Olivia Rodrigo’s new album you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love album is fantastic. I love the album’s musical diversity, from her classic pop punk-inspired sound on Sour and Guts, to 80s/90s rock, to moving and beautiful ballads. This is a 10/10, no-skip album.
And one reason I wouldn’t recommend skipping is because the whole album is one cohesive story. The album’s marketing emphasizes the two halves of that story: tracks 1-7 are “girl so in love,” and tracks 8-13 are “you seem pretty sad.”
But I think the album’s structure is deeper and more complex than that: Specifically, the album a ring structure. You can google or ask AI if you want more information about what that is, but to summarize, it’s this: The story reflects itself around a pivot point.
Here, track 7 (“purple”) is the obvious pivot point, shifting from the euphoria of “girl so in love” to the tragedy of “you seem pretty sad.” Not coincidentally, track 7 is the middle track of a 13-track album. Moving outward from that pivot, we would expect tracks 6 and 8 to echo each other, and tracks 5 and 9, and so on for 4 and 10, etc.
I think that’s exactly what’s going on, specifically:
In “drop dead” (track 1) her vision of the relationship comes to life; in “cigarette smoke” (track 13), the memories of the relationship go dark.
In “stupid song” (track 2), she wants only him; in “expectations” (track 12), she wants someone different than him.
In “honeybee” (track 3), the relationship begins and she is so happy; in “less” (track 11), the relationship ends and she is so sad.
In “maggots for brains” (track 4), she feels sick when they’re apart; in “what’s wrong with me” (track 10), she feels sick when they’re together.
In “you + me = <3” (track 5), she is happy that he gives her so much; in “begged” (track 9), she is sad that he doesn’t give her enough.
In “my way” (track 6), she feels so much confidence; in “the cure” (track 8), she feels so much doubt.
And in the pivot point at “purple” (track 7), they have become so attached… too attached, and that over-attachment shifts the album from the love story to the tragedy.
I’ve made a few attempts at depicting this (I’m a social scientist, not an artist!). Happy listening!
“Gray November, I’ve been down since July.” The opening lyric from the “Evermore” title track hits different now. In July, the surgeon removed the polyp that revealed the presence of stage 3 rectal cancer. And I spent the entire month of November in daily chemoradiation to treat it.
I’m 46. This all emerged after my first routine colonoscopy. If you are 45 or older, get one; if you are 40 or older, and you have any ability to have a colonoscopy done, I hope you will. It is a very good idea and not as onerous as people make it sound. I certainly wish I had. I’d go back in time and change that, but I can’t.
During my screening MRIs, I asked the technicians to play Taylor Swift while I was in the tube. It was a practical decision as well as an emotional one. I know the length of many Swift songs, at least roughly, so when they told me the scan would take about 45 minutes, Taylor both entertained me and let me know how much time I had remaining.
Fast forward to October 27, the first day of radiation treatment. The nurses asked what music I wanted, and when I said Swift, one of the nurses lit up. “We don’t get many Swifties around here!” she said.
“Are you a Swiftie?” I asked. Indeed she was! Later, I learned that she rearranged her schedule so she could have me as a patient and listen to Taylor Swift with me during my treatment. By the end, Nurse Allison even knew how to seed the Pandora station so that it gravitated toward my favorites.
Then there’s the waiting for appointments, an inevitable part of any major medical issue. Early in the treatment cycle, I printed out the lyrics of some of Swift’s most semantically-central songs. I don’t want to steal my own thunder for what might become a future paper, but suffice it to say that, as I sat waiting for radiation therapy, a hospital robe my only clothing to speak of, I busied and distracted myself with a pen and paper, conducting rhetorical analysis of some of her most famous lyrics. I hate it here, so analyzing those lyrics became lunar valleys in my mind.
Now we are back to December, the season of Advent (and, for many Swifties, of the Evermore album). I have finished five weeks of chemoradiation, and later this month, I will begin a chemotherapy regimen that will last 3 months. The hope is that this will take care of the cancer, and that future scans and scopes will reveal no tumor. If so, life continues. If not—and there is a substantial chance the treatment will not be completely effective—I likely will need surgery to remove my rectum. That would be life-changing.
If the opening line of “Evermore” is uncanny, the bridge, that powerful duet between Justin Vernon and Taylor Swift, is an emotional gut-punch. I mean, so many of her bridges are, but this one has taken on deep subjective meaning for me. It’s likely not with meaning she intended, but that’s ok; such is art, whose meaning often is a joint creation between the artist and the audience.
Vernon: Can’t not think of all the cost, and the things that will be lost. Oh, can we just get a pause? To be certain we’ll be tall again. Whether weather be the frost, or the violence of the dog days I’m on waves, out being tossed; is there a line that I could just go cross?
Taylor (as Vernon repeats his section in call-and-response): And when I was shipwrecked, I thought of you. In the cracks of light, I dreamed of you. It was real enough to get me through. But I swear, you were there.
I’ve already felt the cost of my cancer, the things lost: time, energy, professional opportunities, mental drain, the pain of side effects, the burden on my family. And much greater costs may lie ahead. I’ve longed for the kind of pause that Vernon describes, and have appreciated those times of rest when they have come. I’ve also felt shipwrecked, storm-tossed, and the imagery here calls to mind the lament of the psalmist in pain: “All your breakers and your waves have gone over me” (Psalm 42:7, ESV).
A foundational aspect of the lyrical anatomy of almost every Taylor Swift song is this: It is sung in first person, by an “I” (usually but not always Taylor Swift) singing to a “you.” There’s almost nothing in the way of a third-person story about a girl named Lucky, and when Taylor gets close to something like that, she still shows up to buy the Rhode Island mansion at the end of the song. Normally the “you” is easy to identify, at least generally, if not specifically. Often “you” shows up in the first verse.
Not in “Evermore.” “You” doesn’t show up until this bridge. And it’s never entirely clear who this “you” is, present in the cracks of light in the midst of a shipwreck storm.
The imagery calls to mind the “Cardigan” music video, too.
I don’t know how much overlap there is between the Swiftie and Tolkien fan bases, but I’m in the center of that Venn diagram. I adore Tolkien, not only as a fantasy author, but as an academic who put his faith in conversation with his scholarship. During my cancer journey, I’ve thought not only of Taylor shipwrecked on the sea, but also of suffering Frodo, faithful Sam, and the grace of God that brought about the culminating victory at Mount Doom.
Tolkien wrote fantasy, and he theorized about it. As a communication theory textbook author, I approve. In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” he coined a memorable new word: “eucatastrophe.” In a letter to his son, he defined the term succinctly: “the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears.” The endings of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe are good examples. In the Taylorverse, examples might include “Love Story” (with her dad’s unexpected change of heart) and “Long Live” (where the “band of thieves of ripped up jeans” unexpectedly gets to “rule the world”).
For Tolkien, the eucatastrophe is more than a literary device. It is a window into a deeper truth about the way the world works. Much of human life involves sorrow, pain, heartbreak, and death. We inhabit a world filled with conflict and war, cancer and disease, decay and loss.
It would be easy to conclude that this is the permanent, inevitable way of things. But Tolkien did not believe this. Nor do I. The eucatastrophe “denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is [gospel], giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.“
Here, in this season of Advent, Tolkien’s most famous quote about the eucatastrophe clarifies why he had such hope: “The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy.“
“What does this have to do with ‘Evermore’??“, the patient Swiftie reading this may wonder. Well, further into Tolkien’s letter, I was struck by the parallel between his words and the lyrics of “Evermore:” “In the Primary Miracle (the Resurrection) . . . you have not only that sudden glimpse of the truth behind the apparent [nature] of our world, but a glimpse that is actually a ray of light through the very chinks of the universe about us.” That sounds a lot like cracks of light through the storm clouds on a shipwrecked sea.
Tolkien further describes riding his bicycle past an infirmary, when he “had one of those sudden clarities which sometimes come in dreams. . . . I remember saying aloud with absolute conviction: ‘But of course! Of course that’s how things really do work’. But I could not reproduce any argument that had led to this, though the sensation was the same as having been convinced by reason (if without reasoning).” Swift expresses a similar sentiment, more concisely and beautifully, in the closing verse of “Evermore”:
And I was catching my breath Floors of a cabin creaking under my step And I couldn’t be sure I had a feeling so peculiar This pain wouldn’t be for Evermore
Let me be clear: I’m not saying that Taylor Swift wrote “Evermore” to express faith-based ideas. The popular theory is that the song is about her famously difficult year in 2016 and how Joe Alwyn (a.k.a. William Bowery, who has songwriter credit on “Evermore”) brought joy out of that season. It’s also a song released during the pandemic, and during that long season, I certainly longed for a pause to be certain we’d all be tall again.
