Researchers have analyzed Taylor Swift’s accent in interviews.Credit: Gareth Cattermole/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
Researchers have confirmed what Taylor Swift fans have long suspected: the music megastar’s dialect and pitch have shifted throughout her career.
In the early stages of Swift’s music career, while she was living near Nashville, Tennessee, her speech had the hallmarks of a southern US accent. When she released her pop album Red in 2012, the southern twang had faded, suggest researchers who have analysed her voice1. It changed again when she moved to New York City, they say.
A person’s dialect is typically associated with the region they are from, although it can change throughout their lifetime. But being able to study how they change is rare, says Matthew Winn, an audiologist at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in Minneapolis. “We cannot typically follow someone around with a microphone,” he says.
Enter Tay Tay. “Taylor Swift has essentially been followed around with the microphone for most of her adult life,” says Winn.
Swift interviews
In the study published today in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Winn and his colleague analysed more than 100 minutes of Swift’s interviews across three distinct eras of her career. In 2008, Swift released Fearless while living near Nashville; in 2012, she released Red; and in 2019, Lover was released when she lived in New York City.
The pair used computer software to track how the pronunciation of Swift’s vowels changed. “As a person changes dialects — within English at least — mostly those changes are reflected in the vowels,” says Winn.
Early in her career, Swift’s pronunciation of ‘i’ in words such as ‘ride’ became shorter, pronouncing the word more like ‘rod’, which the researchers say is a classic southern US feature. The “oo” sound in words like ‘two’” also changed to sound like ‘tee-you’, another southern signature.
Later, Swift’s vowels lengthened around the time she started singing more pop music, with a clearer distinction between words such as ‘cot’ and ‘caught’, which the authors say is a feature of dialects in Pennsylvania, where Swift grew up, and New York.
The researchers suggest that these changes reflect Swift’s desire to be part of those communities. “I was one of those people who thought of dialects mainly as reflecting where you come from, but they obviously also reflect what kind of community you want to be a part,” says Winn.
