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).

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).

Once these groups were identified, I used tools from rhetorical analysis to discern the meaning of these groups. Specifically, I used symbolic convergence theory, because it focuses on how large groups of people are held together by shared stories, symbols, and meanings. Think about any given night of The Eras Tour, as fans exchanged friendship bracelets, held their hands in the air like a heart, gave a long standing ovation for “Champagne Problems,” and dressed in outfits referring to specific songs and albums. Spotify’s image recognizing her as the 2023 top global artist depicts the deep, rich well of symbolic meanings that exist within the Taylorverse, meanings that outsiders find confusing but fans celebrate and enjoy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: