Taylor Swift has been making music for more than 20 years. During that time, she’s changed her outfits, music, and . . . speech? Researchers from the University of Minnesota recently combed through two hours of interviews to analyze how the acoustics, or sound properties, of Swift’s speaking style evolved over time.
Swift started out as a country artist in Nashville, Tennessee. At the time, her vowels made the word ride sound more like rod—a common sound in Southern accents. When she transitioned to pop music, those features gradually disappeared. Later, when she moved to New York City, the pitch of her voice lowered.
People’s dialect, or regional language style, is often affected by the communities they join. But studying these changes can be difficult. Swift’s long career in the spotlight gave scientists a lot of recorded speech to analyze, making her an ideal subject. “This kind of study is pretty rare,” says Matthew Winn, a scientist who worked on the research.