For the melody I really listened to a lot of the 1989 album and watched a YouTube video by Holistic Songwriting. There he talked about how she has really perfected the way to write effective one note melody songs. She also focuses a lot on the root note of the scale she is in. He broke songs off 1989 down into stats, for example her song “How you get the Girl” has a Root density of 95% and a One note melody density of 96%. “Welcome to New York” has a 77% root density and an 82% one note melody density. “Out of the Woods” has a 57% root density and a 81% one note melody density. ‘Blank Space’ has a 45% One note melody density and ‘Wildest Dreams’ has a 63% One Note Melody density. 

Holistic Songwriting talks about how these are common qualities in a lot of songs and especially in pop songs. But can often be seen negatively in songs such as ‘Friday’ by Rebbeca Black. The difference he offers is the way she uses them and particularly their use before jumping high and then descending back down. He calls this ‘The Swift Line”. Where the One note melody takes up approximately 60% of the melody followed by a tail that consists of a high note followed by a descending line. Using his definition, every song off 1989 uses ‘The Swift Line’ to various degrees. 

In the song I wrote this can be heard in the verses where the first few notes of the melody are the root note and are forming a one note melody. Followed by a higher note than descending. The main difference is the second half of the verse line is actually a little different note wise but is the same principle. I was going for a faster “Welcome to New York’ melody line feel. For the Chorus I followed the same principle but tried to lengthen it, I think it could use some more tweaking for what the actual singer would sing though and this would more form the backing vocals. 

(Findeisen, 2019)