Taylor Swift’s Discography

Finding Trends in Song Metrics and Critic Scores

Red Dingo
Carolina Herrera, Ciara Malamug, Mateo Rodriguez Cortina, and Wilson Eisner

2024-03-01

Introduction

Our Data

Taylor Swift data from the TidyTuesday project (RforDataScience on GitHub).

  • taylor_all_songs: All of Swift’s songs ever released; variables include featured artists, album, song energy, song danceability, etc.
  • taylor_album_songs: All of Swift’s songs part of albums; same variables as taylor_all_songs.
  • taylor_albums: All of Swift’s albums; variables include meta-critic score, user score, etc.

Question 1

Danceability vs Valence: What has a higher impact on an album’s Meta-critic Score?

Danceability

Valence

Comparison

Linear Regression Model

  • 74% of the variability in the meta-critic score (low percentage).
  • F-statistic = 0.2531, p-value = 0.7832
  • Indicates there is no statistically significant relationship between the predictors and the outcome variable.
term estimate std.error t.value p.value
(Intercept) 107.4690 40.5827 2.6481 0.0330
album_dance_mean -39.5667 55.9337 -0.7074 0.5022
album_valence_mean -10.5102 43.1169 -0.2438 0.8144
f.statistic p.value
0.2531 0.7832

Discussion

Neither danceability nor valence in Swift’s music show a significant impact on the meta-critic score of an album.

  • Very weak negative correlation between danceability and meta-critic score.
  • No correlation between valence and meta-critic score; extremely high p-value.
  • Boxplot shows level of danceability and valence do not have much of an effect on the meta-critic score of album.
  • Linear model is not statistically significant, meaning that there is no evidence that the predictors have an effect on the meta-critic score.

Question 2

From Re-Releases to Loudness: How Has Taylor’s Music Changed Over Time?

  • Statistically significant decrease in loudness over time
  • Variation, but little change in audio metrics in re-releases

Change in Loudness Over Time

Taylor’s Version vs Original

Discussion

Over the course of Taylor’s Swift career, there were several changes in multiple audio features

  • Scatterplot reveals a decrease in loudness over the years
    • This change happened quicker in her album releases compared to her singles
  • Bar plot shows that there were slight increases in acousticness and speechiness but a small decrease in danceability on Taylor’s Versions
  • These changes may reflect Taylor Swift’s ventures into other music genres, showing the evolution of her music.