The lyrics to these tracks, however, prove that Swift can be associated with continuity just as much as change.<\/p>\n
To investigate Swift\u2019s lyrical language, I created a bespoke digital database \u2013 a corpus \u2013 of every publicly available track by the artist. I\u2019ve called it the Taylor Lyric Corpus (or TaLyCo for short). <\/p>\n
Aside from the 247 songs spread across her 12 studio albums, the corpus also contains lyrics from extended play releases, charity singles and non-album singles. It also encompasses contributions to film soundtracks, songs written for other artists and unreleased demo recordings. Swift signed a development deal with Sony\/ATV Music Publishing at the tender age of 14, so there\u2019s plenty of material to work with: 123,553 words, to be exact.<\/p>\n
This comprehensive collection of Swift\u2019s writing makes is easy to pinpoint recurring patterns over the course of her 20-plus year career. In the upcoming book The Lyrics of Taylor Swift, my colleague Suzanne McClure and I look in particular at Swift\u2019s lyrical fascination with colour, counterfactuality, embodiment, opposition and time.<\/p>\n
Many of the patterns we\u2019ve picked up on have been carried across into Swift\u2019s four-strong new Encore offering. Take, for example, her strategic use of colour, described by one critic as an \u201cobsession\u201d<\/a>. Swift may have an entire album devoted to red \u2013 a colour she once called \u201creally powerful\u201d<\/a> as it signals everything<\/a> from \u201cpassion and love and affection\u201d to \u201cjealousy and anger and frustration\u201d \u2013 but her most over-represented colour is in fact grey.<\/p>\n In her new song Pink Clouding<\/a>, Swift continues her habit of placing the inherently colourless colour alongside brighter hues for contrast (\u201cgray (gray) rocking where the arrow hit\u201d). Think \u201cDid I paint your bluest skies the darkest gray?\u201d from coney island<\/a> (2020), or \u201cGray overpass full of neon names\u201d from Ruin the Friendship<\/a> (2025) on the original The Life of a Showgirl album. <\/p>\n In her Encore track, there are syllabic and semantic echoes which make the contrast of \u201cgray rocking\u201d and \u201cpink clouding\u201d even more obvious.<\/p>\n Aside from an obsession with colour, Swift has also been described as \u201cobsessed by how others perceive her\u201d<\/a>. Critic Quinn Moreland<\/a> wrote in 2022 that: \u201cSwift sees the world seeing her, and rather than shut it out, she absorbs it.\u201d<\/p>\n Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening verse of new song Cleveland!<\/a>. Swift offers a sardonic assessment of herself which borrows heavily from public perception: \u201cAnd with all of that money, why\u2019s she dressed like trash? \/ When she smiles, it\u2019s annoying.\u201d <\/p>\n This absorption and repackaging of the wider world\u2019s perspective represents a meta-perspective \u2013 my view of another\u2019s view of me \u2013 and it recurs in songs including 2014\u2019s Shake It Off<\/a> (\u201cI stay out too late \/ Got nothing in my brain \/ That\u2019s what people say\u201d) and 2024\u2019s Who\u2019s Afraid of Little Old Me?<\/a> (\u201cI\u2019m always drunk on my own tears, isn\u2019t that what they all said?\u201d). <\/p>\n Elsewhere on Cleveland!, an amorphous \u201cthey\u201d suggest that the track\u2019s romantic lead \u201ccould find someone younger\u201d, compounding Swift\u2019s fascination with unrealised scenarios<\/a> and matching her overuse of the modal verbs \u201cwould\u201d, \u201cshould\u201d and \u201ccould\u201d across the rest of her discography.<\/p>\n Swift is also prone to zeroing in on specific body parts, and the Encore additions are no exception. Across her four new tracks we have mention of arms, elbows, faces, hearts, lips and shoulders \u2013 all body part terms to tick off the lyrical bingo card.<\/p>\n And to cover the body, an abundance of clothes<\/a>: cardigans, Eagles T-shirts, skirts lilac and short or tight and little, black dresses and old faded blue jeans all figure across past tracks. With the release of Encore, her existing lyrical wardrobe has been supplemented by the \u201cchurch dress\u201d and \u201chand-me-down sweater\u201d in new track Babylon<\/a> \u2013 reminiscent of the knitwear left under someone\u2019s bed in folklore\u2019s lead single, cardigan<\/a> (2020). <\/p>\nI\u2019m addicted to the \u2018if only\u2019<\/h2>\n
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