My big takeaway from “Heartbreak Is the National Anthem” was: Is it even possible for the most famous person in the world to get famouser?
Rock critic Rob Sheffield’s essays about Taylor Swift’s music mostly argue how thoroughly, and deservedly, the singer (who turns 35 this month) has conquered pop music over the course of the past 16 years. Sheffield, author of several books and a critic for Rolling Stone magazine, makes that argument persuasively, citing her relationship with fans, astonishing sales, shifting musical focus and uniquely personal lyric writing. Swift makes revelations about her romances while also carving out personal space the public knows little about.
Is it canny manipulation or authenticity? Both, probably. Swift knows her every movement is photographed and parsed. But the behind-the-scenes encounters Sheffield describes, including off-the-cuff interactions with fans, show Swift to be the person we’d hoped she would be, even when the cameras are off.
Because Sheffield’s essays are arranged roughly chronologically, they also illustrate how cleverly Swift’s ginormous career has been built. It now seems inevitable, for instance, that her shift from country-ish music to electronic pop would succeed but Sheffield reminds us of the pitfalls of that shift, as well as the unlikeliness of her pandemic-era, introspectively folky albums such as “Evermore” and “Midnights” becoming monumental sellers.
Sheffield is a fan more than a critic, at least in the case of Swift, and some will criticize how frequently he inserts himself into these essays. It’s compelling when he talks about specific Swift songs that helped him through rough patches, for sure, but do we need to hear about every time he was invited to her apartment to be among the first to listen to a new album? (We do not. P.S., she wasn’t there when he was.) And we really don’t need to hear his thoughts on Duran Duran, which he has covered better in other books.
Still, the combination of memoir and criticism works beautifully in the strongest parts of “Heartbreak,” which discuss Swift re-recording her early albums in an effort to retain control of them when the originals were sold against her wishes. It’s an idea, Sheffield reminds us, that many advisers thought was idiotic but that resulted in more massive sales — of albums that already had been massive sellers.
“By revisiting and rerecording her early albums, Swift not only reclaims ownership but also offers a nuanced reflection on the way her music has evolved over the years — the way she has,” writes Sheffield, who is particularly sharp on the differences between the original and rerecorded (10-minute) “All Too Well.” Perhaps better known as “The One Where She Disses Jake Gyllenhaal,” the revamp became the longest No. 1 hit in history, a decade after its original was released on the “Red” album.
It’s hard to imagine anything that weird happening again. But “Heartbreak Is the National Anthem” makes it seem likely that future Swift will do something even wilder.
