To start with, swing is found in the rhythm section. The melody and soloists are allowed to take liberties with the rhythms and phrase their melody as they see fit.
Dancers do the same thing.
So forget what the melody does. Especially faster songs. I will try to get it across without using time signatures. For the people who know what swing is, but have come up with different numbers, we are sometimes talking about the same thing but using different time bases. Forget about specific components of the rhythm section such as the ride cymbal, snare, hihat etc.