Taylor Swift’s music has pretty much been the soundtrack of my life. When she was waiting for her Romeo in Love Story, so was I. When she was ignoring the haters in Shake It Off, so was I. And when she was lying awake in the middle of the night in Anti-Hero, so was I.
As a data scientist, I’ve been wanting to analyze Taylor Swift’s songs for years. She’s known for her complex lyrics and Easter eggs sprinkled throughout her music and messages. Would I be able to uncover something new using data analysis? (Spoiler alert: yes!)
With her Eras Tour kicking off this month, I thought it’d be the perfect time to dig into her 10 studio albums in the medium that I know best — data visualizations.
1. Why The Eras Tour is in Such High Demand
Taylor Swift made national news when the demand for her upcoming tour overwhelmed Ticketmaster. We all know she’s a famous musician, but what made The Eras Tour especially popular? (Swipe through images)
Due to the pandemic, it’s been 5 years since Taylor last toured and she’s released 4 studio albums in the meantime. Plus, The Eras Tour covers all 10 studio albums – it’s basically a best-of tour!
2. Taylor Swift’s Sound Evolution Over Time
Taylor started out as a country singer, she transitioned to pop, and her sound keeps on changing with each new album. I wanted to see if I could quantify the evolution, so I used the Spotify API look at the sound characteristics of her music. (Swipe through images)
You can see that her earlier albums all cluster together, meaning that her sound was very similar on those albums. As she grows up, she’s become more experimental, with each album introducing new sounds and moods. I can’t wait to see where she goes next!
The technical details for those of you who are interested – I looked at the acousticness (instrumental vs electronic) and valence (positive sound vs negative sound) of all of her songs and averaged them for each album.
3. All the Colors in Taylor Swift’s Songs
Taylor is known for having extremely descriptive lyrics where she references specific people and dates, what she was wearing, how she was feeling and also lots of colors.
I loved this visualization capturing the timeline of wardrobe colors in Breaking Bad and wanted to create my own for TSwift. (Swipe through images)
The most interesting pattern that I found was that her earlier six albums mostly stuck to basic colors like red, gold, blue and black and her later albums, starting with Lover, started to explore more complex colors.
She goes from the song Red on her 4th album to the song Maroon on her 10th album, where her perception of love changes from “burning red” to a more mature “maroon”.
4. All the Swear Words in Taylor Swift’s Songs
When I was listening to Taylor’s latest album Midnights, one thing that stood out to me was the amount of swearing. That’s when I realized that she didn’t swear that much in her earlier albums.
The word damn was used in just one song in her debut album, Taylor Swift. No swear words appeared in her next two albums, Fearless and Speak Now. Compare that to Midnights, where half the songs are explicit.
I also wanted to call out the word sexy. While not a swear word, the only time she’s ever used the term sexy in all 10 albums is in the song Anti-Hero — “Sometimes, I feel like everybody is a sexy baby and I’m a monster on a hill”. I find it pretty impressive that she didn’t use the term at all during her first two decades as a songwriter!
5. The Last Line of Every Taylor Swift Album
I love the last song on every Taylor Swift album. The final song seems to capture her mental state upon completing the album and I feel resolved and content after listening to it.
When I looked at the last line of each of her albums, I was able to see her thought progression over time, from her teen years of hope, to her twenties learning to overcome hard times, to her thirties becoming more confident in herself.
The way the final lines capture her mindset over time is so fascinating and it’s one of those things where I can’t tell if it was done on purpose, or if it just sort of happened.
But I should know by now that with Taylor, everything is intentional. Like she said so herself, she is a mastermind.
More Taylor Swift Data Visualizations
These are just 5 of the 22 Taylor Swift data visualizations I created for this project.
For the Swifties:
- To see all 22 data visualizations about her lyrics, collaborators and more, check out my Extended Version blog post.
Want to watch a video?
- I explain all 22 Taylor Swift data visualizations in my YouTube video.
