taylor 4.0.0

Sequins are forever…

R
package
taylor
Taylor Swift
Author

Jake Thompson

Published

Friday, February 13, 2026

I’m very happy to announce the release of taylor 4.0.0. taylor provides data on Taylor Swift’s discography, including lyrics from Genius and song characteristics from SoundStat.

You can install the updated version from CRAN with:

This is a major release that brings significant changes to how we access audio features, celebrates Taylor’s ownership of her masters, and introduces exciting new data from The Life of a Showgirl.

This is why we can’t have nice things

You may have noticed that this release is coming out much later than I would typically update taylor after a new album release. This is because in the time between the last update to taylor and the release of The Life of a Showgirl, Spotify removed access to the audio features endpoint of their API, meaning we had to find a new source for this data.

Both taylor_all_songs and taylor_album_songs now use audio features from the SoundStat API. In many ways this transition is similar to Taylor’s rerecordings. We’ve tried to make the new data as similar as possible to the old data, but there are places where it’s just not quite the same. Specifically, three variables that are not included in the SoundStat API have been removed from the data sets: liveness, speechiness, and time_signature. Additionally, the remaining audio features (like danceability, energy, valence, etc.) may have slightly different values compared to the Spotify data due to differences in how SoundStat and Spotify calculate these metrics. If you need to convert SoundStat values to Spotify-equivalent values for comparison with previous data, check out the SoundStat conversions article.

I protect the family

Now that Taylor owns all of her masters, we’ve added the original versions of Fearless, Speak Now, Red, and 1989 back to taylor_album_songs. Both the originals and Taylor’s Versions are now included in the dataset, giving you access to the complete discography for analysis.

As part of this change, we’ve made a few updates to album metadata. First, we’ve reordered the albums to be in release order. Previously, for example, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) had slotted in after Taylor Swift as a replacement for the original Fearless. Now, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) appears after evermore and before Red (Taylor’s Version) to reflect actual release dates. This is reflected in ?album_levels, which is in turn used to set the ordering of ?taylor_albums, ?album_palettes, and ?album_compare.

album_levels
#>  [1] "Taylor Swift"                  "Fearless"                     
#>  [3] "Speak Now"                     "Red"                          
#>  [5] "1989"                          "reputation"                   
#>  [7] "Lover"                         "folklore"                     
#>  [9] "evermore"                      "Fearless (Taylor's Version)"  
#> [11] "Red (Taylor's Version)"        "Midnights"                    
#> [13] "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)"  "1989 (Taylor's Version)"      
#> [15] "THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT" "The Life of a Showgirl"

taylor_albums
#> # A tibble: 18 × 5
#>    album_name                    ep    album_release metacritic_score user_score
#>    <chr>                         <lgl> <date>                   <int>      <dbl>
#>  1 Taylor Swift                  FALSE 2006-10-24                  67        8.4
#>  2 The Taylor Swift Holiday Col… TRUE  2007-10-14                  NA       NA  
#>  3 Beautiful Eyes                TRUE  2008-07-15                  NA       NA  
#>  4 Fearless                      FALSE 2008-11-11                  73        8.4
#>  5 Speak Now                     FALSE 2010-10-25                  77        8.6
#>  6 Red                           FALSE 2012-10-22                  77        8.6
#>  7 1989                          FALSE 2014-10-27                  76        8.3
#>  8 reputation                    FALSE 2017-11-10                  71        8.3
#>  9 Lover                         FALSE 2019-08-23                  79        8.4
#> 10 folklore                      FALSE 2020-07-24                  88        9  
#> 11 evermore                      FALSE 2020-12-11                  85        8.9
#> 12 Fearless (Taylor's Version)   FALSE 2021-04-09                  82        8.9
#> 13 Red (Taylor's Version)        FALSE 2021-11-12                  91        8.9
#> 14 Midnights                     FALSE 2022-10-21                  85        8.3
#> 15 Speak Now (Taylor's Version)  FALSE 2023-07-07                  81        9.2
#> 16 1989 (Taylor's Version)       FALSE 2023-10-27                  90       NA  
#> 17 THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT FALSE 2024-04-19                  76       NA  
#> 18 The Life of a Showgirl        FALSE 2025-10-03                  69       NA

names(album_palettes)
#>  [1] "taylor_swift"   "fearless"       "speak_now"      "red"           
#>  [5] "1989"           "reputation"     "lover"          "folklore"      
#>  [9] "evermore"       "fearless_tv"    "red_tv"         "midnights"     
#> [13] "speak_now_tv"   "1989_tv"        "tortured_poets" "showgirl"

album_compare
#> <color_palette[16]>
#>     taylor_swift 
#>     fearless 
#>     speak_now 
#>     red 
#>     1989 
#>     reputation 
#>     lover 
#>     folklore 
#>     evermore 
#>     fearless_tv 
#>     red_tv 
#>     midnights 
#>     speak_now_tv 
#>     1989_tv 
#>     tortured_poets 
#>     showgirl

Now I know the life of a showgirl, babe

The final major update is the inclusion of data from The Life of a Showgirl. You can know find SoundStat data and lyrics for all 12 songs in ?taylor_all_songs and ?taylor_album_songs.

