Evolution of Love by Taylor Swift
Nicole Mah and Ryan Schildwachter
Introduction
From teenage country sweetheart to international pop sensation, Taylor Swift is known for having some of the best-selling music of all time. Her narrative lyricism, which is often inspired by her personal life, is one the largest reasons for her popularity. In this final project, we will analyze how she has evolved lyrically over time and how that relates to her personal life. In particular, we would like to track the evolution of her perspective of love and its variations, as well some of the core themes she addresses over time using computational methods, thus reflecting back on her life experiences.
Dataset, Methodology and Limitations
We used Genius.com to collect the lyrics for 9 Taylor Swift studio albums. Genius is a community-based website where any member can upload data. This includes biographies, song facts, lyric transcriptions, and cover artwork. Editors then review the submitted information and determine what becomes actual Genius data. We used the LyricsGenius API wrapper by John Miller to make working with the Genius API easier and to increase the functionality of the lyrics. Our dataset includes Taylor Swift (2006), Fearless (2008), Speak Now (2010), Red (2012), 1989 (2014), reputation (2017), Lover (2019), folklore (2020), and evermore (2020).
We then manually removed non-songs like poems, prologues and linear-notes (they could not be removed by the remove_non_song function). We then prepared the lyrics for analysis by setting the text to lowercase and removing stop words, punctuation, and apostrophes. These were saved as text files and stored in a single folder. The dataset also does not include sections of the albums that did not constitute songs, such as poems and prologues.
To understand thematic changes in her music over time, we built a topic model based on her albums. Using little mallet wrapper we created 15 topics for her 9 albums to identify common and distinct themes among the albums. We concluded that every album had its own specific theme while a few topics remained relevant across albums.
We also ran a sentiment analysis across the 9 albums to look for emotional trends. This was done by using vadersentiment to create a line chart that shows sentiment score per album. Her 2010 album Speak Now had the lowest sentiment score whilst her 2012 album Red which had the highest. We picked these 2 albums for a close examination of the distinct sentiment scores.
Finally, we zoomed in on specific albums by conducting a world frequency data analysis using countvectorizer. We noted the frequency of the word “love” as well as colors in our topic model.
The dataset also does not include different versions and editions (e.g. evermore Japanese version or folklore deluxe edition) and did not include unreleased songs (e.g. Lucky You) or re-released albums, (such as Fearless Taylor’s Version). This was to prevent repetition of lyrics and tracks, as this may skew the results of word frequency in favors of albums which had been re-recorded or had multiple versions and editions. However, this may also hinder the analysis of her transition as an artist and in terms of personal growth. For example, the rerecording and expansion of Fearless as “Taylor’s Version” was defined as a nostalgic and celebratory experience: for fans, who could relive her music from over a decade ago, and for Taylor as an act of empowerment against her first label, Big Machine. Moreover, non-songs and extra information are vital and perhaps the most crucial when considering the true connection between her songs and life experiences.
Equally important, we are only analyzing the lyrics and not the instrumental sounds itself. The actual sound and genre of albums are missing from the dataset. As the transition from country teenage sweetheart to American pop princess to independent folk-pop superstar largely defines Swift’s growth as an artist, the lack of sound, tonal shifts and genre in the data indicates an inability to further analyze this change. Lastly, the dataset does not include any album covers, so we are unable to analyze the artwork and aesthetic, both of which are important in understanding her choices and growth.
Some ethical considerations include how certain artists are against being on Genius. For example, Lupe Fiasco claimed not to have a “problem” using a site like Genius to read lyrics and lyrical analysis from verified annotators. He believes that the site could obstruct listeners from personal interpretation and the enjoyment of deciphering complicated metaphors and references in lyrics. To a smaller extent, Swift dislikes sharing personal information about her life in her songs. To TIME, she stated that she “let people fill in the blanks on their own… I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.” Another ethical consideration is how we represent Swift’s music and how it would affect her career. Obviously, our college project will not have any impact on her reputation, but a larger and more renowned study could influence public opinion of Taylor Swift. Furthermore, any connection we make from her lyrics to her life would be educated assumptions, unless confirmed by Swift.
Analysis
Swift has a powerful ability to display incredible vulnerability in her lyrics, but is known for having been guarded about her image and private life. Ever since she shot to stardom, people have been hungry to know about her political affiliations (“Who is Taylor Swift voting for?” was the most searched result on Google in November during the 2016 election”) and timelines of her romantic interests. Nonetheless, she tells her story about her life through her music.
Figure 1. Heat Map of Topics in Taylor Swift Albums
Taylor Swift is the self-titled debut studio album, released in 2006. The lyrics are written from the perspective as a teenager from an American small town. While the album consists of confessional songwriting that is associated with country music and primarily features elements of country music with guitars, banjos and fiddles, she did not write about stereotypical themes of “tractors and hay bales”. Instead, she wrote about her observations and reflections on romantic relationships, friendships, and insecurities from a contemplative, honest teenage perspective. This is demonstrated by our topic label of ‘wishes’, which included key words such as “‘wishing’, ‘stars’, ‘smile’, ‘pretty’, and ‘hope’. This is reflected in the lead single and first track “Tim McGraw”, which is inspired by her relationship with a senior as a freshman in high school. The song conveys her hopes that after her boyfriend ended the relationship and left for college, he would reminisce about her every time he heard their mutual Tim McGraw song.
