In her 2016 speech accepting the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for 1989, Taylor Swift gave a message directed at any young women who were watching: ‘focus on the work’. Taking Swift’s emphasis on ‘the work’ as a guide, this article surveys Swift’s changing compositional techniques and her reception as a songwriter over the course of her career. Though one of the most-discussed figures in popular culture, there exists little analysis of the musical works that remain the fulcrum of Swift’s artistry and ‘artist-brand’. Gender and genre bias have clouded perception of Swift’s particular skills and techniques. To begin an analysis of the work of Taylor Swift, this article traces her stylistic development through a series of song case studies drawn from successive albums, her collaborations with co-writers and producers, and the 2016 hit by Calvin Harris and Rihanna that was co-written by Swift under a pseudonym, ‘This is What You Came For’. By listening closely to her recorded output, we can hear how a modern songwriter responds to commercial pressures to evolve while retaining a coherent musical identity—and how Swift’s respect for ‘the work’ might motivate her activism around issues of ownership and authorship in the music industry.

在她 2016 年接受格莱美1989年度专辑奖的演讲中，泰勒斯威夫特向所有正在观看的年轻女性传达了一条信息：“专注于工作”。以斯威夫特对“作品”的强调为指导，这篇文章调查了斯威夫特不断变化的作曲技巧以及她在职业生涯中作为词曲作者的接受程度。尽管是流行文化中讨论最多的人物之一，但几乎没有对仍然是斯威夫特艺术性和“艺术家品牌”支点的音乐作品进行分析。性别和流派偏见使人们对斯威夫特的特殊技能和技巧的看法蒙上了阴影。为了开始分析泰勒·斯威夫特的作品，本文通过一系列从连续专辑中提取的歌曲案例研究、她与合著者和制作人的合作以及 2016 年由卡尔文·哈里斯和蕾哈娜合作的热门歌曲来追溯她的风格发展。 - 斯威夫特用笔名写的，'这就是你来的目的'。通过仔细聆听她录制的作品，我们可以听到现代词曲作者如何应对商业压力以保持一致的音乐身份——以及斯威夫特对“作品”的尊重如何激发她在音乐所有权和作者身份问题上的积极性行业。