She’s stolen our hearts, held our favorite streaming services to ransom, and started a new internet feud every other week.
Accounting for 22% of album sales in the US, she has an estimated worth of $200 million.
Taylor Swift has caused Apple to rethink its streaming policies, and shaken Spotify to its core. A nightmare dressed like a daydream, Ms Swift has an effect on many millions of people – directly or indirectly.
She wants to make a difference and she wants to be heard. But what about us?
What does the world want to do to Taylor Swift?
If you follow our staff on Twitter, you might realize one particular member consistently talks about the country popstrel turned music mega-star.
Specifically, they talk about wanting to marry to her. And they aren’t alone.
Every day, there are thousands of tweets and Facebook posts where people, in some form, express their desire to do something to Taylor Swift.
We’ve tracked all of them, spanning back two whole years.
If you’ve tweeted the phrase “I want to _____ Taylor Swift”, we’ve seen it. No need to start sweating.
Excluding RTs and competitions (as these skew our results) we found 7,582 of these posts, containing 1,020 different words.
Some of these are phrases, as you’ll see. Take a deep breath, some of them are weird.
Blank Space
Our research has brought up a wide variety of different things people want to do to/with Taylor Swift.
Dwarfing them all is ‘see’.
Unsurprising, when people talk about the popstar, they talk about wanting to see her at a concert. 1,552 people to be exact.
In second place – with less than a third of the front runner’s total – is ‘be’.
On dark, lonely, nights, sometimes the only way to pick yourself up is the cry out to the Twittersphere: “I want to be Taylor Swift.”
‘Date’ comes in at #7, with 54 mentions, with more forward infatuated fans have made ‘marry’ get to #14.
Combined, there are 80 platonic obsessives: ‘be best friends with’ makes it into the top 10, with the less powerful ‘be friends with’ slides into #12.
The top 30 phrases are below
#1 – #5
#6 – #15
#16 – #35
Post-#35 on the charts brings some delightful anomalies.
Our favorites are usually scored in block capitals, for example.
“I WANT TO BAKE COOKIES WITH TAYLOR SWIFT” – coming in at #47 with five mentions.
“I WANT TO BE IN HAWAII WITH TAYLOR SWIFT” – straight in at #88, with three mentions.
“I WANT TO GO THROUGH PUBERTY LIKE TAYLOR SWIFT” – here we have #99, with two mentions.
“I talked to your dad / go pick out a white dress”
Additionally, we’ve also analyzed the mentions according to demographics.
You might not be surprised that things men want to do to the pop starlet are quite different to the things women want do.
There’s been a public outing of fathers who listen to Taylor Swift, to the point where it’s become much more socially acceptable.
Still, there’s a lot of hostility towards her from men.
For women, the word ‘punch’ appears at #26 on our list, but for men it appears at #16.
Also, ‘date’ is, again, 10 places higher in the men’s list than in the women’s list.
The full word clouds are below, so you can see the differences for yourself.
All
Men
Men
Women
Women
It’s a love story, baby just say yes
Now we’ve uncovered these deep desires, we feel somewhat responsible for making them happen.
But as much as we want to give these fans Taylor’s phone number, we – surprisingly – don’t have it to hand.
Taylor knows all her fans want to do is see her, meet her, or have themselves acknowledge by her tumblr, Instagram or Twitter.
The fact that she responds to a few of these requests is why her fanbase is so strong.
A heartwarming note to end on: apart from a few ‘slap’, ‘hate’ and ‘punch’ mentions, the overall conversation was overwhelmingly friendly.