A new study confirms that Taylor Swift's accent has noticeably shifted over the course of her career, mirroring changes in her music and home base. Researchers analyzed more than 100 minutes of Swift's interviews from three key periods, per Scientific American: her early days near Nashville, in 2008; her pop turn around the time of 2012's Red; and her time in New York City near when 2019's Lover was released.
Early on, Swift's speech carried a Southern accent, with telltale vowel sounds—like a shorter "i" in "ride" (sounding more like "rod") and an altered "oo" in "two"—that are typical in the region. As she moved toward pop music and relocated, her pronunciation gradually reflected influences from Pennsylvania (her childhood home) and New York, with clearer differences between words such as "cot" and "caught." Researchers used computer analysis to track these shifts, focusing on vowel sounds as key indicators. The study, published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, suggests these linguistic changes may relate not only to geography, but also to Swift's desire to fit in with different demographics.
"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 of," said audiologist and study co-author Matthew Winn. A separate finding: Swift's vocal pitch dropped after she moved to New York, which researchers say could be linked to either aging or an evolving public persona as she took on advocacy roles. The study noted that "a lower voice pitch is often used by talkers to signal confidence and authority on important topics, and make the speaker more likely to be perceived as a leader," reports CNN.
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