Yet it is also a song that is a powerful, beautiful, and general artistic description of pain, grief, and loss. And in writing about such things, I cannot help but have the sense that the lyrics find their way to something deep and true for those who are in Christ.
If I may be permitted one more moment of listener interpretation that surely moves beyond what the writers of “Evermore” intended, I was struck by Vernon’s cry: “Is there a line that we could just go cross?” The lyric seems to express a desire for relief, for refuge, maybe even in death. Of course, “cross” here is used as a verb; but the word is also a noun. A particularly sacred noun. In my pain, in my fear, in my longing to not be a burden on my family, in my guilt about not paying attention to those very few signals that might have led me to get a colonoscopy sooner—in those moments most overwhelming, the cross of Jesus, an emblem of brutal death that has become an emblem of unending life, has been my only refuge, the only place I can go to find relief.
I long for my current story to be one that ends in eucatastrophe during my mortal life, to get scans that speak to a cancer thoroughly destroyed, whether as a miraculous answer to prayer or the Lord working through the power of modern medicine. That may not happen. But the cross and the empty tomb speak to a more-than-certain hope, a feeling so peculiar, an absolute conviction that, one day, the world will be made right and I will have a resurrected body, like that of Jesus, that is cured of cancer. It is a hope “beyond the walls of the world” available to all who put their faith and trust in Christ.
I cannot speak definitively to the authorial intent of “Evermore,” and I am not a postmodernist; I believe authorial intent matters. But in the corridors of my mind, the shipwreck is my cancer diagnosis; the waves are the challenges and suffering of treatment. And the cracks of light are the love and support of family and friends, in part. But that undimmable light, more real than even the reality of my suffering, is most supremely the gospel, the good news in which is all my hope: that Christ came as a baby, fully God and fully human, lived the perfect life I could not, died the death and took the wrath of God that I deserved, and three days later walked out of his own tomb.
And the mysterious “you” in “Evermore” is for me, then, Emmanuel, God with us: the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. This December, as I sing Advent songs with tears in my eyes, this is my joy and hope, and why I am certain my pain won’t be for evermore.
That reason is that the vocabulary here is a bit different than her previous work. Lyrically, these songs aren’t all that connected to what has come before. Here’s some evidence.
My research article created a giant “map” of Taylor Swift’s songs and how they are connected to each other in terms of word overlap. Specifically, if a song shared 13 words in common, it was treated as connected. (There is a mathematical rationale for 13, in addition to the Swiftian rationale, but I won’t get into that here.) We can then compute how central a song is on that map: The more connected it is to other songs, the more central it is. It turns out that more central songs tend to be the more popular songs. To give a few examples, very central songs include “All Too Well,” “Blank Space,” “Fifteen,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” and “Mine.”
Here’s some plots of the number of songs that fall within certain centrality ranges across the three most recent pop, post-Folklore/Evermore albums. Interpretively, if a song scores above 0.6 (and especially above 0.8), it is likely to be a ‘tentpole’ song: one of those songs that holds the Taylorverse together and, often, is highly popular. Songs in the 0.4-0.6 range are still connected to other songs and, usually, are well-received. Below 0.4, it’s a song that is peripheral to the Taylorverse, at least in terms of the words used in the song, and might be a less popular song.
Here’s Midnights:
We have one clear tentpole song, and that is “Hits Different,” a big hit with fans. “You’re Losing Me” and “You’re on Your Own, Kid” also score above 0.6. “Question…?” is in the midrange. Although a number of songs on Midnights are less central (look at the high number of songs at the low end of the range), there are clear ‘signposts’ that connect to other songs in the discography.
Now, Tortured Poets:
The ‘tentpole’ at the far right here is “But Daddy I Love Him,” a song that has classically Swiftian vocabulary. Midrange songs include “So Long London,” “loml,” and “Florida!!!” Although there’s a lot of peripheral songs here (perhaps indicating why Tortured Poets had its own somewhat mixed reception at launch) the Swiftian core vocabulary is still unambiguously here.
Now, Showgirl:
Look at that big blank space on the right side of the graph. The closest thing to a ‘tentpole’ song here is the title track, which scores just below 0.6. There are no mid-range songs scoring between 0.4 and 0.6. The second most central song is “CANCELLED!” at 0.35. The rest are below that, and in terms of vocabulary, really aren’t that similar to earlier works.
So maybe the problem isn’t just that some people find the lyrics cringey. Maybe the album needed less “Gucci,” “terminal uniqueness,” “toy Chihuahua,” and “Plaza Athénée,” and more words that emphasize commonplace, relatable experiences, such as dress, walk, day, room, boy, and feel — words common in the broader discography, but almost or entirely absent here.
From this map, we can calculate the “centrality” of the song. This refers to how well-connected the song is to other Taylor Swift songs; in other words, it tells us how central the song is in the “Taylorverse.” One of the main findings from the anlaysis was that songswith higher centrality are more popular(as measured by stream count, expert rankings, and social media conversation). So, although there are certainly exceptions, the songs at the center of the Taylorverse are more beloved than those at the periphery.
But, which are the songs that are most central? Well, here’s the complete list (as of October 9, 2025), going from most central to least central. It includes all songs on the main studio albums, and, unlike the published analysis, I’ve included The Tortured Poets Department and The Life of a Showgirl! In addition to listing the songs in descending order of centrality, I’ve also broken them into five groups based on their centrality.
Before we begin, it’s worth remembering that this isn’t a ranking of the best Taylor Swift songs, nor my personal opinion (you can find my complete ranking of her songs that list elsewhere). Rather, it is a list of which songs share the most word overlap with other songs. But, as you scan the list, I think you’ll see that the central songs do tend to be more popular (with exceptions), and those on the periphery less popular (again, with exceptions).
The Center of the Taylorverse
Fifteen
Timeless
All Too Well
But Daddy I Love Him
Mr. Perfectly Fine
Blank Space
Hits Different
I Bet You Think About Me
Better Than Revenge
Betty
Mine
In addition to being the top ten eleven, all of these songs have centrality scores that exceed the traditional threshold for statistical significance (for fellow stats nerds, z > 1.96). Aside from the Speak Now Vault track “Timeless,” which wasn’t particularly well received, the others are fan favorites. Most are singles and/or Eras Tour songs; of course megahit “All Too Well” would end up here. And with oft-repeated Swiftian words like love, door[s], boys, girls,time, just, and dancing, “Fifteen” is a prime example of core Swiftian language and, as of this analysis, is at the very heart of the discography, semantically speaking.
Also in the Taylorverse’s Core
You’re Losing Me
Foolish One
You’re On Your Own, Kid
Dear John
Ronan
When Emma Falls in Love
imgonnagetyouback
Electric Touch
The Life of a Showgirl
If This Was a Movie
Call it What You Want
The Other Side of the Door
End Game
Teardrops on My Guitar
Happiness
Last Kiss
So Long London
loml
The Moment I Knew
Cruel Summer
Superman
Love Story
The Best Day
Long Live
Florida!!!
… Question?
Forever & Always
You Belong With Me
Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince
Mary’s Song
I Hate it Here
These songs don’t quite break the top 10, but do exceed one standard deviation above the average for centrality. It makes sense that “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” which metaphorically narrates Swift’s career, would score toward the center. Other big hits in this group include “Dear John,” “Teardrops on My Guitar,” “Love Story,” and “Cruel Summer.”
Above Average Centrality
Hey Stephen
Never Grow Up
The Story of Us
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
The Bolter
Better Man
Haunted
I Did Something Bad
Getaway Car
Right Where You Left Me
Back to December
Forever Winter
The Lucky One
Tell Me Why
Nothing New
Holy Ground
Peter
Breathe
Death by a Thousand Cuts
You Are in Love
White Horse
Thank You Aimee
Cancelled!
Jump Then Fall
So High School
‘Tis the Damn Season
I Can See You
Now That We Don’t Talk
Bejeweled
Sparks Fly
Stay Beautiful
I Wish You Would
Delicate
Mean
Red
Our Song
Long Story Short
Enchanted
Begin Again
Daylight
… Ready For It?
Tim McGraw
The Way I Loved You
Should’ve Said No
Fresh Out the Slammer
Eldest Daughter
Change
Opalite
Wonderland
SuperStar
London Boy
Style
Paper Rings
Innocent
Illicit Affairs
Dress
Come Back, Be Here
Gorgeous
Speak Now
These songs have a centrality score between the mean and one standard deviation above it. You’ll recognize lots of Taylor classics here, including the debut single “Tim McGraw,” hits like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “Style,” and the song that anchored the Speak Now Eras Tour set, “Enchanted.”
Below Average Song Centrality
Me!
