A new study provides evidence that pop star Taylor Swift’s speaking voice shifted in measurable ways as she moved through different social and geographic communities during her career. Researchers found that Swift adopted Southern speech patterns during her early years in Nashville, gradually returned to features associated with Philadelphia English, and later adopted vocal traits linked to urban prestige while living in New York City. These findings suggest that even in adulthood, a person’s accent may adjust in ways that reflect their community ties, career goals, and public identity.
The research was published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
Most research on dialects tends to focus on how groups of people from different regions sound at a single point in time. But when a person moves between communities with distinct dialects, their speech may offer insights into how accents can change. This is especially true when the individual is highly visible and well-documented, as is the case with Swift.
The authors were interested in whether Swift’s accent changed over the course of her career in ways that aligned with her geographical movements and professional shifts. She moved from Pennsylvania to Tennessee as a teenager to pursue country music and later shifted away from country toward pop music while returning to the Northeast. Her media interviews, recorded across different phases of this journey, provided material to study how specific vowel sounds changed in her speech, as well as how her vocal pitch varied over time.
The researchers also considered the social function of accent. Prior studies suggest that people often unconsciously adapt their speech to match those around them, and this adaptation can be strengthened by social or professional motivations. For someone building a career in country music—a genre strongly linked with Southern identity—aligning her speech with regional expectations could enhance her authenticity and connection with the audience.
“This work was made possible by Miski Mohamed, who is a huge Taylor Swift fan. Miski was a student in my class where I taught about measuring physical properties of the voice, and we generated the idea for the Taylor Swift study based on her accent change and the opportunity to see changes in her music when comparing in-studio versus live shows,” said senior author Matthew Winn, an associate professor of audiology at the University of Minnesota.
“It is usually extremely difficult to studying how dialects change, because it is not realistic to follow around someone with a microphone and hope that they move to a different city and change how they speak. But Taylor Swift gives us that rare opportunity because she was recorded many times over the years in interviews and media appearances. She lived in different geographic regions, and also had different kinds of social influences and career aspirations that might have further shaped how she wanted to sound.”
The researchers analyzed Swift’s speech from interviews during three periods of her career: in 2008 when she was promoting a country album and living in Nashville; in 2012 when she had transitioned into pop and was reconnected with the Philadelphia region; and in 2019 when she was living in New York City and speaking publicly about social justice issues.
Audio clips were selected carefully to avoid noise and overlapping voices, and only natural, unstressed vowels were analyzed. They focused on vowels because these are reliable indicators of accent differences. Special attention was given to the vowels in words like “ride,” “code,” “thought,” and “cot,” as these vary across American dialects.
During the Nashville period, Swift’s pronunciation included traits associated with Southern White English. The most striking was a shortening of the /aɪ/ vowel, which occurs in words like “ride.” She also produced a more fronted /u/ vowel. This fronting occurred even when the surrounding sounds did not typically promote it, suggesting it was not just an automatic effect but likely influenced by broader social exposure and goals.
When she returned to promoting music outside of country genres, her speech showed signs of returning to features consistent with her roots in the Philadelphia area. Her /aɪ/ vowels regained a longer, more distinct trajectory, especially in voiced contexts like “ride,” although the difference was less noticeable in unvoiced contexts like “right.” Her /u/ vowel also became less fronted.
By 2019, Swift’s speech had shifted further. While living in New York, she showed a clearer separation between the vowels in “cot” and “caught,” a distinction common in Northern dialects but not prominent in the South. Her /aɪ/ vowels became even longer and more distinct from their Nashville versions. These changes suggest a deliberate or unconscious distancing from her earlier Southern accent.
“Many people think that dialects just reflect where a person grew up, but it also includes the social community that you want to be a part of,” Winn told PsyPost. “When Taylor was in Nashville in the country music scene, she added southern features to the pronunciation of two vowels. First, the vowel in ‘my’ which becomes similar to ‘ma’ (we call this monophthongization of /aɪ/). Also, she used a fronted version of the /u/ vowel (‘boom’ would shift toward ‘bee-oom’). She dropped these features when she shifted to pop music.”
The researchers also tracked changes in her voice pitch. Swift’s average pitch, measured across vowel sounds, was significantly lower in her New York City interviews than in earlier years. This change coincided with her increased public engagement on issues such as sexism and musicians’ rights. Prior studies suggest that lowering one’s pitch can signal authority, seriousness, or competence, particularly for women in public-facing roles. Although the researchers acknowledge this change could also be influenced by age, the timing suggests that her lower pitch may have supported her evolving public persona as a leader and advocate.
“We did not expect the change in her voice pitch,” Winn said. “Also we did not expect that she would show the /u/ vowel fronting as strongly as she did. Normally this happens only in specific contexts, but she showed it rather consistently.”
Across all three periods, Swift preserved some consistent features. For instance, in words that end with the letter “l,” like “cold” or “school,” her vowels remained farther back in her mouth, a trait associated with Philadelphia English. This consistency supports the idea that people retain parts of their native dialect even as they adapt to new environments.
Importantly, the researchers stress that changing one’s accent over time does not suggest inauthenticity or deception.
“Observing these accent changes does not mean that a person is ‘faking’ who they are,” Winn told PsyPost. “It is a totally normal behavior for people who become part of a community. Also, a person doesn’t need to lower their pitch just to be taken seriously – it’s a common thing to do, but it isn’t necessary.”
As with all research, there are limitations to consider. The analysis is based on a single speaker, which means the results cannot necessarily be generalized to others. Also, the interviews were conducted in casual, uncontrolled settings, so some variation in speaking style could be influenced by context, emotional tone, or conversational partner.
Another limitation is the lack of control over what words were spoken during each era. Because the interviews were not scripted, the researchers had to work with the words Swift happened to say, which affected how many tokens they had for each vowel.
Future studies might compare other highly visible public figures who have crossed regional or cultural boundaries. The authors also expressed interest in returning to their lab’s main research focus, which involves studying how hearing loss affects speech perception and effort.
“The main focus of the research in our lab is actually not dialects or Taylor Swift!” Winn explained. “We do most of our work trying to understand how speech communication is affected by hearing loss. We work with people who listen using a cochlear implant, and try to understand the factors that might make listening effortful for them.”
“Hearing loss affects 1 in 7 adults in the United States, and yet we have much to learn about how hearing difficulties can affect a person’s stress, ability to work, and willingness to socialize with friends and family. These are the topics that motivate our work. We run experiments that measure changes in pupil dilation and eye movements as signatures of how hard a person has to work to understand what they hear.”
The study, “Acoustic analysis of Taylor Swift’s dialect changes across different eras of her career,” was authored by Miski Mohamed and Matthew B. Winn.
