Rob Sheffield’s “Heartbreak is the National Anthem”

I’m energized by Taylor Swift; she makes me happy. I guess that makes me a Swiftie, though I don’t yet have close familiarity with her entire body of work. My journey to Swiftville started during the pandemic, with Lover and folklore.

Lover filled a blank space on my To Listen To list since reading Rob Sheffield’s review when it came out in 2019, but I hadn’t yet gotten to it. Sheffield is a long-time contributor to Rolling Stone, an award-winning author of several music-related books, and an early Swiftie. His latest book, Heartbreak is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music, is a fun primer for the Swift-curious and a joy-filled celebration for fans. Written in bite-sized chapters but big on infectious Swift-thusiasm, informative musical context, and touching personal anecdotes, this book was, for me, like his 2019 review, a compelling invitation to go deeper; a portal that I passed through, never to return.

I added folkore to my pandemic “To Listen To” list amid all the buzz, but Lover had to come first so I could get a sense of Swift’s evolution. Sheffield notes that the pandemic-era, acoustic-ish folklore, with indie A-list collaborators, was an entry point for many who had dismissed or ignored her. Or, in my case, didn’t look past the media’s one-dimensional, predictable framing of another ingenue. The only Swift song I knew at this point was “Shake it Off,” a ubiquitous hit from her 2014 release 1989, which I loved at first hearing and added to my Women’s Voices Dance Party playlist. It had all the ingredients of a great pop song and was obviously created by a woman with talent, wit, and intelligence. And attitude. My affection for that one song made me susceptible to future Swiftness, though the media’s framing of her kept me from seeing her for the artist she is.

Lover’s synth-pop, highly produced, pastel-colored sound didn’t grab me right away upon close listening, but her words did, and so the music appreciation parts of my brain soon said “yes.” I was delighted by the playfulness and imagery of her metaphor-laden lyrics. She’s a perceptive observer of the big and the small. And she knows how to write pop songs that work. “Paper Rings,” “Cruel Summer,” “You Need To Calm Down” and “The Man” stood out for me, the latter triggering bad memories from decades ago that her spot-on sass quickly rendered irrelevant; I shook it off.

According to Sheffield, “She’s always had her eye on history, studying the songwriting greats and mastering their moves, tuned in to country and pop and soul and rock and Motown and the Brill Building and cheese-metal and new wave.” Folklore, a completely different style (Taylor would say “quill pen” rather than “glitter gel pen”) was again a pleasant surprise. “This Is Me Trying,” “Mirrorball,” “cardigan,” “the 1,” and “Last Great American Dynasty” resonated. It had been years since I stumbled upon an album I wanted to play over and over and get to know. After Lover and folklore, I saw beyond the media’s framing, heard her artistry, and wanted more.

I started at the beginning, with her eponymous 2006 album. I felt like the Beatles-curious young people I’ve met over the years, newbies, starting at Please Please Me, embarking on a journey where enchanting moments await. I was repeatedly delighted by her evocative and unexpected phrases and her ability to express complexity through small details, in words and vocal nuances, across a range of genres, or “eras.” Since then, Evermore, Midnights, The Tortured Poets Department, and the Eras Tour (sadly, only fan footage on YouTube) appeared. I’m enjoying them on multiple levels while still getting to know her entire body of work. Here’s my TS favorites playlist, definitely subject to change, and here’s Sheffield’s ranking of every TS song.

Repeated listening often makes a song more appealing—that’s the principle behind Top 40 radio. That familiarity lets us anticipate and ride the musical contours, learn the words, and fully engage. It becomes a song that lights up your brain. Then you recall a snippet while brushing your teeth or making a salad and you want to hear it again. But, in the first instance, the song must give you a reason to want to hear it again—and Swift’s songs do.

I’m at a very different stage of life than Swift or most of her fans, yet there are truths in her songs that speak to me. She expresses a very broad palette of emotion to describe situations of all kinds: wasting years on someone who let you down, not being appreciated or taken seriously, heartbreak and betrayal, giddy anticipation of a new romance. According to Sheffield, Swift has “always had a unique flair for writing songs in which people hear themselves — her music keeps crossing generational and cultural boundaries in ways that are often mystifying.” Stevie Nicks told Time magazine, “Taylor is writing for the universal woman and the man who wants to know her.” Hmmm. What then does it say about men that her fan base skews so widely female? An important question for another day.

Having witnessed and written about the greatest pop culture phenomenon of the 20^th century in my book Beatleness, I’m happy that I’m here to witness and write about a female-driven 21st-century phenomenon that surpasses the Beatles in scale and duration. Swift’s fandom is deeper, wider, and 3x longer. Looking at the Swift phenomenon through the eyes of his young nieces, Sheffield writes, “Taylor was the Beatles times Motown times Bruce Springsteen times Britney times strawberry ice cream.”

In a 2019 interview with Apple Music, Swift said she wants her fans to have an experience that’s “more than just audio,” that it be “like some kind of brain game,” and that she wants to “entertain them on as many levels” as she possibly can. Thus, the Easter Eggs in her songs, album covers, and videos. This 2019 quote reminded me of McCartney explaining his vision for Sgt. Pepper, that it be more than “just a collection of songs or a nice picture on the cover,” that it be a “magic presentation.”

Swift told Sheffield she got the idea of putting “secret messages” into songs from the Beatles, that whole Paul Is Dead thing. Of course, the Beatles didn’t plan any of that—fans’ obsessive reading of rich, layered texts created those “messages.” And Lennon derided fans for looking for secret messages in Beatles music, most notably in “Glass Onion.” But it’s another interesting point of compare/contrast between these epochal fandoms, with both artists, intentionally or not, giving fans a playful and engaging wrap-around experience that’s “more than just audio.”

The strong bond of admiration and trust between Swift and her fans grows from what Sheffield calls one of her “central paradoxes:” “She writes songs about the tiniest, most secretive agonies, the kind you wouldn’t even confess to your friends, except the only way she knows how to process these moments is turning them into louder than life stadium scream alongs.”

I can feel wistful about not having a Taylor Swift in my life when I was a young music fan, but I’m genuinely happy for the girls and women who grew up with her and continue to. This is progress!  With the exception of Joni Mitchell, whose words I bathed in, most of the lyrics I heard growing up were in the male voice, laying out the norms and expectations. Swift’s words, and her very existence, offer her fans a kind of validation that didn’t exist for the girls who followed the Beatles and other groups in the sixties.

As Sheffield puts it, “An entire generation of listeners has grown up in a world where music’s biggest star is also the one insisting that every girl has a song in her heart and a right to sing it….”  After his first Swift concert years ago, Sheffield walked out in a “joyful haze,” musing about the future of music: “I can’t wait until all these girls grow up and start bands of their own….young fans hearing Taylor tell them that girls have stories, and these stories deserve telling.”

At the time, Sheffield predicted that ten years down the road his favorite music would be coming from these girls. In other words, that pop music would be reinvented—in the fangirl image. Needless to say, he was correct. Guitar sales to women are at an all-time high (50% according to Fender in 2018), and Phoebe Bridgers, Gracie Abrams, Maisie Peters, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, and Olivia Rodrigo are each doing her own thing in the space that Swift created.

Reading Heartbreak is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music, with Spotify open, listening as I read, was great fun and great listening. I learned a lot, not just about Swift but about the multitudes she contains. I didn’t want it to end.

-Candy Leonard

Photo: Taylor Swift, 2019 (© Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com via Wikimedia Commons)