"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."
"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, prounouncing 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."
Taylor Swift's dialect and pitch shifted over her career, moving from southern US speech features while living near Nashville to different patterns after relocating to New York. More than 100 minutes of interviews from 2008, 2012, and 2019 were acoustically analysed to track vowel pronunciation changes. Early-career features included shortening of the 'i' in words like 'ride' toward 'rod' and an "oo" in 'two' that sounded like 'tee-you.' Around the pop transition, vowels lengthened and distinctions between vowels such as in 'cot' became clearer, revealing longitudinal phonetic shifts.
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