10 eye-opening takeaways from a great new book about Taylor Swift

If the last few years are any indication, the world may very well revolve around Taylor Swift.
But despite her ubiquity, few books have been written that explore the musician beyond her celebrity status. A handful of unofficial biographies have cobbled together headlines, trivia, lyrics, photos and anecdotes, but few journalists have ventured into the world of long-form writing to compose a cogent portrait of Swift’s career and catalogue.
“Heartbreak Is the National Anthem,” the new book by Rolling Stone writer and editor Rob Sheffield, due out from Dey Street Books on Nov. 12, aims to redress that. Sheffield has followed Swift since her debut in the mid-2000s and whenever she releases new music, he adds to his enormous file of every Swift song ranked; according to the author, “All Too Well” and “Bad Blood” will forever bookend the list of 274 songs (and counting).
Now for some key takeaways from Sheffield’s book — or, for the Swifties, his “manuscript.”
1. Don’t expect a sanitized, sycophantic rave. 
While Sheffield praises Swift for her genius hooks and clever rhymes, he also points out her misses. (Ever get the feeling Swift picks odd lead singles off her albums? So does Sheffield, and in the book he unpacks why.) Sheffield’s also not afraid to dig into the contradictions of Swift’s mythology. Was she popular in high school or not? Swift’s answer to that question has changed over the years, and Sheffield explores those discrepancies in great detail.
2. Sheffield has probably forgotten more about pop music and pop culture than most of us can ever hope to know.
And with that gargantuan trove of knowledge, he pulls fun facts and coincidences to the forefront of his analysis. (Betcha didn’t know Swift’s parents got married on Rihanna’s birthday, or that there’s a reference to the 1937 film “Stella Dallas” in “All Too Well.”)
3. Some music journalists hoping to hear an advance of a new Swift album have to go to her house. Seriously.
One of the most intriguing — and hard-to-believe — anecdotes in Sheffield’s book addresses how he’s had to listen to Swift’s upcoming albums over the years. As he tells it, Swift’s team has required approved journalists to hear new music within the confines of Swift’s own house in order to prevent leaks. In an interview with the Star, Sheffield recalled weeping at the end of “New Year’s Day” as he asked the liaison if he could once again listen to the 2017 album “Reputation.”
4. So. Many. Puns.
Sheffield has been doing this job for a while, so it’s no surprise that he Swiftifies even the most basic prose. Keep an eye out for myriad “Blank Space”s, “Shake It Off”s, and “…Ready for It?”s sprinkled over otherwise expository sentences. He has mastered the art of tossing in song references as Easter eggs for fans.
5. The world has LeAnn Rimes to thank for Swift’s childhood obsession with country music.
“LeAnn Rimes created a g—damn monster,” jokes Sheffield in the book. When Swift received Rimes’ “Blue” for her sixth birthday, she became a committed country fan. And when Swift met the singer at a concert two years later, Rimes remembered her name thanks to the fan letters she sent. That was the confidence boost Swift needed to start working toward a career in music.
6. While the book is 99 per cent about Swift, the other one per cent, Sheffield’s own personal anecdotes, is a gut punch.
In the 12th chapter, about Swift’s seventh studio album, “Lover,” Sheffield swivels his scope toward himself, remembering his grief over the loss of his mother. Yes, the album has a song for that — “Soon You’ll Get Better,” about Swift’s relationship with her own mother as she battled breast cancer — but Sheffield says it’s unlikely he’ll ever listen to that one again. (“Left it off my playlist,” he writes. “Maybe someday I’ll give it another chance. Probably not.”)
7. Ever need to explain Swift’s feud with ex-manager Scooter Braun to a friend? Try referencing “The Godfather.”
Yes, it’s an unlikely comparison, but Sheffield manages to put Swift in dialogue with the movie’s mob family, the Corleones, when explaining why Swift started re-recording her first six albums in 2021 (to own the copyright to those new master recordings). Throughout the book, Sheffield makes lots of pop culture references that at first seem a little obscure, but soon make perfect sense. 
8. Sheffield really, really loves the song “New Romantics.”
And who can blame him? The synth-pop bop comes from the album “1989.” And in chapter 18, he calls the track one of Swift’s “most brilliant surprises” and confesses that he “never dreamed she had a song like this in her.” 
He’s also big on the New Romantics, the flamboyant ‘80s subculture; in the book he writes about seeing Duran Duran in his youth and recalls the first time he heard Swift’s homage to the synth on this “urgent and glittery and perfect” track. The book’s title comes from the song’s chorus: “Heartbreak is our national anthem / We sing it proudly.”
9. Like Swift herself, Sheffield’s book is very funny.
From the very first page, Sheffield calls out the media’s tendency to sexualize Swift and fixate on her love life. An introductory timeline includes the most significant moments from her life, and by the time it reaches 2009, each year’s entry concludes with “the media talks about her boyfriends.” He’s not wrong.
10. Writing about Swift can be a full-time job.
Throughout the book, Sheffield reveals the chaos and joy that accompanies following Swift for a living. “She’s become the star who embodies pop music in all its maddening contradictions and cultural riddles,” he writes. “Over the years, she will keep experimenting and mutating, always rushing on to her next mistake. She’ll reign as the most divisive figure in pop culture.” But, as Sheffield says, no matter how chaotic Swift decides to be on a given day, the world will keep watching. Because, as no shortage of pundits and writers have quipped over the years: Taylor Swift is the music industry.