Fearless (Ryan’s favorite!) is the second studio album, released in 2008, which catapulted Swift into mainstream prominence. The lyrics further explore facets of love, from teenage infatuation to high school heartbreak. The topic of ‘heartbreak’ captures key words like ‘sorry’, ‘’help’, ‘loved’, ‘rain’, ‘hurt’, and ‘tired’. The title and titular lead single describes her depiction of courage in embracing the complexities and fears that go hand in hand with falling in love as a common theme across all songs. For example, “Love Story” was inspired by Romeo and Juliet, one of her favorite narratives, as well as a real love interest whom Swift’s family and friends were not fond of. Hence, Fearless is a successful testament of her ability to meld fairy tale tropes with catchy melodies and engaging lyrics, incorporating magical elements into her definition of love. Her genuineness and idea of picture perfect romances with happy endings highlight her innocence as well as her relatability to a young audience.
Speak Now is the third studio album, released in 2010. The lyrics revolve around her recurring themes of love, heartbreak and forgiveness, but transcends the fairytale inspired themes of its predecessor, highlighting her growing maturity in her perspective on love, and is reflected in our topic ‘growth’ with keywords like ‘thought’, ‘still’, ‘live’, ‘someday’, ‘mind’, as well as the topic of ‘regret’ in ‘back’, ‘never’, ‘time’, ‘knew’, ‘little, and ‘break’. The songs here can be categorized into two themes: those that describe the intense rush of romance and describe fresh possibility, while the others are weary, lovesick and downtrodden. For example, “Back to December” is an open apology to her ex-boyfriend, Taylor Lautner, something which she never did prior. Songs like “Dear John”, “Mean”, “Last Kiss”, “The Story of Us” all highlight her growth and the confusing, sometimes sad and uncomfortable learning process. This is further corroborated by sentiment analysis as shown in the figure below, which ranks Speak Now as the most negative album.
Figure 2. Graph of sentiment analysis across Taylor Swift albums
Red is the fourth studio album, released in 2012.” Swift explained that she decided to name the song Red as her album title, as its lyrics encompass the entire theme of the project.
“Thinking about what that means to me and all the different emotions that are written about on this album — they’re all pretty much about the sexy, crazy, insane, intense, semi-toxic relationships that I’ve experienced in the last two years…All those emotions — spanning from intense love, intense frustration, jealousy, confusion — in my mind, all those emotions are red. There’s nothing in between; there is nothing beige about any of those feelings.”
It’s no surprise that Red has the highest sentiment analysis score given that it describes the intensity and possibility of happiness in relationships. But compared to fantasy-driven narratives and happy endings of previous albums, Red also depicts the uneasy reality of relationships ending painfully, a sign of maturity through vulnerability in her perspectives. The topic of vulnerability is most prevalent in Red given keywords like ‘never’, ‘stay’, ‘alone’, ‘wrong’, ‘room’. The titular song’s chorus also explains that “Losing him was blue like I’d never known / Missing him was dark grey, all alone / Forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you never met / But loving him was red”, the first of her vivid use of color to be emblematic of love and all its encompassing facets.
1989 is the fifth studio album released in 2014, titled after her birth year as a symbolic rebirth of her image and artistry as a pop superstar. In contrast to her previous albums, she expresses a light-hearted perspective towards failed romances, departing from prior antagonistic attitudes. According to Rolling Stones, 1989 is the first album where she does not villainies ex-lovers, but rather expresses a “wistful and nostalgic” viewpoint on broken romance. The topics of “Hopes” and “Adventure” are reflected in the album’s liner notes, which collectively describe a tale of a girl’s tangled relationship. It ultimately concludes that “She lost him but she found herself and somehow that was everything.” She explained that in the past, she focussed more on heartbreak caused by someone else, but on this album, she focussed more on the complexity of relationships and self-love. It is widely speculated that the entire album is inspired by her relationship with Harry Styles.
Reputation is the sixth studio album, released in 2017 as a result of a period of highly publicized celebrity disputes, widespread and immense media and internet scrutiny, causing her to seclude herself from social media and press for about a year. Reputation captured Swift during the most turbulent but also commercially successful period of her career while at the wrong end of a long-running public feud with Kanye West. She was called a snake, whilst #TaylorSwiftIsCancelled trended all over twitter. The sound of the album also takes on a much darker, more aggressive dark electropop, EDM and R&B style. The topic assigned to this album is “carefree”, with keywords such as “‘wanna’, ‘bad’, ‘nobody’, ‘nice’, and ‘hate’. Her lyrics draw from the scrutiny and can be categorized under two themes: excessive media gossip and distorted media depiction, as well as finding love and expressing vulnerability amongst tumultuous events. In Reputation, she is embittered and frustrated by a public who no longer loves her, but is simultaneously liberated from the media-imposed image of America’s sweetheart. For example, in “Call It What You Want” she sings, “They took the crown but it’s all right.” In “Delicate”, she sings, “My reputation’s never been worse, so you must like me for me.” Hence, her lyrics depict her love as a means of rediscovering her true self in a battle to break free from low self-esteem and distorted media perception.