Guilty as Sin
New Romantics
Elizabeth Taylor
High Infidelity
You All Over Me
Mad Woman
Everything Has Changed
Cardigan
Bad Blood
The 1
Coney Island
Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve
It’s Time to Go
Girl at Home
Afterflow
Bye Bye Baby
Champagne Problems
Honey
The Great War
Ivy
Run
Cold as You
Dancing With Our Hands Tied
Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?
Cornelia Street
Today was a Fairytale
My Tears Ricochet
Ours
I Can Do It With a Broken Heart
Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus
August
You’re Not Sorry
The Very First Night
Exile
Actually Romantic
Fearless
I Think He Knows
Castles Crumbling
My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys
Mastermind
Clara Bow
False God
Willow
Wildest Dreams
So It Goes
Vigilante Shit
Tolerate It
The Prophecy
Invisible String
I Almost Do
Anti-Hero
Snow on the Beach
Wi$h Li$t
The Black Dog
Don’t Blame Me
The Tortured Poets Department
Say Don’t Go
Dear Reader
Picture to Burn
Dorothea
Starlight
King of My Heart
The Manuscript
I Knew You Were Trouble.
State of Grace
Is it Over Now?
Down Bad
Stay Stay Stay
Look What You Made Me Do
Suburban Legends
Peace
Father Figure
I’m Only Me When I’m With You
Slut!
Soon You’ll Get Better
That’s When
Tied Together with a Smile
22
Out of the Woods
Cassandra
Clean
The Fate of Ophelia
Mirrorball
Ruin the Friendship
Maroon
Karma
No Body No Crime
I Know Places
Seven
Labyrinth
The Archer
Shake It Off
Sad Beautiful Tragic
The Last Time
Don’t You
Message in a Bottle
The Outside
Come in With the Rain
This Love
I Forgot That You Existed
The Alchemy
How You Get the Girl
You Need to Calm Down
Lover
This is Me Trying
With centrality scores from the mean down to one standard deviation below it, these songs have less than average word overlap with other songs. Although there are certainly some hits here (“I Can Do it With a Broken Heart”; “Champagne Problems”; “Out of the Woods”), many songs are deeper cuts on their respective albums.
The Edge of the Taylorverse
Midnight Rain
Hoax
Place in This World
Gold Rush
Treacherous
Invisible
The Last Great American Dynasty
How Did It End?
Babe
Closure
This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
All You Had to Do Was Stay
Marjorie
Evermore
Wood
Welcome to New York
New Year’s Day
The Man
We Were Happy
I Can Fix Him (No, Really I Can)
Fortnight
I Look in People’s Windows
It’s Nice to Have a Friend
A Perfectly Good Heart
Paris
Lavender Haze
Sweet Nothing
Untouchable
Bigger Than the Whole Sky
Glitch
The Albatross
The Lakes
Robin
Epiphany
Again, it’s worth remembering that having low song centrality doesn’t mean a song is bad. Here, at the semantic fringe of the Taylorverse, I find songs I personally enjoy, such as “Midnight Rain,” “Treacherous,” “Evermore,” and “The Lakes.” But, with the exception of “The Man” and “Fortnight,” this is generally a list of lesser-known songs. It makes sense that “Epiphany,” which concerns the experiences of Swift’s grandfather in World War II and doctors during COVID, would have the lowest centrality: its subject matter differs from any other song in the discography.
This isn’t a list I plan to update regularly, if ever, because updating the map takes some effort. [Edit: OK, I couldn’t resist when TLOAS came out.] Nevertheless, I hope it provides a different perspective on how we might consider, rank, and understand the amazing body of work that is the Taylorverse.
What makes a Taylor Swift song popular? Several answers could come to mind: the poetic beauty of her songwriting, the deft skill of her producers, the power of the bridge, her emotive vocal performance. Certainly, these matter. But each of these answers is also limited because each focuses on the characteristics of one song in isolation. My semantic analysis of Taylor Swift’s lyrics suggests a different kind of answer: A Taylor Swiftsong’s popularity arises from its connection to other Taylor Swift songs.
I’ll discuss the data supporting that claim in a moment, but I want to do so by way of something I’ve never written about here: My own story of how I became a Swiftie.
My journey into the Taylorverse
In my childhood, I listened to a number of female country artists, and in my mid-twenties, I enjoyed singers that were, at the time, also catering to a similar audience as Taylor Swift (Hilary Duff, Aly & AJ, Miley Cyrus). That was good preparation, and although I can’t pinpoint the first time I heard Taylor, it was probably on the radio or on Yahoo’s music streaming service.
I do know that, in June 2009, I was driving down New Hampshire St. in Lawrence, Kansas. I was on a business trip as a young assistant professor, attending a weeklong seminar on advanced social science statistics. “Love Story” came on the radio. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the song, but I remember thinking to myself, “Yeah, this is good stuff—I could be a Taylor Swift fan.” That’s the point when I’d say my journey into the Taylorverse began.
Later, I bought a used copy of Fearless, then Speak Now, then debut, and then I bought Red when it was a new release. As I listened, I began to appreciate that Taylor wasn’t writing just songs; she was writing albums. That’s maybe not the case with debut, which feels like a (very good) group of songs, but in Fearless and especially Speak Now, it was becoming evident that her albums were cohesive artistic statements as a whole. Fearless celebrates the closeness and challenges of teenage girls’ relationships; Speak Now is about finding one’s voice in the journey of growing up. By Red, a tour de force of romantic passion and heartbreak, the deeply thematic nature of her albums was undeniable. Yes, the songs matter; but the song’s context, what we would now call its era, deeply shapes her work.
Then, moving into 1989 and Reputation and beyond, I realized the connections weren’t only within albums, but between them. “A circus ain’t a love story” ties Reputation to Fearless. “Blank Space” wryly caricatures her media persona in her early albums. “I once believed love would be burning red,” she sings in Lover’s “Daylight.” Then “Bad Blood” is playing in a cab on Folklore, and then “You’re on Your Own, Kid” summarizes her entire career… you get the idea, and there are so many other examples.
To call these lyrical connections “Easter eggs” is a bit too trite. Perhaps these connections are more than a bonus for astute fans, but rather part of the fabric—the ‘invisible string,’ if you will—that unites the art. That’s what my research tried to examine quantitatively.
Which Taylor Swift songs have the most word overlap with other songs?
In the previous post, I described how 13 shared words is the minimum threshold where it made sense to treat two Taylor Swift songs as connected. Of course, the more words in common, the stronger the connection. We can use that information to create a map of the links between songs (again, discussed in the last post; also, see here for a list of all songs ranked by centrality, including TTPD).
Once we have that map, we can calculate something called a song’s centrality. (For those interested in the technical details, I used eigenvector centrality in the analysis.) Some songs are highly connected to other songs; their centrality is high. Here are the 15 songs that are most highly connected to other songs, in ascending order of centrality:
#15: “When Emma Falls in Love”
#14: “You’re On Your Own, Kid”
#13: “Dear John”
#12: “Foolish One”
#11: “You’re Losing Me”
#10: “Better Than Revenge”
#9: “Betty”
#8: “Mine”
#7: “I Bet You Think About Me”
#6: “Hits Different”
#5: “Blank Space”
#4: “Mr. Perfectly Fine”
#3: “Timeless”
#2: “All Too Well” [original; I didn’t include 10-minute in the analysis]
#1: “Fifteen”
You might already have a rough sense of what’s going on here… not all of these are stone-cold Taylor classics, but there’s a decent number of singles, big hits, and fan favorites among the most central songs.
Other songs are on the fringe of the map, with few connections to other songs; their centrality is low. Here are the songs with the lowest centrality:
Now, I imagine every Swiftie has a song or two (or more) they like among these least central songs (I’m partial to “Evermore” and “The Lakes,” myself). But, aside from “The Man,” it’s hard to argue any of these are among her most beloved songs. Also, I was curious, so just now I checked Spotify stream counts again. As I write this, four of these songs (“A Perfectly Good Heart,” “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” “Epiphany,” and “Glitch”) have the lowest number of streams on their respective albums (Taylor Swift, Lover, Folklore, and Midnights).
Song centrality predicts song popularity
So, just by eyeballing the list of central and not-central songs, we might have a sense that song centrality is positively associated (correlated) with song popularity. In other words, the more central the song, the more popular it is. But, as I tell my students, we can’t conduct statistical tests with our eyeballs. We need to conduct statistical tests with… um… statistics.
But to get statistics, we need to know how to measure what we want to measure. We’ve already measured song centrality. But what about song popularity? How should we measure something as debatable as that?
Because song popularity is somewhat vague, I chose to measure it three ways that combine into a fourth:
Spotify stream count. One day, in a meeting that was kind of boring, I manually wrote down every Spotify stream count for all of the songs in a spreadsheet. Time well spent, for sure.
