The Evolution of Taylor Swift’s Music and Lyrics

Musical Trends and Lyrical Themes

Yellow Kangaroo
Caroline Ruggiero, Doreen Luo, Yuze Qin

2023-03-01

Introduction

• Taylor Swift Has over 534 million combined social media followers.

• Published over 270 songs and Won 14 Grammys.

• So …

• Taylor Swift’s songs have a significant impact in the modern music industry, and her discography is a rich source for us to learn the evolving societal musical tastes and trends.

• Also, by exploring the evolution of her musical attributes and lyrical themes in her songs, we aim to learn valuable perspectives on consumer preferences and the dynamics of the music market in the U.S.

Taylor’s Data Overview

• Dataset: Taylor Swift

• Source: ‘taylor’ R package

• 3 Main Dataframes:

  • taylor_album_songs (29 var, 194 obs): Lyrics and audio features from Spotify API for official album songs.

  • taylor_all_songs (29 var, 274 obs): Entire discography including EPs and singles.

  • taylor_albums (5 var, 14 obs): Summarizing all album release history.

Q1: Taylor’s Evolution of Sound

How has Taylor Swift’s musical style evolved in terms of emotional tone and energy over her career?

Q1: Taylor’s Evolution of Sound

Q2: Lyric and Themes

What are the most common words in Taylor Swift’s lyrics across her albums?

We can Fearlessly Speak Now that Red love stories are an eternal theme of Taylor’s songs.

Q2: Lyric and Themes

What are the most common themes in Taylor Swift’s lyrics across her albums?

T H A N K S !!!