library(tidyverse)

taylor_all_songs %>% 
  filter(album_name == "The Life of a Showgirl")
#> # A tibble: 12 × 26
#>    album_name       ep    album_release track_number track_name artist featuring
#>    <chr>            <lgl> <date>               <int> <chr>      <chr>  <chr>    
#>  1 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03               1 The Fate … Taylo… <NA>     
#>  2 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03               2 Elizabeth… Taylo… <NA>     
#>  3 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03               3 Opalite    Taylo… <NA>     
#>  4 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03               4 Father Fi… Taylo… <NA>     
#>  5 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03               5 Eldest Da… Taylo… <NA>     
#>  6 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03               6 Ruin The … Taylo… <NA>     
#>  7 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03               7 Actually … Taylo… <NA>     
#>  8 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03               8 Wi$h Li$t  Taylo… <NA>     
#>  9 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03               9 Wood       Taylo… <NA>     
#> 10 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03              10 CANCELLED! Taylo… <NA>     
#> 11 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03              11 Honey      Taylo… <NA>     
#> 12 The Life of a S… FALSE 2025-10-03              12 The Life … Taylo… Sabrina …
#> # ℹ 19 more variables: bonus_track <lgl>, promotional_release <date>,
#> #   single_release <date>, track_release <date>, danceability <dbl>,
#> #   energy <dbl>, loudness <dbl>, acousticness <dbl>, instrumentalness <dbl>,
#> #   valence <dbl>, tempo <dbl>, duration_ms <int>, explicit <lgl>, key <int>,
#> #   mode <int>, key_name <chr>, mode_name <chr>, key_mode <chr>, lyrics <list>

The Life of a Showgirl has also been added to ?taylor_albums. Metacritic is still undergoing updates to their music scores, so user scores are still unavailable for all albums after Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).

taylor_albums
#> # A tibble: 18 × 5
#>    album_name                    ep    album_release metacritic_score user_score
#>    <chr>                         <lgl> <date>                   <int>      <dbl>
#>  1 Taylor Swift                  FALSE 2006-10-24                  67        8.4
#>  2 The Taylor Swift Holiday Col… TRUE  2007-10-14                  NA       NA  
#>  3 Beautiful Eyes                TRUE  2008-07-15                  NA       NA  
#>  4 Fearless                      FALSE 2008-11-11                  73        8.4
#>  5 Speak Now                     FALSE 2010-10-25                  77        8.6
#>  6 Red                           FALSE 2012-10-22                  77        8.6
#>  7 1989                          FALSE 2014-10-27                  76        8.3
#>  8 reputation                    FALSE 2017-11-10                  71        8.3
#>  9 Lover                         FALSE 2019-08-23                  79        8.4
#> 10 folklore                      FALSE 2020-07-24                  88        9  
#> 11 evermore                      FALSE 2020-12-11                  85        8.9
#> 12 Fearless (Taylor's Version)   FALSE 2021-04-09                  82        8.9
#> 13 Red (Taylor's Version)        FALSE 2021-11-12                  91        8.9
#> 14 Midnights                     FALSE 2022-10-21                  85        8.3
#> 15 Speak Now (Taylor's Version)  FALSE 2023-07-07                  81        9.2
#> 16 1989 (Taylor's Version)       FALSE 2023-10-27                  90       NA  
#> 17 THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT FALSE 2024-04-19                  76       NA  
#> 18 The Life of a Showgirl        FALSE 2025-10-03                  69       NA

A new color palette inspired by the Showgirl aesthetic has also been added to the ?album_palettes. The palette can be used inside any of the scale_*_taylor_*() functions (e.g., scale_fill_taylor_d()).

The five colors of the Showgirl color palette. The hexadecimal codes are #C44615, #EB8246, #F0CD92, #6CAE90, and #3E5C38
Figure 1 
taylor_album_songs %>% 
  filter(album_name == "The Life of a Showgirl") %>% 
  mutate(track_name = fct_inorder(track_name)) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = energy, y = fct_rev(track_name))) +
  geom_col(aes(fill = track_name), show.legend = FALSE) +
  scale_fill_taylor_d(album = "The Life of a Showgirl") +
  labs(x = "Song Energy (From SoundStat)", y = NULL)
A horizontal bar graph showing track names on the y-axis and song energey on the x-axis. Bars a filled with colors derived from the Showgirl color palette, ranging from orange to green.
Figure 2

Finally, the package website has gotten a new theme to match the album aesthetic, and, of course, a new package logo!

taylor hex logo with a Showgirl theme.
Figure 3

(Other things) have changed

There were also a few of minor improvements:

  • get_spotify_track_info(), get_soundstat_audio_features(), and get_reccobeats_audio_features() are now exported and can be used to gather data for other songs.
  • set_spotify_api_key() and set_soundstat_api_key() have been added to assist with setting up API access.
  • scale_color_albums() and scale_fill_albums() are now more forgiving with mapping the album_compare palette to album names. They now recognize alternate capitalizations (e.g., Folklore instead of folklore) and common nicknames (e.g., Debut for Taylor Swift).

For a complete list of changes, check out the changelog.

Acknowledgments

Featured photo by KaroGraphix Photography on Unsplash.