When Rolling Stone music critic Rob Sheffield known as me from New York Metropolis, I didn’t spend any time with softball questions or creating rapport. I jumped proper in with my hardest-hitting query about his new guide, Heartbreak Is the Nationwide Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music: Did he write an essay in regards to the 1989 bonus observe “New Romantics” to drive listeners to play the tune—and sing-scream his guide title, a “New Romantics” lyric—on repeat?
I’m severe, although; instantly after studying the chapter, I cranked up my automobile stereo and belted out “New Romantics” 3 times in a row. Sheffield laughs; he understands.
“I feel it was extra that I used to be shouting out the title of the guide whereas I used to be writing. That tune is totally nuts, so good when it comes to a press release of her worldview, a press release of her complete philosophy of life,” he says.
“Scripting this guide was going deeper into the Taylor Swift mysteries which have been perplexing us everywhere in the years”
That outlook on Taylor Swift’s music reveals up all through Sheffield’s newest guide and repeatedly throughout our dialog. And it’s clear from the outset of Heartbreak that Sheffield is a Swiftie, and his fellow Swifties will discover heaps to like right here. But it surely’s not only for us: I might hand this guide to an off-the-cuff music fan who desires to know the fuss or to a lifelong Swiftie. They’d each go away with one thing new.
It’s exhausting to debate the guide and Sheffield’s motivation with out slipping into fan speak. Heartbreak is relatable partly due to the connection to “all of the Taylors you’ve ever been,” as Sheffield writes in regards to the rhapsodic, parasocial response to the star’s Eras Tour.
“These songs, as a result of they’re so emotionally intense, they catch you in the meanwhile you’re,” he says. “Even when the songs aren’t describing the conditions you’re going via on a superficial stage, they converse to the emotional truths. She’s received an uncanny knack for that.”
Sheffield leans in to that connection, crafting a guide that isn’t precisely a biography, nor exactly a fan memoir or solely a cultural evaluation. He makes use of all three of those approaches. It’s the identical course of he used for 2 of his most up-to-date titles, 2016’s On Bowie and Dreaming the Beatles the next 12 months. Sheffield’s love of his topic’s music is at all times a part of the story, but he goes past his personal perspective.
“Nobody listens to music extra carefully and are harder to con than the teenage woman followers,”
“Like I mentioned in my Beatles guide,” Sheffield says, “I wasn’t writing a behind-the-music guide, not the place the music got here from, however the place it went—the way it created the world we’re residing in.” Considerably, he wrote about Bowie after his demise and the Beatles lengthy after the band’s dissolution. As an artist nonetheless in movement, Taylor Swift offered a brand new problem: “As I used to be writing, she was at all times a step forward of me.”
These unfamiliar with Sheffield’s work is perhaps stunned by a 50-something, male Rolling Stone author following the avatar of American girlhood. They could even suppose he’s cashing in on the second when Swift appears to be the world’s largest superstar. Bowie, the Beatles and different basic acts might sound extra apparent decisions. However Sheffield has been a Swiftie longer than I’ve—and doubtless longer than you, too.
“For me, all of it comes right down to ‘Our Tune,’ ” he says of the 2007 single, Swift’s third. “Oh my gosh, I couldn’t consider my ears. . . . The best way it’s this teenage woman saying, ‘I’ve heard each tune ever made and ever recorded, and so they’re not ok. I’m simply going to have to write down my very own tune that’s our tune.’ Even earlier than I Googled the singer, I Googled the songwriter.”
Sheffield was startled to search out that the songwriter was additionally the singer—and that she was a teen. He thought on the time, “Wow, I hope she has one other tune or two that’s this good.” He laughs. “Little did I do know. Little did any of us know.”
Swift has written greater than a few smash singles, and in reality, you may learn Rob’s full song-by-song rating on Rolling Stone’s web site. He updates it with every new launch—however he at all times cheats to maintain “Fifteen” at No. 15. Heartbreak is crammed with understanding allusions to Taylor’s lyrics and catalog, which continued rising because the guide was underway.
Sheffield started writing simply earlier than Swift’s record-setting Eras Tour started in March 2023. Why then? “For some time, I used to be pondering when it comes to, wow, when she kind of hits a plateau stage, that’ll be the time to take all of it in,” he says. “When she stops innovating and inventing on a week-to-week foundation, that’s the time to take inventory.”
