Revealed: The Top 5 Most Danceable Taylor Swift Songs on Spotify

The abundance of people ensuring a seamless Internet connection, and possibly combined with goodness knows how many hours of annual leave was used up to book pre-sales tickets to her Eras Tours; it really got me thinking of a relevant project for my Data Analytics studies, where I was tasked with creating a Data Viz in Tableau on any topic I wanted. Music is the fabric of our lives, and therefore I wanted to explore the beat category.

Unlike some other musicians out there; Tay Tay is not known to cancel any of her tours, and all of those Swifties pay top dollar (Girl Math might save the day) to (literally) be first in best dressed. That is only for the tickets. There are other extra expenses to consider in seeing Tay Tay live.

According to Canberra times, pre-sales tickets to her Sydney and Melbourne Eras Tours in early 2024 sold out in only two hours.

Just for a moment, I want to pretend that I've been hired as a Junior Data Analyst for Tay Tay's Manager; and part of my job is to find the relevant datasets for analysis, in finding out the most danceable songs of Tay Tay's on all popular digital music sources. Of course, other streaming services such as Apple and Amazon would be considered; yet Tay Tay's Manager (still fictionally speaking of course) wanted the data on Spotify to be looked at.

On that, credit is to be given to Jarred Priester for finding the right data set on Kaggle. Here it is. What is most impressive about Kaggle is that a usability score is given, based on how well data scientists (who create these datasets on Taylor Swift and other musicians) include all of the necessary elements that Kaggle look for. This dataset has a usability score of 10, and that is the highest possible score. Datasets can also be found on Tableau, as well as Google, and data.world to name.

The aim is to create a new Taylor Swift event or concert that is fun, with the top songs (across all of Tay Tay's ten albums) that have the highest danceability factor/score to be played, and therefore such should come as a surprise to the attendees, and shall keep them on their toes, quite literally.

For a song to be danceable (that people want to get onto the dance floor to dance to, and hence to burn some calories, rather than consuming such); musical elements such as tempo, beat strength, rhythm stability, and overall regularity to name need to be taken into consideration.

Prior to sharing this data (as a Viz) on Tableau; I chose to work with spreadsheets to filter out the data, and to ensure that it is clean. As a result, and full disclosure; I removed her song Vigilante S*!t, as I really do not want to see profane work on my Data Viz profile so soon; and I do not know how to censor it on Tableau. That aside, the data was cleaned and filtered, prior to uploading into Tableau for analysis, where a bar chart was appropriate. I could have run a SQL query to get this data, yet the spreadsheet did the job, due to the size of the data. if Tay Tay had released an extra 100 songs, then I would be thinking of using SQL.

Which songs made the top five, in terms of being the most danceable?

Here we are...

1. Song title: I Think He Knows / Album: Lover

This song is the most danceable song listened to by Tay Tay fans on Spotify to date. This is the data, and this is official. The fans are saying that this is the flirtiest and most underrated song. Who knew that it was the most danceable song of Taylor's, as in to date?

2. Hey Stephen

Interestingly so, it came up in the analysis that this song is the second most danceable song from Tay Tay's reputation Stadium Tour as a surprise song, of which Tay Tay has the edge on. Out of interest, this is what came up when I filtered the spread sheet by song title only, for this particular song:

I did not choose to add the Fearless album to the Viz, as the concert version ranked higher in loudness, and hence adding to the surprise, and to the party vibes. Earplugs anyone?

3. Song title: Cornelia Street / Album: Lover

Her Lover album is beginning to take the cake with Tay Tay fans who listen to her tunes on Spotify, when it comes to the danceability factor. Ironically, this turns out to be one of Tay Tay's most heartbreaking songs (running this through a handful of my friends as a sample size of Tay Tay fans yet again); yet it is the third most danceable song listened to on Spotify. Perhaps a natural A*vil anyone? (If such a thing existed).

4. Song title: Clean / Album: 1989 (Deluxe Edition)

Tay Tay fans on TikTok will embrace and cheer some more, knowing that a song from her 1989 album had made it to the top 5 on Spotify, in terms of being the most danceable. You have to love the opening beat that carries throughout the song. Something you can dance to while using your Dyson to vacuum the house with ease and finesse. Here we are, with the correct album image shown:

5. Song Title: Paper Rings / Album: Lover

Yes, and back to the Lover album. Three of out five is marvellous, in terms of being one of the most danceable songs of Tay Tay's listened to on Spotify. Such a catchy song as well. This is one where friends can bond at a concert to. Not bad for the seventh album released by Taylor Swift in 2019.

What do you think? Are you surprised by the findings from this data? If so, why are you? On the flip side, why do you agree with these findings? Again, Vigiliante S*!t was surprisingly there, yet I wanted to keep the sharing of my data clean on this process as well, without biasing the results, and in maintaining data fairness. After all, you could be paying $1000 (just kidding, but you could be, for something leaning towards the unique) to attend this concert. And yes, there would be more than five (really six, if you count Vigiliante S*!t, as that one is surprisingly a highly danceable song of Taylor's on Spotify as well.)

Of course, data would need to be collected on the number of songs that should be played at a concert where every attendee is required to get off their seats and dance with Tay Tay to create a party of Swifties dancing the night away. And on how much tickets should be, and where such concerts should be held around the world.

Would this be a seasonal thing, or a year round opportunity? Maybe just on April 29...thanks to High Fidelity. (You Swifties will understand that.) These are questions that the Data Analytics profession can explore further, in keeping you Swifties entertained, and perhaps in supporting the global economy some more. And for bonds to be built among family, friends and work colleagues post-pandemic. We all need that right now. Just saying.

Out of interest, here is the Data Viz on this content on Tableau, should you wish to take a look.