Taylor Swift appears naked in new music video 

She once claimed that she did not need to remove her clothes to sell records.

Taylor Swift has employed a little creative ambiguity to stick to that message, whilst at the same time appearing to be totally naked in a new video.

The 27-year-old US pop star on Monday released a preview of a music video for her latest single, Ready For It, in which she appears unclothed, with geometric lines of lights across her body, although she is likely wearing a nude-coloured bodysuit.

Swift posted three short clips on her Instagram page and within an hour they had been viewed more than 2.5 million times.

In a 2014 magazine interview, the pop star insisted she would not be stripping off like some of her pop rivals.

"I find it relatively easy to keep my clothes on because I don\'t really feel like taking them off,” she told America\'s Glamour magazine.

“It\'s not an urge I have. For me risky is revealing what really happened in my life through music.

“Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is. That\'s putting myself out there, maybe even more than taking my shirt off."

The following year, she added: “My point is not to be sexy, my point is not to turn masses of people on.”

Swift, who is famed for writing songs about former boyfriends, will release her latest video in full on Thursday.

In the teaser, set in a futuristic sci-fi universe, she is filmed walking down a corridor with a hood over her head before transforming into a robot or cyborg-like being.

Another segment shows the singer gazing into a floating, glowing orb, while another snippet sees her smashing through what looks like a glass cage.

Fans of the star took to Twitter to share their thoughts about the video, with many expressing  confusion over her apparent nudity.

One asked: "Is she naked with editing or is it a bodysuit?? She had to know we\'d be wondering from the trailer!"

"I\'m still attempting to digest the image of Taylor Swift in a nude body suit for her new video omg," one surprised fan wrote.

Grammy-award winning Swift has had several high-profile romances over the years, including with actor Tom Hiddleston, 36, and DJ Calvin Harris, 33, and she is known for using her experiences as song-writing material.

She is currently believed to be in a relationship with 26-year-old British actor Joe Alwyn.

Last year, she was said to be “furious” that a Kanye West video had used a naked wax model of herself in bed with various people.

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