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Taylor Swift Lyric Study Finds Persistent Themes Across Her Career
A researcher studied many of Taylor Swift’s song lyrics to look for repeated ideas.
The collection contains more than 123,000 words from 247 songs.
The study found that the color grey appears unusually often.
Swift also regularly writes about things that might happen or could have happened.
Her songs often imagine how other people see her.
Body parts and clothing are also common subjects in her lyrics.
These details can help show how her characters understand themselves.
The research suggests that Swift can change her sound and image while returning to familiar lyrical themes.
Naomi Adam’s Taylor Lyric Corpus analyzes 123,553 words from 247 publicly available Taylor Swift songs.
The database covers 12 studio albums, extended plays, charity singles, soundtracks, collaborations, demos and other tracks.
Grey is the most over-represented color in Swift’s lyrics, despite the prominence of the album Red.
Swift frequently uses hypothetical words such as “would,” “should” and “could,” while exploring how others perceive her.
Body parts and clothing recur throughout her lyrics, which Adam links to identity and self-understanding.
- Who
- Naomi Adam analyzed Taylor Swift’s lyrics.
- What
- The Taylor Lyric Corpus identified recurring themes and language patterns across Swift’s songs.
- Where
- The research was conducted through the University of Liverpool and discussed in The Conversation.
- When
- The analysis was reported alongside the September 25, 2026 release of The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore.
- Why
- It examined whether Swift’s apparent musical reinventions coexist with persistent themes in her songwriting.
Continuing Patterns
Ongoing Reinvention
Swift’s artistic direction
Continuing Patterns
The lyric analysis suggests that recurring subjects, including colors, hypothetical situations, body parts and clothing, have remained consistent throughout Swift’s career.
Ongoing Reinvention
Swift is widely associated with changing her musical identity, and the analysis does not establish that her future sound or image will remain unchanged.
Meaning of the latest work
Continuing Patterns
Adam’s findings suggest that newer lyrics continue patterns found in earlier songs, including detailed descriptions, speculation and color imagery.
Ongoing Reinvention
The New York Times video Is Taylor Swift in a Holding Pattern? raises the question of whether recent work represents a new stage of development rather than simply a continuation.
Key facts
- Researcher
- Naomi Adam, a postdoctoral research associate in literary linguistics at the University of Liverpool
- Database
- Taylor Lyric Corpus, also called TaLyCo
- Word count
- 123,553 words
- Songs analyzed
- 247 songs
- Coverage
- Swift’s 12 studio albums plus extended plays, charity singles, non-album tracks, soundtracks, songs written for other artists and unreleased demos
- Most over-represented color
- Grey
- Expanded release
- The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore added four songs, including Patient Zero, and was reported as released on September 25, 2026
Sources
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