It turned clear that Swift wasn’t slowing down anytime quickly, so Sheffield took the plunge anyway. “I used to be making an attempt to do justice to the place she was at that time; at that time, Midnights was the brand new album,” he says. She’s launched an album and re-released two others since then (and with Swift, there’s no telling—there might be one other earlier than this interview publishes). “By the point this guide is out, she’ll have completed one thing that calls for one other chapter,” Sheffield says. “She’s been on this sizzling streak for the previous 18 years, and it’s uncommon for anybody to have a sizzling streak like this for one 12 months.”
“She at all times needed these songs to make a large number in your coronary heart and your thoughts and preserve making a large number.”
Sheffield continued to marinate in Swift’s music as he labored on the guide, attending three consecutive reveals early within the Eras Tour. “After three nights, I used to be completely prepared for a wheelchair and a feeding tube,” he recollects. “I mentioned, how is she even presumably practical this week given that every one I did was stand within the viewers and scream and sing alongside? And as we now know, she was not solely doing this however making The Tortured Poets Division”—her newest album as of this writing—”between reveals, which was simply completely insane.”
Sheffield had loads of materials to attract from. “I’ve been writing about her for therefore lengthy and pondering these items for therefore lengthy and studying about her for therefore lengthy—and studying for the reason that early days, when virtually every part written about her was condescending and dismissive. You hate to say, however that’s how she was written about for years,” he says. “Scripting this guide was going deeper into the Taylor Swift mysteries which have been perplexing us everywhere in the years. I wasn’t making an attempt to resolve these mysteries, however simply perceive them slightly higher. Slightly deeper. Actually, that’s the method for me. I used to be listening to the music. However I’m at all times listening to all these information.”
Heartbreak recounts Swift’s profession with great respect, and Sheffield’s data of each her discography and the music she admires is obvious. He attracts connections to many artists whose affect reveals up in her music: “She was a teenage prodigy who had studied all of the greats,” together with Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, the Beatles and extra. “It was so fascinating that this was somebody who was so early in her profession however was decided to be on an all-time nice historic album.”
Sheffield additionally analyzes the world’s response to Swift, who has usually been dismissed with derision, notably earlier in her profession: “Individuals are at all times saying, ‘Oh she’s good for her age.’ However who’re the individuals older than her who’re supposedly writing higher pop information?”
The condescending angle additionally loops in teen women, which doesn’t sit effectively with Sheffield, who’s fast to notice that Swift’s profession began when she was a teen. Now in her mid-30s, Swift continues to place teen women first. These teenagers will not be solely the key to Swift’s success. They’ve been behind most artists with multigenerational followers.
“The teenage women are simply essentially the most subtle listeners,” says SheffieldSheffied. “Nobody listens to music extra carefully and are harder to con than the teenage woman followers,” he says. “In case you didn’t be taught this from the Beatles or Bob Dylan or David Bowie or whoever, the teenage women are getting issues that the remainder of the viewers doesn’t.”
Heartbreak is an ode not solely to the artist who sees these listeners as paramount, but in addition to the trade she’s reshaped in her picture. Lots of Swift’s followers have grown up along with her, Sheffield notes, and that’s a rarity. “Ex-Swiftie just isn’t a class, actually. It’s not a part that folks develop out of, which was what was already predicted within the early days.”
Learn our overview of ‘Heartbreak Is the Nationwide Anthem’ by Rob Sheffield.
Right this moment’s pop charts mirror this affect, too, with younger girls corresponding to Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan releasing 2024’s songs of the summer time. “That’s what pop music is now,” says Sheffield. “Taylor very a lot remade pop music in her picture. The concept that pop music by girls, for girls is pop music. It’s not a subgenre or a sidecar to the story. It is the story. That’s an astoundingly large innovation.”
And Swift’s music has given these musicians and their followers room to enjoy your entire emotional expertise of a tune. “She was by no means writing songs that ended as songs. [It isn’t] ‘oh, what an elegantly turned verse, what an expertly turned refrain,’ ” Sheffield says. “She at all times needed these songs to make a large number in your coronary heart and your thoughts and preserve making a large number.”
Heartbreak is a love letter to the songs which have created that mess in Sheffield’s personal coronary heart, and an invite to wash within the music. Swifties, particularly, are prone to discover themselves queuing up observe after observe as they learn—at the least, this one did—and be part of Sheffield and me in shout-singing his guide’s title repeatedly.
Photograph of Rob Sheffield by Marisa-Bettencourt.