] sneering obnoxiousness".

[140] In less enthusiastic reviews, Billboard's Chris Payne deemed it the worst cover on Adams's 1989 because he thought it failed to highlight Swift's songwriting strengths,[141] and Vulture's Jillian Mapes thought that by switching the "sinister beats" with "coffeehouse-singer [...] strumming and a jangly counter-melody in the chorus", Adams turned "Bad Blood" from a sonically distinctive track into an unoriginal song.

[209] Some critics commented that there were subtle changes; Notion's Rachel Martin wrote that Swift made "some dialect tweaks" and sang "with more depth and emotion" in the bridge, which resulted in a more powerful conclusion,[210] while The Music's Tione Zylstra said that her vocals were "angrier and bitter".

[207] On the Billboard Hot 100, "Bad Blood (Taylor's Version)" debuted at number seven on the chart dated November 11, 2023,[214] extending Swift's record for the most top-10 singles (49) among women.