Twitter/X conversation. Using the resources available in our Schieffer Media Insights Lab at TCU, I obtained 17,092 unique tweets, posted between February 1, 2022 and February 15, 2024, about the poster’s favorite Taylor Swift songs. The paper contains more detail about how this data was processed to get a measure of how frequently each song was mentioned.
Overall popularity: We can combine the three measures together into an overall index of the song’s popularity.
Now, you might already see some problems with this approach, particularly for Twitter/X conversation (I’ll just call it Twitter from now on, to keep it simple, and sorry, that’s just a better brand name than X). Taylor released some albums during that time window (Midnights, Speak Now TV, and 1989 TV), so we might expect those songs to show up more in the Twitter data. Same for any song performed in the North American Eras Tour, which was vibrant during that time. Even Spotify data isn’t a perfect indicator of song popularity, because Taylor’s first three albums were released before Spotify was available in the United States, and she then removed her music from Spotify during the 1989 era. Even critics’ evaluations might be subject to these influences.
This is a common occurrence in social science: We want to look at the association between two things (in this case, song centrality and song popularity), but confounding variables get in the way. We can solve that by controlling for those confounding variables. And, doing that actually told an interesting story about some other factors that shape popularity:
Album: Critics prefer the later albums, and later albums are more popular overall.
Track: Tracks earlier on an album tend to be preferred across the board: They are streamed more, talked about on Twitter more, critics like them more, and they are more popular overall. Said differently, later tracks on an album are less popular (ever push “play” on an album and stop halfway through, maybe because you’re bored or the car ride ends?).
Release date: Later releases have more streams, and songs released in the 2-year window are talked about more on Twitter.
Eras setlist: Songs on the Eras Tour setlist were more popular on Twitter and among critics, as well as overall.
Finally, we can address the main question (“Question…?” 😉): Are songs with greater word overlap with other songs (i.e., with higher song centrality) more popular? And the answer is, yes, they are! Songs with higher centrality are more popular with critics, more popular on Twitter, almost more popular on streams (barely missed the threshold of statistical significance), and more popular overall.
This is hard to visualize, in part because Taylor has so many songs. (And we Swifties are grateful for that!) Here’s a plot I used to demonstrate this to an audience recently, using a smaller selection of songs. Larger circles indicate more popular songs, with thicker lines meaning that the song shares more words in common. And, songs toward the center of the graph are more central, with those on the outside more peripheral. It seems that there is a knot of very popular songs at the center with lots of word overlap with other songs (“Cruel Summer,” “All Too Well,” “Long Live,” “Blank Space,” “Getaway Car”), while songs on the periphery are less popular.
Summary and Conclusion
So, then, yes: These results are consistent with the idea that the connection between Taylor’s songs is part of the appeal of her art. A caution, though, that we social scientists like to give: Just because two things are associated does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. Yes, it could be that audiences gravitate toward cohesive albums that connect to other parts of an artist’s work. Or, it could be that Taylor sees which songs audiences like, and makes those songs central by writing songs more like them.
My guess as to what’s going is, well, “both of these things can be true” (“Happiness”). Any artist’s popularity is crafted together with the fans who support them, something that Taylor has emphasized throughout her career. This again calls back to connections: It is the connections between the songs, as well as the artist and her fans, that animates her art and fuels its success.
We can map Taylor Swift songs based on their word overlap with other Swift songs.
The songs cluster into four core stories of (1) Villains and Heroes, (2) Longing and Regret, (3) Extraordinary Meaning in the Ordinary, and (4) Empowered Voice.
Taken all together, these four core stories form an overarching narrative of a woman moving from victim to voice, a journey of finding feminine meaning and worth in a masculine world that devalues such things.
Songs with high centrality (i.e., word overlap) tend to be more popular than songs with low centrality.
This is consistent with the claim that the discography forms a “Taylorverse” of interconnected meanings, and these connections are part of the appeal of her music.
Many have claimed that Taylor Swift has built her own “Cinematic Universe,” and that this “Taylorverse” is part of the reason for her success. I decided to apply the tools of social science to find out whether, and how, that is the case.
Long story short: The data backs it up! If you want to see the full paper, it’s published here in Communication Quarterly. And if you can’t access it, or want a more accessible summary… keep reading. In this post, I’ll talk about how the analysis categorized Taylor Swift’s songs into four types, and how these types reveal the central meaning of the Taylorverse. In the next post, I talk about how the lyrical content of songs is associated with song popularity, as measured by stream count, expert rankings (but no, I didn’t include my own rankings in the analysis!), and social media mentions.
How are Taylor Swift’s songs connected?
Swifties have a habit of looking for connections among Taylor Swift’s songs, so much so that it is a meme. Sure, such fan theories are fun (if sometimes farfetched). And Taylor’s work seems to invite that kind of inspection, through repeated objects, scenes, and ideas: rain, cars, midnights, dancing, dresses, parties, heartbreak…
So, it seemed to me that, when taking a social scientific approach to the lyrics the Taylorverse, it was appropriate to focus on the words themselves. For example, several songs talk about doors: “The Way I Loved You,” “All Too Well,” “Everything Has Changed,” “Holy Ground,” “How You Get the Girl,” “Tolerate It,” and “Hits Different.” At least one word (“door”) connects these songs… but one word could be a random connection. How many words are needed before we can say that it seems like two songs have meaningful overlap in their vocabulary?
After feeding the lyrics for all songs on debut through Midnights (The Tortured Poets Department was announced while the work was already in progress and so isn’t included in the analysis), I got an answer to that question. It’s an answer I liked, and if you’re a Swiftie you’ll like it too. The number is… 13. If two Taylor Swift songs share at least 13 words in common, that’s above average and semantically meaningful overlap. Yes, that’s actually a mathematical answer based in the data… but I was also rather happy about it, for reasons beyond science. 😉
This approach allowed me to make a map of which songs connect to each other. Just one of the 200 songs from debut to Midnights wasn’t connected to any others, and that was “Epiphany.” That makes since, given the distinct subject matter of that song (World War 2; COVID). But, all of the other 199 songs are on the map, although there are so many connections that it is hard for a human being to see the patterns. Although the remainder of the post will focus on the albums through Midnights, I did calculate song centrality rankings for all songs through TTPD (click here).
A messy map of how Taylor Swift songs are connected to each other.
Four Types of Taylor Swift Songs
However, there are patterns in the connections that the computer can detect. Using a clustering algorithm, my analysis found that we can arrange these 199 songs into four groups. Here’s that grouping, with songs in italics in the periphery of the group (i.e., less central in the group overall), with those in italics more representative of the group overall. I’ve put the song groupings in chart form at the bottom of this post, organized by album. Even at a glance it is apparent that different albums seem to contain different song types (and stats supports that: album is significantly associated with song group).
Symbolic convergence theory refers to such shared meanings as fantasy themes, and helps discern those themes by calling attention to four elements of the story within each theme: (a) the characters, (b) the plot, (c) the setting, and (d) the “sanctioning agent,” which is a term for the authority that gives legitimacy to the vision. With this in mind, I considered each song group as representing a core story that that runs throughout the Taylorverse. In chronological order of emphasis, these core stories are:
1. Stories of Villains and Heroes: These songs feature Taylor as the recipient of good or bad male behavior. Her boyfriends may be pure heroes, as in “Stay Beautiful” and “Hey Stephen”; more often they are clear villains, as in “Cold as You,” “Forever and Always,” and “Dear John.” The early hit “Love Story” is an example of both the heroic (boyfriend) and the villain male (the stubborn father), with Taylor the innocent victim. These songs are most frequent in the first three albums and become very rare from Reputation onward (although “You’re Losing Me” from Midnights is a modern example of the type). Following symbolic convergence theory, this story type emphasizes the characters in the unfolding drama.
Group 1 song map: Villains and Heroes
2. Stories of Longing and Regret: Moving into Speak Now and especially Red, Taylor’s identity and that of her boyfriends becomes more three-dimensional. She is no longer free of blame; she would “go back and time and change it, but [she] can’t” (“Back to December”), and she knew he was trouble when he walked in (“so shame on me”). Likewise the men are a more complex blend, as in “State of Grace,” where she accepts that the man she is with was “never a saint” and that she has “loved in shades of wrong.” These songs become less frequent after Red (but see “Getaway Car,” “Exile,” and “Anti-Hero”). Following symbolic convergence theory, this story type emphasizes the plot, usually of faded romance.
Group 2 song map: Longing and Regret
3. Stories of Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary: These songs are most scattered throughout the discography. Although they find their peak prominence in Folklore and especially Evermore, they appear early on too; indeed, her very first single “Tim McGraw” is an example of this song type. In these songs, rich sensory details serve as a window into deeper meanings in Taylor’s inner life. In “Tim McGraw” it’s the “old faded blue jeans” and the “moon like a spotlight on the lake”; in “All Too Well” it is that iconic red scarf; in “Champagne Problems,” it’s the “Midas touch on the Chevy door,” among many other details. Again, although these songs shine in the two indie albums, really it’s a foundational form of sensory storytelling throughout the Taylorverse. Following symbolic convergence theory, this story type emphasizes the setting and how it resonates with the emotional meaning of the story.
