Review: Heartbreak is the National Anthem
A serious book about Taylor Swift
Hi everyone!
I initially subtitled this post “The first serious book about Taylor Swift?” but some academic books of collected essays on Swift have just come out that are bound to be more serious than this book. (I will read them very soon, once this interminable semester winds to its longed-for close). Also, I haven’t read every book on Swift out there. I probably should do that before I finish my own book! I guess that also goes on the post-semester list.
I’m still not happy with the rewritten subtitle but I couldn’t think of a better one so here we are. In my defence, I think this is the first book of Swift criticism to be reviewed by the New York Times so it’s getting institutional recognition, which may or may not be synonymous with seriousness.
That review, by the way, makes for very interesting reading.1 The critic Amanda Hess wishes that the book’s author, music critic Rob Sheffield, spoke more about his experience of being a middle-aged man and a fan of Swift:
I’m curious about how that all feels from Sheffield’s perspective, this tall man who writes that he must cower at Swift’s concerts so the kids behind him can see. I guess that’s confirmation that I’m not a real Swiftie — that there’s another character I’m interested in beyond the woman we know all too well.
I actually feel like Sheffield is very present as a character in the narrative, comically describing himself as a fan forever going on about Swift. For example, there’s a vivid anecdote in which he insists on telling the band Duran Duran all about Swift’s “New Romantics” song. But this did make me think that there is a disconnect between what the book is actually about and what it claims to be about.
It feels to me that this book is trying to make the wrong argument. Which is not to say its argument is wrong - it sees Swift as responsible for turning pop into a genre that’s about the experiences of young women, which seems plausible. I don’t think the book completely convinced me that this is something Swift did specifically as opposed to this being an evolution with many possible explanations. But the fact that many young women have listened to Swift’s music and heard some aspect of their own experiences, and that many been inspired to write their own songs because of her, is undoubtedly true. But a book about Swift reinventing songwriting would have to be about other people’s writing as much as hers and industry pressures and would be more strictly researched and probably more boring.
This book is not boring. For example, at one point Sheffield turns from his analysis of Swift’s work to note that he actually knows her and apparently, as he reveals at one point, single-handedly convinced Swift that “All Too Well” was actually good - !!?? This is not boring. But it’s also not really about Swift reinventing songwriting, so much as it is about a music critic helping shape the perception of Swift’s greatest songs (even Swift’s own perception of them).2 What I think the book actually is, more than an argument about the history of songwriting, is a history of Swift’s career that jumps around between the most interesting bits (“my mind is alive” is folded into the analysis) told by someone who has been involved in shaping the perception and reception of that career from very early on.
The best parts of the book are descriptions of Sheffield’s encounters with Taylor Swift - especially Swift’s appearance at the Tribeca Film Festival as a director, facing the unusual experience of walking into a room full of people who didn’t really know or care about her work and having to charm them.
Despite knowing Swift, Sheffield emphasizes that his analysis is of the work, not of her, and that her speakers are not the same as Swift herself. Much writing on Swift never gets to this very important realization. But, maybe paradoxically, it’s worth emphasizing this point that Swift is not the same as her speakers precisely because it’s impossible not to conflate Swift with her speakers a tiny bit. And Sheffield is very good on this entanglement between Swift and her work. He claims that the relationship between Swift and her narrators is tangled, confused - that even Swift herself is confused on the point (is the “Swift” he’s talking about here the real person or the fictional one? The point is that that’s the point.)
As you might expect from a professional critic, the textual analysis is generally good - discussions of the words “marvellous” and “nice,” for example, are standouts. There are moments I’m not convinced by, for example the idea mentioned a couple of times in this book that the narrator of “seven” is scared of the situation with her friend’s dad - surely not? She seems almost oblivious to it and, if anything, she seems to fail to share or understand her friend’s emotions. But I think this kind of disagreement is inevitable; we all have our own readings of the texts and reading the book feels like having a conversation (slash argument) with a fellow Swiftie.
My other issue with the book, besides the fact I think it chose the wrong argument, may or may not in fact be more of an issue with me. The book is aimed at Swifties (for example referring to Swift as “our girl” at one point, which believe me is in no way an exception to how the book refers to her). I think reading this book would be a strange and potentially even off-putting experience for non-Swift fans because it is constantly making knowing allusions to Swift songs. It feels to me like the overriding style whenever anyone writes about Swift is to crowbar her lyrics into anything they say - maybe as a way of proving their authority and knowledge of the subject? Or because they don’t want to seem to take what they’re saying too (there's the word again) seriously? Or somehow, contradictorily, both: to say that it’s no big deal, but they know what they’re talking about. For example, even in the moment when Amanda Hess, quoted above, claims not to be a real Swiftie, she’s referencing “All Too Well.” Can you imagine if Shakespeareans did this? O for a muse of fire that would allow me to thoroughly explicate my ecocritical reading of The Tempest, which unfortunately is just words words words.
Lol anyway this is an affectionate criticism; and there have been a few separate occasions recently when I have been speaking about Swift and listened to myself and thought, “this would be really annoying for someone who wasn’t a Swift fan to listen to.” And the overall point I want to make, even though I hesitate about the wording, is that this is a serious book about Swift that I think is very good at getting to the heart of what makes her art distinctive. There’s a line, “the constant revising of the self is the self,” that I made a note of to try to quote in my book because I think it’s so helpful.
(I listened to this book as an audiobook so I have to give the additional caveat that this review is based on notes I took in my voice memo app, as I don’t have access to a physical copy to check anything. But I think my characterization of the book is generally fair. I would though, wouldn’t I - you’ll have to read it yourself to check…)
Someone (I now know better than to assume the author is responsible for titling their piece) has called it “Is Taylor Swift’s Superpower a Gift for Writing?” even though the Times ran multiple articles on a class on Swift and literature at Harvard, and even though she’s now established in English departments worldwide as an object of study.
There’s a moment in Tavi Gevinson’s zine “Fan Fiction: A Satire” in which the narrator breaks off her cultural commentary on Swift’s music to reveal that she actually knows Swift, or at least used to know her, and proceeds to quote a text Swift supposedly sent her after she behaved very oddly at one of Swift’s parties.