Thread by @tmac0201

Hi, I’m Tara. I charted, graphed and tracked 99 Taylor Swift songs for 3 years looking for answers. I didn't find what I expected. This is my journey down a rabbit hole to Wonderland 1/13

3 years ago, I drove solo from St. Pete, FL to New Orleans for a girls trip. I spent 12 hours with windows down, snacks in my lap and @taylorswift13 blaring from my speakers. 1989 had just come out. I had tickets to see her 12th row at @RJStadium on Halloween night 2/13

While scream singing, a light bulb came on. I was pumping gas in Tallahassee when I texted the @TB_Times features editor, @stephhayes. Let me create a database of #TaylorSwift lyrics for you, I said. It’ll be fun, I said. I’ll do illustrations, I said. Yes, she said. 3/13

I started by tallying all her words by hand. 4/13

But with only 24 hours in a day and less than two weeks until her show, there was no way I was gonna finish the database by then. I gave up 5/13

I spent the next 2 years thinking of the project that never was. Until one night I was nerding out about @reddit’s #dataisbeautiful with Times investigations/data editor @adamplayford. I said I’d once had a dream to look at Taylor Swift’s lyrical data. And he was like, YES 6/13

The lyrics were copied and pasted into an #excel spreadsheet and then loaded into a program called #overview, a program that has been used to sort government documents 7/13

Meanwhile, in June, I held a roundtable discussion with a business owning mom, a big fan with a Masters degree, Times music critic @JayCridlin, Times web producer intern fresh from college @gabriellecalise and a realtor who was into music 8/13

We talked about what we knew about Taylor Swift, captured on video with the help of Times #cameranerds @danesekenon, @DirkShadd, @jborchuck and @Eve_Edelheit 9/13
bit.ly/2OXSp3U

By the last month of research, I was counting words manually in Excel. But for one especially tough chart exploring past vs present tense, I asked Times data genius @Eli_Mur to help, who ran the data through a fancy text analysis program 10/13

I had a hell of a time discussing #charts with @bevolk, who designed the project for print and commissioned this illustration by Delphine Lee. Catch it in the Times' Sunday #Floridian section 11/13

And I think I broke @elizhangnyc, who set up the web presentation with @catlips, WHILE they were working on actual investigative journalism. So thanks for the assist, @_neilbedi 12/13
(btw, these kids have probably been drinking lead: bit.ly/2nqStfW)

BUT. Here it is. Three years after its inception and four days before #reptourTampa, an analysis of 99 songs. And that’s how you *get* the girl.
#LookWhatTaylorSwiftMadeMeDo 13/13
bit.ly/2M4Q2yi