Group 3 song map: Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary
4. Stories of Empowered Voice: These are virtually absent in the early albums, until “Mean.” Doing this research project helped me see how important this song is in the discography. No longer is Taylor singing about romantic partners, but about a music critic; she’s addressing her career, and the challenges she faces within it as a woman. That song was a seed that grew a genre of story that is common from 1989 onward, characterized by sarcastic humor (“Blank Space,” “I Did Something Bad”), social commentary (“The Man,” “You Need to Calm Down”) and continued reflection on her own career (“The Last Great American Dynasty,” “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” “Mastermind,” “Long Story Short”). Following symbolic convergence theory, Taylor Swift is no longer a victim; she has become the sanctioning agent, or authority, that grants legitimacy to her (and her audience’s) perspectives and experiences.
Group 4 song map: Empowered Voice
Taylor Swift’s Rhetorical Vision: From Victim to Voice
The final step of a symbolic convergence theory analysis is to look for the overarching story that seems to unite the community. This is known as a rhetorical vision. In the published paper, I summarize the overarching story of the Taylorverse as this:
“The overarching rhetorical vision of the Swift discography, then, is a story of a woman transforming from heartbroken victim to empowered poet. She takes her audience through a journey of finding (feminine) worth, agency, and voice in a world of (often masculine) characters that try to deny her (and her audience) those things through abandonment, neglect, betrayal, or simple unwillingness to understand. The scene reinforces the vision, as setting her stories in commonplace (often domestic) locations builds a strong sense of identification between Swift and her audience (Morris, 2024), and the movement from rural to urban represents growing voice and confidence. The locus of the vision is not so much an external quest for influence, but rather an internal quest for self-value and understanding while ‘living in a world built for someone else’ (Heggeness, 2024).” (Ledbetter, 2024, pp. 20-21)
So, those are the four types of Taylor Swift songs identified in the analysis, and the overarching vision these four core stories create. Clearly, this overarching vision has artistic, cultural, and economic impact. But, not all Taylor Swift songs are equally popular; there seems to be a real difference in enthusiasm between “Blank Space” and “All Too Well” on one hand and, say, “Girl at Home” and “How You Get the Girl” on the same albums. (No disrespect intended if you like the latter two songs!… just looking at stream count…) In the next post, I consider the other major part of the paper, and that is how the semantic overlap between songs predicts a song’s popularity.
And, here is how the song types break down by album era:
Album
Group 1:Villains and Heroes
Group 2:Longing and Regret
Group 3: Extraordinary Meaning
Group 4:Empowered Voice
Debut
Cold as You The Outside Stay Beautiful Should’ve Said No Invisible
Picture to Burn Teardrops… Guitar Place in This World Tied… With a Smile
Tim McGraw Mary’s Song Our Song
Only Me… With You Perfectly Good Heart
Fearless
Love Story Hey Stephen White Horse Breathe Tell Me Why You’re Not Sorry Forever & Always Change Jump Then Fall Other Side… Door Today… Fairytale That’s When Bye Bye Baby
Way I Loved You SuperStar You All Over Me Mr. Perfectly Fine
Fearless Fifteen You Belong With Me The Best Day Untouchable Come in… Rain We Were Happy Don’t You
NONE
Speak Now
Mine Sparks Fly Speak Now Dear John Story of Us Better Than Revenge Innocent Haunted Ours If This Was a Movie I Can See You
Back to December Superman Electric Touch Foolish One When Emma…
Enchanted Last Kiss Long Live Castles Crumbling Timeless
Mean Never Grow Up
Red
I Almost Do Better Man Babe
State of Grace Red I Knew… Trouble Never Getting Back… Stay Stay Stay Begin Again Come Back… Be Here Forever Winter
Treacherous All Too Well The Last Time Sad Beautiful Tragic Everything Has Changed Starlight The Moment I Knew Ronan Bet You Think… Run The Very First Night
22 Holy Ground The Lucky One Girl at Home Nothing New Message in a Bottle
1989
All… Was Stay I Wish You Would How You Get the Girl I Know Places Clean Slut! Say Don’t Go Now… We Don’t Talk
NONE
Welcome to NY Out of the Woods You Are in Love Suburban Legends
Blank Space Style Shake it Off Bad Blood Wildest Dreams This Love Wonderland New Romantics Is It Over Now?
Reputation
… Ready For It? Dress Can’t… Nice Things Call… You Want
Don’t Blame Me So It Goes… Getaway Car
Look What… Do King of My Heart Dancing… Tied New Year’s Day
End Game I Did Something Bad Delicate Gorgeous
Lover
NONE
Lover The Archer Afterglow
Forgot… You Existed Paper Rings London Boy Soon… Get Better Nice to Have a Friend
Cruel Summer The Man I Think He Knows Miss Americana… Cornelia Street Death… 1000 Cuts False God Need to Calm Down ME! Daylight
Folklore
This is Me Trying Mad Woman
Exile My Tears Ricochet Mirrorball August Peace The Lakes
Cardigan Illicit Affairs Invisible String Hoax
The One Great American Dynasty Seven Betty
Evermore
Dorothea
NONE
Champagne Problems Gold Rush ‘Tis the Damn Season Tolerate It Coney Island Cowboy Like Me Marjorie It’s Time to Go
Willow No Body, No Crime Happiness Ivy Long Story Short Closure Evermore Right Where…
Midnights
Lavender Haze Vigilante Shit Sweet Nothing The Great War Glitch You’re Losing Me
Anti-Hero Midnight Rain Labyrinth
Maroon Bejeweled Karma Bigger… Whole Sky Paris Would’ve… Could’ve
Snow on the Beach You’re on Your Own, Kid Question…? Mastermind High Infidelity Dear Reader Hits Different
Normally I review Taylor Swift’s songs and albums, which is really fun, but here I’m reviewing something much less fun: Our bathroom remodel with Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM).
We have been NFM customers for almost 20 years, furnishing our first apartment as a newly-married couple out of the Omaha store, and much of our Texas home from the location at The Colony. Among the options available, we chose NFM for the renovation due to this longstanding customer relationship and their brand reputation.
Here’s some videos and pictures from the 5-6 week project that turned into a 6+ month renovation nightmare that still isn’t settled.
The waterfall flood
Nebraska Furniture Mart @nfmtweets did this to our home during our renovation. And when we requested an inspector, they wouldn't give us the report about the water damage.
It appears NFM used an unlicensed plumber. One of many reasons a 5-6 week job became a 6+-month nightmare. pic.twitter.com/fmNxcRmrlZ
The first time we tried to use the upstairs shower, we discovered that NFM had actually installed this new ‘water feature’ in our master bedroom. They paid for a third party inspector, who discovered that NFM’s incompetent subcontractor, who was probably unlicensed, caused it due to misinstallation. More on the quality of their work in a moment.
We’ve asked for licensing information about the plumbers who did the work, and NFM has refused to provide it. One NFM employee did, however, cite their longstanding relationship with this subcontractor in an email to us (“Since we use the subcontractor for many different projects, we do not have access to what staff have been requested for each home”).
We’ve also asked to see the inspection report, and NFM won’t give us that either.
Here’s more detail on the incompetence that caused the flood. (I wish I’d caught on camera how the fixtures moved up and down, but that was a crazy week…)
But it is apparent that the subcontractors should have known about the misinstallation. Because we were replacing our master ceiling fan at the time, our master bedroom mattress was right below the vent at the time the workers installed the shower. That earlier flood destroyed the mattress and the bed.
Valve leak and the bathroom cabinet
NFM incorrectly installed the shutoff valve in an upstairs bathroom sink. It leaked every 8 seconds for a week and damaged the bottom of the cabinet.
No O-ring means no seal, which would mean a rather short bath.
Trashy, smelly garage
NFM said the worker’s trash wouldn’t be stored on site. Yet our garage was filled with trash for weeks. What this picture can’t capture is the rancid stench from the workers’ leftover food as it decayed in the sweltering Texas summer heat.
Questionable quality
Here’s the niche in the upstairs shower. The workers made it rather small. Notice the messy grout around the edges, and the way the gray grout bleeds into the white grout. And the tiny triangles at the top are a strange way to cut the tile. This is but one example of many quality issues during the initial install.
Firing the subcontractor and discovering even more problems
After 8 weeks of dealing with these quality issues, culminating in the flood, we were livid. We insisted, and NFM fired their incompetent subcontractor they use “for many different projects” and hired someone who was actually competent to do the work. And that contractor discovered many, many problems with the first contractor’s work. So, after moving out of the house for 8 weeks to avoid living through a renovation… well, we lived through a months-long renovation anyway.
