She’ll Never Go “Out Of Style”
Taylor Swift never “goes out of style”- even after her hiatus from music. Taylor Swift just dropped a new album, “Midnights”, where almost all her songs were on the top 100 songs in the US and 5 of them were the top 5 songs in the country. Taylor Swift has seen fame larger than Justin Bieber- some would say that she will go down as one of the biggest or the biggest pop stars of the millenial/gen-z generation. This past month, Taylor Swift pre-sale tickets went on sale on Ticketmaster. Little did they know that there expected 1,000,000 buyers on the site would turn into 3.5 million. Not only did this crash most people’s terminals, but Taylor Swift also still managed to sell 2 million tickets in one day. Not only did she sell these 2 million tickets alone, but she also sold out her LA show at the So-fi stadium for 7 days in a row. Most artists can’t even sell out one show. Her fame speaks to her name as her albums are constantly trending- ever since buying back her own music she has been dropping her own, “Taylor Versions” of her albums to show how much she owns her music. She had a few years of no music on Spotify as she didn’t want anyone listening to her music because she didn’t own it. Not only is she bringing back her own versions, but girls across the country are literally “freaking out” at the idea of the older Taylor Swift singing her old songs. Some of her fans, the mega fans, have been to every single one of her tours, movies, and secret dates. She speaks to and helps many girls, now women around the world to encourage them to be the best version of themselves even when going through a rough patch. Her music is exactly how she wants her fans to listen to it- to be seen and to be heard.
Using Spotify’s API, there are features on sounds that analyze Taylor’s music. There are also features to look at top albums or singles, as well as the popularity ratio between other artists, or even how many countries her music is available in. The main idea is to truly understand the story of how and why Taylor Swift has attracted a tremendous amount of fame in her career. Compared to other artists, Taylor Swift has a rating of 100% popularity on Spotify, whereas Harry Styles has 94% and R&B, rap, and pop artist SZA has a rating of only 90%. Yes, 90% is still a very high rating, but not as high as a perfect score of 100%. This can be because Taylor Swift has many many albums compared to other artists from over the years, or the fact that people have continuously listened to her music.
Not only does Taylor Swift on her own have a rating of 100% popularity on Spotify, but her latest Album also “Midnights’ ‘ has an average popularity rating of 90%. With a popularity rating so high, one could assume that her albums and individual songs must have a “musical” aspect in which engages the general audience to like her music more than others. Taylor Swift used to get a lot of hate for writing about break ups, yet she has acquired the title, “Artist of the Decade and Woman of the Decade”. She is infamous for songs such as, “Shake it Off” and “You Belong with Me”, making the danceability to those songs both around 87%. This feature in the Spotify API can explain whether the engagement of an artist is high or low.
Danceability is an engaging factor as, even if a person can’t dance, the body releases endorphins either way- resulting in a happier consumption of time spent dancing and or listening to the music. This can keep engagement of music up as one turns on songs to listen to because they enjoy them. Most people have a “go to” song to scream at, to cry for or just to make them “have a good time”. People also create playlists in which describe their moods. In the college scene, “throwbacks” are a huge hit when it comes to clubs and bars. When you are with your friends and all of a sudden here “You Belong With Me”, the majority of the crowd will start screaming and then continue to scream the lyrics and dance. Danceability gives the artist and the user a sense of wanting to come back for more of the artist’s music or it gives the artist the insight to keep creating the kind of music they do.
Another feature to look at to analyze Taylor Swift success is her ability to keep all her songs on her latest album, “Midnights”, in a time signature of 4. For people who don’t understand music, it won’t make a difference to them if they know this or not, but it will make a difference to listening to her music. Keeping a cohesive time signature between her whole album makes it more intriguing for the listener to understand the structure of the song even without the lyrics given. With the help of the time signature, artists, such as Taylor Swift can create lyrics that go with each measure of the song. She can add notes onto the bars where she sees fit and add in a lyrical component to the time signature. Taylor’s “speechiness” rating on her recent album is 92%- this means that most of her songs are more lyrics than sound.
Another aspect that keeps Taylor trending, is the fact that her music is available in over 150 markets- 182 to be exact. This gives her the power to speak to multiple audiences around the world and give world tours. Her ability to spread her music around the world gives her the chance to keep creating music that makes her fans happy.
In addition to sound audio features that Spotify has, Spotify also enables the ability to visualize the similarities between each track. In doing so, python is a great tool for making plots such as this:
In this plot, we can see that Paris, Maroon and Snow on the Beach are on very similar grounds. This can be related to the key where all those songs are in key 7 relating to the Spotify API. Comparing each song to each other is interesting in a way to see how Taylor can keep some of her songs so similar, yet they are very different in Nature. Although all three of these songs are in a time signature of 4, Snow On The Beach is the slowest song of all of them. These songs are heavy on the bass which helps to feel the time signature and could also be why they are very similar in terms of sound.
Two other songs that are related are, “The Great War”, and “Anti-Hero”. Most will know one line from Anti-Hero, that being, “It’s me, I’m, I’m the problem it’s me”. Taylor Swift stays relevant regardless of listeners listening to her full songs or not. About a month ago a trend on TikTok was going around with her song Anti-Hero, before her album even dropped, which increased the streams and views of her music. Her top song, “Anti-Hero” has 358,505,789 plays, compared to 70 million plays of The Great War. So, even just a snippet of one song, made her streams go up by millions.
Analyzing Taylors music can paint a picture of how successful she is by millions. From 2 million sales in one day, to over millions of streams on Spotify. She is one of the most influential artists that can completely capture the imagination of her audience and make their listening experience the best it could possibly be. She manages to make every song and lyric personal so that it can be relatable to anyone who listens. She focuses her lyrics on a poetic way and explains how we put on different masks for different people, but when it comes to writing, all of her masks come off to be fully vulnerable for her audience. She has been able to turn her music into a full experience by releasing her latest extended album at 3 AM, which forces her fans to wait until it drops. She is one of the best storytellers in music and she speaks to this by accepting one of her Grammys with one of her most famous quotes- “I’m intimidated by the fear of being average”. Now, she can reimagine her music and release her own versions to fully share the story and message she wanted to get across. She will continue to share her emotions and help to strengthen people across the world through her music- “if you have the power, use it for good”. — Taylor Swift.