Lover is the seventh studio album (and Nicole’s absolute personal favorite!), released in 2019, is dubbed as Swift’s most romantic and free-spirited work yet. The highly detailed lyrics are reminiscent of her older works, like personal lyricism of Speak Now and the confessional song writing of Red, but differs in that the lyrics largely stem from happiness in the middle of her relationship with Joe Alwyn as opposed to chronicling the downfall of a relationship. Hence, she reaches a peak point of contentment in her art and self-perception in Lover. The lyrics are saturated with autobiographical details, emotional clarity and wisdom. Open-hearted songs dominate the album and examine all aspects of love. Swift dubbed the album as a “a celebration of love, in all its complexity, coziness, and chaos” .
“A love letter to love itself — all the captivating, spellbinding, maddening, devastating, red, blue, gray, golden aspects of it”
She highlights the album as a rainbow of emotions and colors, presenting her most mature understanding of love yet. In this album, the lyrical scope covers much more diverse themes, including love, infatuation, contentment and heartache like prior albums, but also themes that she had been scared to explore before such as: individuality and self-love, feminism, political criticism, grief, mental health and LGBT rights under the umbrella concept of love. As seen in “The Man”, “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” and “You Need to Calm Down”, the album incorporates political criticism, while also embodying Americana-inspired song writing. Her decision to include politically charged lyrics shows her maturation to an adult who cares less about her reputation and more on social issues and loved ones.
“Lover feels like a return to the fundamental songwriting pillars that I usually build my house on. It’s really honest; it’s not me playing a character. It’s really just how I feel, undistilled. And there are a lot of very personal admissions in it”.
Another big contrast is in her use of color from Red to Lover. The story telling in Lover shows all the colors of the rainbow of love to create vivid imagery on every single line. Out of Lover’s 18 tracks, eleven feature color in the lyrics. In particular, blue is her most used color by far, and is one of the most featured keywords for the topic assigned. Blue often references things she loves or sadness, featuring 11 times across “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”, “Paper Rings”, “Lover”, “Afterglow”, and “London Boy”. In the last track of the album “Daylight”, in stark contrast to Red, she sings that “I once believed love would be (Burning red)/ But it’s golden”.
Figure 3. Graph of color use across album
She ultimately describes love with her most mature perspective yet. Interestingly, in the liner notes of Red, she states that “real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn’t fade or spontaneously combust. Maybe I’ll write a whole album about that kind of love if I ever find it.” That album is Lover, and love is defined as a long-lasting. It is interesting that for an album all about love that the frequency of the word ‘love’ is not highest here. That shows that a mature understanding of love is that it’s more than just a word. Love can be found in an apology, a touch, or a color.
Figure 4. Graph of frequency of “love” in Taylor Swift albums
Folklore and evermore, both released as surprise albums in 2020, are considered “sister albums”. Both folklore and evermore show high degree of fictionalization, and the emotional and narrative range expands from a focus on Swift’s personal stories to imagined characters and story arcs, comprising of tales of love, marriage, infidelity and grief, in contrast to the autobiographical tones in previous albums.This is also corroborated by the topics of “fables” and “rebirth”. Swift claims to have found escapism in these partially imaginary, partially not imaginary tales and expresses them through her lyricism. Both albums are known for its contemplation, wistfulness and gentle delivery. Critics found the introspective themes and poetic lyricism timely for the COVID-19 pandemic and regarded it as a bold invention of her artistry, and an opportunity to free herself from speculation about herself. In “invisible string” in Folklore, Swift describes “One single thread of gold tied me to you”, a magical yet strong and mature bond between lovers.
Throughout her career, Swift has developed leaps and bounds in her perspectives of love. Swift has taken phrases, patterns and colors that we know as one thing and breathed new life in the context of her storytelling, drawing devoted listeners in with her continuous growth and relatability. We have also realized that analyzing lyrics alone is insufficient in following her musical path and transitions. In addition to her lyrics, we can see how variations of love, secret meanings and Easter eggs have been woven through her lyrical narratives, as well as her albums, cover art, liner notes and promotional work and looking in from a greater scope across all 9 albums. It is insufficient to look at word frequencies in love. If given the opportunity, a possible direction for future work would include analyzing the aesthetics of her album art and the moods of her albums, or the increase in frequency of curse words, or her use of sound and different instruments. By giving us glimpses into her life through lyrics, Swift has fans celebrating her happiness and progress. In essence, Swift encapsulates how love is a spectrum of all colors, love is vivid in music, in art and life.