Lack of upstairs tub support
The waterfall flooding wasn’t the only issue with the upstairs tub/shower. NFM didn’t bother to put support underneath, per installation instructions. Instead, it was sitting on leveling feet, and those feet weren’t even level. For about three months this was our only working shower (once the flooding issue was repaired, of course). Not real fun as a family of four, and the tub bottom felt squishy and unstable while using it. Our entire family continually felt like we might fall through the floor of the tub at any moment while showering.
Wrong lumber in the master shower
I’m no expert on these things (and it appears NFM might not be, either), but apparently you’re supposed to use pressure-treated lumber for a shower, given the dampness of the area. NFM used plain old lumber. I’m told NFM used the wrong type of concrete as well. This meant that the shower floor had to be completely ripped out, all the way back down to the foundation to redo it properly and then have it permitted and inspected, which the original NFM contractor never did.
Uneven backsplash
Here's how @nfmtweets initially installed our master bathroom backsplash. Totally uneven. When we pointed this out to the installer, he shrugged and said there was nothing he could do. Can't blame him, really. It was late on Friday afternoon and I'm sure he had weekend plans. pic.twitter.com/e2aBlStYCi
Of course the bathroom mirror glass couldn’t be installed until this was done. It took the countertop folks about four trips to the house and weeks of delay to finally get it right.
No insulation for a pipe on an external wall
Our new standing tub needed pipes to run along an exterior wall for the placement of the fixture. Even though I’m no expert, I know insulation is needed so that pipes don’t freeze. But NFM didn’t put any in there. And to have the new pipes on this exterior wall required cutting through some studs that hold up the roof of the house. You guessed it, improper support was provided where the studs were notched.
Improperly installed tile
For the shower tile, @nfmtweets put the mortar on in globs, which would allow moisture to run under the tile. The proper approach would be to spread the mortar on the tile evenly. pic.twitter.com/6iPun1DDcY
This video also shows the bags of tile debris, which definitely does not contain insulation (see above).
Wrong color grout for the master shower floor
If white grout around white tile is your thing, hey, you do you. But to us, it looks washed out and bleh. Before work began, we made it clear that we wanted gray grout around the white tile. NFM didn’t communicate this to the original subcontractors. Even though the subcontractor called me to clarify, they still misinstalled it, so they did it again. Then the new contractor had to rip it all out… but NFM miscommunicated again, and we had white on white a second time (!). They finally got it right the fourth time.
Not getting proper permits and inspections for plumbing work
For the two drains in the master bathroom, @nfmtweets did not seek proper permitting during the initial installation. pic.twitter.com/W8FXh4O5Yl
Even with reliance on a subcontractor, I don’t know how this procedural and legal detail escaped NFM’s attention. And the shower drain was loose, so water could have traveled along the drain pipe down into the foundation of the house.
What about the aftermath?
I wish I could say that, in the aftermath of all of this, NFM has engaged in good customer service, treating us like longtime customers who spent a lot of money in their store on this project. That has only been the case regarding actually fixing the work. In the end, the bathrooms turned out fine.
Disappointing customer service
Making things right has been another story. We spent thousands of dollars to cope with the flood in August (hotel fees, replacing the master bed, etc.). NFM wasn’t interested in reimbursing that money until the work was done… in January.
And by that point, they were uninterested in talking directly to us at all. They just wanted to push us off onto their insurance claims adjuster (who, obviously, works to serve NFM, not help us). Nearly a month ago, I asked for a high-level member of their customer service team to call us to discuss what happened and how to make it right. Other than a few curt and uninformative emails from the store manager at The Colony, we’ve heard nothing. At one point, we called and left a voicemail. NFM never returned the call.
But when I tweeted about the flood, they did tweet back. “Just talk with us through the BBB” is painful to hear after our experience.
Hi @dr_ledbetter, we're sorry to hear and see this and have been working with you through the BBB, CASE 21188996. Please continue to respond through the BBB. Thank you for your understanding.
Dealing with NFM’s financial practices also has been frustrating and confusing. We took some credit from NFM to fund the project. By the time the initial subcontractor was fired in late summer, NFM said we owed a certain amount, and that amount was consistent with our agreement when we contracted for the work.
Then in September, the amount dropped by a few hundred dollars.
In October, our bill was over $1000 less than the prior month.
Then in November, $6500 less!
But in December, it was $6300 more.
And in January, another $1200 more.
We’ve asked for explanation why our bill has gone up and down. They’ve pointed to their general accounting practices–essentially, ‘this is just how we do business.’ They also sent us this spreadsheet, which isn’t exactly illuminating. It feels like NFM is making this up as they go.
Personal impact
But beyond the construction hassles, the financial wonkiness, and the poor customer service, this has just plain overshadowed so much of our lives since last June. We moved out of our house unnecessarily over the summer, during which our youngest daughter slept on an air mattress for 8 weeks.
My wife and I both work in higher education, and we planned the renovation for the summer because that is a slower and more flexible time. During fall semester and now spring, this has impacted our work productivity, between meeting with contractors and phone calls and emails.
Our house wasn’t a great place to celebrate the holidays, when the work should have been long done. It has been massive amounts of stress and time lost that we’ll never get back.
And the impact on our kids is just the worst. Here’s my oldest daughter’s narration the night of the flood, as we packed up to head to a hotel. (Admittedly, the lost wallet is my fault, not NFM’s, though the stress of this entire ordeal certainly didn’t help matters!)
The hardest part of the Nebraska Furniture Mart @nfmtweets renovation has been seeing the toll it took on our kids during the 198 days of work in the home. Here's our oldest on the night of the flood. They've persevered and I'm proud of them. pic.twitter.com/3QPDwz9npp
We regret choosing Nebraska Furniture Mart for the renovation, and we will not buy so much as a lightbulb there in the future. We hope our story helps others make informed decisions about home remodeling work.
Thanks to the Swiftie mom and her Swiftie daughter who gifted me this friendship bracelet soon after I entered the stadium!
My voice is hoarse, my caffeinated drink is at my side as I head into a long day of teaching… but it was all totally worth it! The Eras Tour is an amazing show and a delightful celebration of Taylor’s broad and deep discography!
Because I’m a quantitative social scientist, I can’t help but rank things as a way to enjoy and appreciate them… so here I’m going to rank the presentation of each era at the Eras Tour concert I attended (Sunday, April 2, AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX). Bottom line: They’re all great. The show is maybe the biggest music event I’ll ever see–a concert/sing-a-long/costume party with tens of thousands of your fellow Swifties. So this ranking is in the spirit of having fun and celebrating that Swiftie experience.
So here’s the ranking… obviously, spoilers follow. Except for one from my wife, images are my own taken on a cell phone at the 400 level.
10. Taylor Swift (debut album). This is at the bottom because… well, it was absent. I think that choice is defensible; even in a 44-song set, she can’t cover everything (because she’s produced that much music across such a long period of time).
9. Reputation. This being ranked low may have much to do with my high expectations. Reputation is one of my absolute most favorite Taylor Swift albums, one that I initially viewed with skepticism but have come to really appreciate and enjoy. The snake imagery on stage was great (including a snake microphone!), and I especially enjoyed how that transitioned into the Speak Now era, with the big snake slithering across the runway. What left me wanting, then? There was no “Getaway Car.” That song is just at the crux of this era and I felt its absence; I would’ve traded any of the four she chose for that one. Also, the back half of the album’s resolution from the first half’s angst was absent too; that’s more understandable, because again, she can’t cover everything. But, my two cents: “Getaway Car” should’ve made the cut. I hope it shows up in later concerts. The people in glass boxes during “Look What You Made Me Do” was delightfully weird, though.
8. 1989. I’m not sure “Shake It Off” has aged that well. As I’ve written in my ranking of her songs, it’s the one TSwift song that, to my ear, is a bit “been there, done that.” But, although “Blank Space” has never hit me as much as it hits others, it came alive in the stadium environment, and the Tron-style grid lines and neon bikes (with golf clubs? Wow!) was pretty cool. So were the pyrotechnics in “Bad Blood,” another song that isn’t my favorite but worked well here.
7. Speak Now. Only reason this is a bit low is because we only got one song, “Enchanted.” But that was a stellar choice. Taylor’s performance of this jewel of a song was passionate and warm and epic, and a highlight of the entire show. I look forward to seeing this era get more time in the sun soon (we hope) with Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).
6. Evermore. This is not my favorite Taylor Swift album, but her performance of this era was great. The way she played “Champagne Problems” shows that she knows her audience (“you ready for the bridge?”), and the stagecraft of “Tolerate It” was outstanding (excellent acting work not just by Taylor, but by the dancer who played the dismissive husband). I just wish the jumbotron had shown the on-stage action for “Tolerate It” like every other song; I don’t know if that was a deliberate artistic choice or a technical glitch specific to our show. The picture above is of the fire effects for “Willow,” and you can see the trees that emerge from the stage in the upper left.
