Taylor Swift Lyrics LDA

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Word Frequencies (Bigrams)

So you know how everyone says Taylor Swift songs are all the same?
Well, let’s test that, shall we?

First, let’s look at the most common word pairs (bigrams) in each album.
I used bigrams because unigrams returned very generic words, and trigrams repeated lyrics too much.

The Moment You’ve Been Waiting For: LDA

Okay… now for the LDA!

I expected there to be three main themes in Taylor Swift’s discography.
Even though GridSearch said that a single component was the best model (okay, okay, all you naysayers may have been right…), I still believe there’s more nuance in her broader lyrical themes.
So I forced the LDA model to use 3 topics.

As a fan, I hypothesized these rough groupings:

• Love – e.g., Taylor Swift, Speak Now, Red, Lover
• Revenge/Anger – e.g., Reputation, Red, Midnights, Folklore
• Existentialism/Awe – e.g., Folklore, Evermore, Midnights, TTPD

Here’s what the topic-document matrix revealed:

Observations

• Topic 1: 1989 and Speak Now converge here — upbeat, exciting love vibes.
• Topic 2: Folklore, Lover, Midnights, Debut (Taylor Swift), and Evermore cluster here — reflective, existential, awe-filled themes.
• Topic 3: Fearless, Red, Reputation, and TTPD cluster here — more intense, bitter, or vengeful themes.

Possible Topic Interpretations

• Topic 1: Exciting/New Love
• Topic 2: Existentialism / Awe
• Topic 3: Anger / Revenge / Bitterness

TTPD, with its massive tracklist, definitely shows up where the bitterness simmers.

🧠 TL;DR: Taylor Swift is more thematically diverse than people give her credit for.