5. Midnights. The transition to Midnights is incredible, with Taylor diving into the stage after her acoustic set, appearing to swim beneath the stage, enter the cloud, and emerge in Midnights garb. And I’m glad “Midnight Rain” made the setlist–it was a reflective complement to the more energetic songs. I confess that I find myself wondering: Did the dancers wearing different colors in the final number (“Karma”) symbolize different eras, maybe even eras left to come? If so, perhaps a dark green, a white, and a gold album are in our future? She is a “Mastermind,” after all (and I’m glad that also made the cut, and I liked the chessboard theming of that one).
4. Red. My only complaint about the treatment of Red is that it was impossible to do the album, which is now an expansive masterwork in its Taylor’s Version version, full justice. That’s where the 10-minute “All Too Well” is both a benefit and a drawback: A benefit as a true showstopper, where much of the production drops out and its just Taylor connecting with the audience, but a drawback because it means other great songs from Red just can’t make the show. But as someone who is almost 44, I’m glad that at the age of 33, she’s still singing “22.”
3. Lover. Such a strong start to the show and great to see this underrated album finally, finally get some serious attention four years after its release. My eyes got moist when the “Miss Americana” intro came on, and I wish that song had been allowed to bloom into its powerful self, but moving right into “Cruel Summer” was also a solid choice. The pageantry of “The Man” was outstanding, and I especially enjoyed how the flaming arrows of “The Archer” transitioned from a burning Lover House into…
2. Fearless. I didn’t expect this era to hit me this way! But shouting these classic lyrics while jumping (yes, I’m a 43-year-old man and I was jumping!) with 80,000 other Swifties is just peak Eras Tour. “Fearless,” “You Belong With Me,” and “Love Story” seem custom-made to have big impact in an arena, and here, 15 years after the release of that album, it felt like they hadn’t aged a day.
1. Folklore. Despite the brisk pace of the 3-hour show, Taylor effectively captured the mood and tone of each album era (except debut, of course), but of any era, this was the one that felt like it had the most chance to breathe. The woodsy staging with the cottage was great, the phalanx of mourners and water-styled fire of “My Tears Ricochet,” the rich colors and sheer fun of “August,” the band performing on the cottage steps for “Betty,” the elegant dress of the dancers in “Last Great American Dynasty”… yeah, she made the right decision to let her most recent Grammy-winning album shine, and that these intimate songs work in a football stadium is testament to her stage presence and her artistic genius.
Finally, let me give a shout-out to the staff of AT&T Stadium, who let us in early when a thunderstorm and potentially severe weather hit before they were set to open! Thanks for keeping us safe!
What the university press release didn’t mention is that TCU dropped from #83 last year to #89 this year. Of course, rankings don’t tell the whole story, and the US News & World Report rankings have been the focus of recent controversy. At the same time, the rankings have long been the benchmark for universities, and for my part, I rather like that they are based on a wide range of factors (if you want to dive into that, see the USNWR methodology page and their explanation of criteria and weights). Although the USNWR rankings aren’t the final word, they nevertheless convey something informative about the quality of the schools on the list.
So what about TCU’s 6-point drop? This year, several schools are tied at TCU’s former (2021-22) spot of #83: Binghamton University–SUNY, Gonzaga, Marquette, Stevens Institute of Technology, University of California–Santa Cruz, and University of Iowa. And likewise several schools are tied at TCU’s new spot of #89, including incoming Big 12 opponent BYU, as well as Colorado School of Mines, Elon, Howard, University at Buffalo–SUNY, University of California–Riverside, and University of Delaware.
That’s not bad company; these are solid, respectable schools. But is it the company that TCU seeks? A few years back, TCU’s Chancellor’s Cabinet self-identified ten peer schools. Here are those school’s rankings:
Wake Forest (#29)
Tulane (#44)
Villanova (#51)
Pepperdine (#55)
Santa Clara (#55)
George Washington (#62)
Syracuse (#62)
American (#72)
SMU (#72)
Baylor (#79)
At #89, I’m not sure most of these universities would name TCU as a peer. Indeed it seems that TCU’s peers have become its aspirants.
Going by the rankings, the ten private universities closest to TCU are Baylor (#77), Loyola Marymount (#77), Gonzaga (#83), Marquette (#83), Stevens Institute of Technology (#83), BYU (#89), Elon (#89), Howard (#89), Clark (#97), and University of San Diego (#97). With the exception of Baylor, which is a newly-minted Research 1 university positioned to ascend higher in future years, the USNWR list looks much different than TCU’s self-defined list.
What could lead to an increase in TCU’s ranking? That’s a question with many possible answers, including reduced class sizes (notably, the Board recently increased TCU’s student/faculty ratio from 13:1 to 14:1, amid budget cuts across the university’s academic units), increased alumni giving, greater graduation and retention rates (one of TCU’s strengths is that these are already high), and the beguiling standard of “undergraduate academic reputation” (which is essentially a popularity contest among senior administrators and admissions officers nationwide and, in my opinion, accounts for too much of the USNWR score).
One action worth considering is increased faculty compensation, which has accounted for 7% of the ranking in recent editions of the survey (equivalent to student selectivity of the entering class). USNWR uses this as a benchmark because, they say, “Research shows there is a link between academic outcomes and compensation of faculty.” Analysis from TCU’s Faculty Senate in 2019 and 2020 found that TCU’s compensation lags behind that of other nationally-ranked private universities, and a 2022 analysis suggests TCU’s compensation has gotten worse after rising inflation.
On the University Compensation Advisory Committee (UCAC), we have been discussing TCU’s compensation targets, which are 90% of the AAUP doctoral university median for faculty, and 80% of the median for staff. By definition, salaries below the median are below-average salaries, which seems inconsistent with TCU’s identity as a top-100 nationally-ranked university whose top strategic priority is to raise the academic profile.
Also inconsistent with that identity is TCU’s move to diminish the importance of faculty research. TCU has long been committed to the teacher-scholar model, which recognizes the equal worth of both teaching and research. As the TCU Faculty Senate put it in 2019, “Teaching and scholarly activity (such as research and creative activity) are mutually compatible and reciprocal, and exceptional performance in one inspires equal merit in the other.” But now, TCU’s Provost’s Office is far along in a plan to recalibrate tenured/tenure-track faculty workload for many units, such that 50% of faculty effort would be devoted to teaching and only 30% to research. This places faculty research closer to service work (20%) than teaching. If TCU wants to improve its scholarly reputation, drive innovation, and discover solutions to the challenges facing our world, this is not the way to go.
In the end, then, the 6-point drop should provoke discussion and raise at least a bit of concern, but given the number of schools tied around our current (#89) and former (#83) rank, it should not be a matter of overreaction either. Much more concerning are the institutional decisions that could inhibit increases in the rankings and, more importantly, the academic quality and success of the university in the future. For example, TCU remains vulnerable to the next inevitable phase of athletic conference realignment, as the power conferences have a demonstrated preference for Research 1 universities.
The time is ripe for TCU to increase investment in the core academic mission of the university: The faculty, academic and student support staff, research labs, undergraduate and graduate programs, library resources, and grant development, along with a vigorous public relations campaign that emphasizes TCU’s commitment to scholarship. Beyond the USNWR rankings, these will enhance the ability of TCU’s students, faculty, and staff to make a positive impact on our world.
And so it goes… this is me trying to use communication theory as an invisible string that runs throughout the Swiftverse.
Specifically, here’s a list that provides one connection between Taylor Swift and each of the 33 theories in A First Look at Communication Theory (11th edition). Of course there are more theories than this in the communication world… and of course there are many more possible connections to Taylor’s music. If you have a good example, feel free to leave it in a comment below.
Interpersonal Communication Theories
Symbolic interactionism (Mead):“Begin Again,” Red. This song begins with Taylor Swift looking in the mirror, but not just the physical mirror in front of her—she’s gazing at her looking-glass self, remembering how her ex criticized her.
Expectancy violations theory (Burgoon): “Betty,” Folklore. Betty’s ex-boyfriend James wonders what will happen if he appears unannounced at Betty’s party. Will she receive him warmly or reject him? Based on EVT’s twin concepts of violation valence and communicator reward valence, what would the theory predict?
Family communication patterns theory (Koerner & Fitzpatrick): “The Best Day,” Fearless. In this ode to her family, and specifically her mother, Taylor celebrates her ability to talk openly with them. Note particularly the second verse where her mother serves as a source of emotional support, as well as how throughout the song the open talk translates into communication that builds children up. It’s an effective picture of positive outcomes arising from conversation orientation.
Social penetration theory (Altman & Taylor): “Delicate,” Reputation. In the chorus of this song, Taylor wonders aloud if she has shared too much, too soon. Social penetration theory would suggest that she’s wondering whether the knife has cut too deeply into the onion.
Uncertainty reduction theory (Berger): “Paper Rings,” Lover. Immediately after meeting her boyfriend (presumably, Joe Alwyn), she looks him up online… the extractive uncertainty reduction theory. Why, according to the theory, might she be particularly motivated to reduce uncertainty in this situation (including, apparently, reading all of his books)?
Social information processing theory (Walther): The infamous 27-second phone call when Joe Jonas broke up with Taylor, The Ellen Show. She seems hurt as she shares about this with Ellen DeGeneres. The theory might suggest that’s because the cue-limited medium didn’t enable the then-teenagers to clarify what happened, especially during such a short call.
Relational dialectics theory (Baxter & Bakhtin): “Our Song,” Taylor Swift. Here, Taylor expresses frustration to her boyfriend that they don’t have a song for their relationship. RDT scholars might say that she wants to find an already-spoken cultural discourse that shapes their bond. In the end, Taylor creates her own; but, according to RDT, is it really a new discourse, or just echoing relational discourses in country music that have come before?
Communication privacy management theory (Petronio): “All Too Well,” Red. In the bridge of this epic song, Taylor reports that her (ex-)boyfriend’s sharing of private information had devastating consequences on her well-being. As Petronio contends, self-disclosure does not necessarily lead to intimacy.
Media multiplexity theory (Haythornthwaite): “Girl at Home,” Red. When flirtation verges on infidelity, what’s Taylor’s advice to the guy hitting on her? Delete her telephone number. According to the theory, that’s a good way to reduce the strength of their tie.
Elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo): “Enchanted,” Speak Now. This song finds Taylor full of insomnia, awake in the middle of the night thinking deeply about the man that she just met. She is clearly motivated to process the relationship centrally, so much so that her need for cognition exceeds her need for sleep.
Cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger): “Sparks Fly,” Speak Now. As Taylor notices her new romantic interest, she knows dating him isn’t a good decision, but she chooses to ignore this fact.
The Rhetoric (Aristotle): Taylor Swift’s commencement address to NYU’s Class of 2022. According to Aristotle, what kind of speech is this: deliberative, epideictic, or forensic? How does she establish her ethos? Do you see any other modes of proof in the speech?
Dramatism (Burke): “Mean,” Speak Now. Taylor wrote this song in response to a music critic who criticized her, and Taylor’s response is Burkean victimage. If you apply the pentad to this song, which elements does Taylor emphasize?
Narrative Paradigm (Fisher): “The Story of Us,” Speak Now. Taylor Swift’s music often uses the metaphor of story to describe love—but according to Fisher, perhaps story is more than a metaphor. In this song, Swift seems to use narrative rationality to evaluate her romantic relationship. Because the story of their love (and specifically, the story of her boyfriend’s behavior) lacks both narrative fidelity and coherence, she is dissatisfied. If you want to take this idea farther with Swift’s music, you might examine “Love Story” (Fearless), where she likens a romance beset by family drama to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Group and Organizational Communication Theories
Functional perspective on group decision making (Hirokawa & Gouran): “You Belong With Me,” Fearless. Did you realize this hit song is about decision making? The girl in the song has analyzed the problem: her male friend is in an unsatisfying romantic relationship. And she’s identified two alternatives: he can stay with his current girlfriend, or ditch her for a relationship with the singing girl. As for goal setting, the singer lists several criteria, from music tastes to dress to sense of humor. If only he’d follow the four functions, she thinks he’d realize his best and most reasonable choice.
Symbolic convergence theory (Bormann): “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”, Lover. Taylor Swift wrote this song as an allegory about the election and presidency of Donald Trump, using the imagery of a high school football game to imagine American politics in a creative and memorable way.
Cultural approach to organizations (Geertz and Pacanowksy): “Epiphany,” Folklore. Taylor imagines what life was like for her grandfather in the military during World War II, and for doctors during the COVID pandemic. For both groups, the emotion conveyed in the song rests in the tension between the corporate (leadership) and collegial (“how things really work”) narratives in those organizations.
Communicative constitution of organizations (McPhee): Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions (19:14-22:10). CCO addresses how organization is constituted through communication, a process that occurs when closure is achieved through back-and-forth interaction. This entire show focuses on how this was accomplished by Taylor and her collaborators, creating a Grammy-award winning album during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. This clip focuses on the song “Exile,” addressing how the song grew from a piano riff by Taylor’s boyfriend Joe Alwyn, to collaboration with Aaron Dessner, to including Justin Vernon (Bon Iver). Which of the four flows occur in this very organic example of organizing? If you watch the entire show, do you see all four flows present in the creation of the Folklore album?
Critical theory of communication in organizations (Deetz): “My Tears Ricochet,” Folklore. This song might sound like it is describing the funeral of an ex-lover, but the deeper layer of meaning is this: Taylor is critiquing music industry practices that favor management and disempower artists. She’s particularly concerned about practices like the contract she signed as a young artist, a contract that seems to be in her favor but wasn’t. Deetz might label that “consent,” and instead, Taylor seems to want something more akin to stakeholder democracy (participation).
Cultural Context Theories
Communication accommodation theory (Giles): “I Bet You Think About Me,” Red (Taylor’s Version). Taylor draws a stark contrast between her own socioeconomic background and that of her ex-boyfriend. His constant divergence is a key cause of their breakup.
Face-negotiation theory (Ting-Toomey): “Tolerate It,” Evermore. See how the distressed wife’s conflict strategies and face-concern change over the course of the song, moving from other-face toward her husband at the beginning, then to self-face by the end.
Co-cultural theory (Orbe): “You Need to Calm Down,” Lover. Orbe’s research has investigated the LGBTQ community, an audience Taylor addresses in this song. How would dominant group theory describe the lyrics of the second verse?
Afrocentricity (Asante): “What Wildest Dreams Gets Wrong About Africa,” MTV News. Taylor’s video for “Wildest Dreams” takes place in Africa. This clip critiques that choice because, for example, it portrays Africa as a single country and culture rather than a multitude of countries and cultures.
Feminist standpoint theory (Harding & Wood): “Mad Woman,” Folklore.The thesis of this song resonates deeply with feminist standpoint theory: Women (and others on the margins of society) have insights into society that members of more powerful groups don’t possess.
Muted group theory (Kramarae): “The Man,” Lover. Here, Taylor considers what her life would be life if she were a man—how would she be perceived? What power and influence would she have? This reflection reveals the bias and muting enacted against her within the music industry because she is a woman.
Media Theories
Media ecology (McLuhan): “Coney Island,” Evermore. There’s one line in this song that reflects on how the Internet has changed shopping in America, and with it people’s social lives… and beyond the lyrics, something about the wistful reflective mood of this song fits with media ecology’s concern that perhaps communication technology has led us to lose more than we realize.
Context collapse (boyd & Marwick): “The Lakes,” Folklore. In this song, Taylor yearns for a world without context collapse, where she doesn’t have to worry about the pressures brought by constant exposure on social media.
Semiotics (Barthes): “Look What You Made Me Do” music video, Reputation. Early in the video, Taylor sits in a bathtub filled with diamonds… and a single dollar bill. As a denotative sign, it clearly refers to wealth. But Taylor includes it here as a connotative, second-order semiotic system: The single dollar bill represents the amount she claimed against her sexual harasser in a high-profile lawsuit. And so the sign signifies all women who experience sexual abuse and the courage it takes to confront it.
Cultural studies (Hall): “Nothing New,” Red (Taylor’s Version). By highlighting how the music industry features young women for awhile and then rejects them as they age, Taylor articulates oppression that not all music listeners consider.
Uses and gratifications theory (Katz): “Taylor Swift Meets Her Biggest Fan,” The Ellen Show. When superfan Mary Kate meets Taylor Swift, her emotions are uncontainable. From the video shown before the meeting and her interaction with Swift, it’s clear she has a parasocial relationship with the singer.
Cultivation theory (Gerbner): “If This Was a Movie,” Speak Now. Taylor wants her ex to come back to her, thinking about how he would if they were film characters. The song highlights how the television/movie world differs from the real world, and suggests how the media world can shape how we think and react.
Agenda-setting theory (McCombs & Shaw): “Blank Space,” 1989. The whole song is a tongue-and-cheek critique of the second level of agenda-setting, and in this case, the subject of the media’s framing is Taylor Swift. At the time, the media framed her as a young woman who dated a series of men and, after the relationship was over, turned the story of the romance into songs (and profit). Here, Taylor rejects this boy-crazy image by embracing it, pretending it’s true to argue that it’s not.
Andrew M. Ledbetter 
