Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music

by Rob Sheffield

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

An unprecedented look into the life of Taylor Swift, told by the only journalist close enough to tell it. This is a must-have for any Swifties looking for the next great insight into her stardom.

***The Instant New York Times Bestseller!***

An intimate look at the life and music of modern pop’s most legendary figure, Taylor Swift, from leading music journalist Rob Sheffield.

A cultural phenomenon. A worldwide obsession. An agent of emotional chaos. There’s no parallel to Taylor Swift in history: a teenage girl who turns into the world’s favorite pop star, songwriter, storyteller, guitar hero, live performer, changing how music is made and heard. An all-time great on the level of The Beatles, Prince, or David Bowie.

Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music is the first book that goes deep on the musical and cultural impact of Taylor Swift. Nobody can tell the story like Rob Sheffield, the bestselling and award-winning author of Dreaming the Beatles, On Bowie, and Love Is a Mix Tape. The legendary Rolling Stone journalist is the writer who has chronicled Taylor for every step of her long career, from her early days to the Eras Tour. Sheffield gets right to the heart of Swift and her music, her lyrics, her fan connection, her raw power.

At once one of the most beloved music figures of the past two decades and one of the most criticized, Taylor Swift is known as much for her life beyond her music as she is for her hits—the most public of stars, yet also the weirdest and most mysterious. In the tradition of Sheffield’s Dreaming the Beatles, Heartbreak Is the National Anthem will inform and delight a legion of fans who hang on every word from Taylor and every word Rob writes on her.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063351318
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/12/2024
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Rob Sheffield is a columnist for Rolling Stone, where he has been writing about music, TV, and pop culture since 1997. He is the author of the national bestsellers Love Is a Mix Tape: Love and Loss, One Song at a Time; Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut; Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love & Karaoke: On Bowie; and Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Editorial Reviews

A contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a bona fide Swiftie, Sheffield charts how Taylor Swift, who rose to fame writing songs for teenage girls (when she was still one herself), became ubiquitous — and he makes the case that even as her cultural dominance can work to obscure her skill, everything always leads back to her virtuosic writing.” — The New York Times Book Review

“An impassioned dissertation on (almost) all things Swiftian: her history, her method, her craft, her secret life as a pop music scholar and geek, her place in a long line of legends and calculated image crafters from Joni Mitchell to Michael Jackson… The relationship between Swift and her Swifties — their origin story, their care and feeding — is at the heart of Heartbreak Is the National Anthem.” — Washington Post

“Readers will revel in the unrestrained delight with which Sheffield captures his subject, mixing a fan’s exuberance with a music critic’s nuanced analysis. Swifties won’t be able to put this down.” — Publishers Weekly

“The book is a rollercoaster to be devoured in one sitting and at the end, he somehow leaves you wanting more.” — USA Today

"An impressionistic portrait of Taylor Swift... the first serious attempt to place Swift inside a music history.” — Chicago Tribune

"I did enjoy a lot of Taylor Swift's album "The Tortured Poets Department." But I'd be lying if I didn't say I enjoyed a book about her even more - Rob Sheffield's "Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music." It's the year's best critical appraisal of pop stardom disguised as a fan's ecstatic notes." — NPR's Fresh Air

“Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone tackled mix tapes in a memoir and the Beatles in an appreciation, both highly acclaimed books. Now he tackles Taylor Swift, choosing his title Heartbreak Is the National Anthem from her song 'New Romantics' (from her best album 1989, just sayin'). Fans will love the fact that he takes Swift seriously: this is about popular music and how she's shaped it as an artist and yes as a pop culture force to be reckoned with. And non-fans will enjoy learning just what all the fuss is about." — Parade

“Tracking Taylor Swift from precocious teen to pop-music juggernaut. Why is Taylor Swift a cultural lightning rod? Why do people love—or hate—her and her music so much? Those are the questions that Sheffield, a music journalist and self-avowed Swiftie, seeks to answer in this zippy and engaging work. An affectionate homage from an ardent fan.” — Kirkus Reviews

“The first serious book-length discussion of Swift as an artist and cultural force… short, delightful and interesting.” — Bloomberg News

“Strongly felt and delightful collection… [Sheffield] can make the whole place shimmer.” — Boston Globe

“Rob Sheffield’s kaleidoscopic, wildly enthusiastic biography, Heartbreak Is the National Anthem, will satisfy both superfans and those less familiar with the prolific phenom Taylor Swift.” — BookPage

“For the Swiftie in your life, this definitive account of the rise of pop megastar Taylor Swift by Rolling Stone journalist Rob Sheffield is a must-read. Sheffield has been following Swift’s career since “Our Song” in 2006, and his new book tracks her rises and falls with the rigor of an investigative journalist and the eyes and heart of a superfan.” — Our Culture Magazine

“One of the things that’s made Rob Sheffield’s writings on music compelling to so many readers is his attention to the ways music can become a part of one’s life… His latest, Heartbreak Is the National Anthem, explores the cultural impact of another musical juggernaut: Taylor Swift. It looks to be both a welcome addition to Sheffield’s own catalog and a memorable look at Swift’s music.” — Inside Hook

From the Publisher

2024-09-27
Tracking Taylor Swift from precocious teen to pop-music juggernaut.

Why is Taylor Swift a cultural lightning rod? Why do people love—or hate—her and her music so much? Those are the questions that Sheffield, a music journalist and self-avowed Swiftie, seeks to answer in this zippy and engaging work. Swift has been in the public eye for almost 20 years. Even though she sells out stadiums around the world, she remains an enigma, says Sheffield. “To some,” he writes, “Taylor is a creative genius, a cultural force, a feminist rebel crashing history with her girls-to-the-front energy.” To others, she’s “a symbol of capitalism, privilege, self-absorption, self-pity.…A factory of insipid tearjerkers.” Perhaps it’s because Swift is a shape-shifting mirror, reflecting her fans’ emotional ups and downs. A fan since her country-music days, Sheffield reads her lyrics as if poring over tea leaves. What do they say about her? More importantly, what do they say about him? “When I hear myself in her songs, it’s often the parts of me I try hardest to keep covered up and tied down. I’m threatened by the hairpin trigger in her songs, her constant edge of emotional danger.” Curiously, one doesn’t get much of a sense of what Swift’s music actually sounds like. While Sheffield cites song lyric after song lyric, he describes her music sparingly: “seething electronic pulse…a stark goth-folk sound.” The book is the most engaging when Sheffield shows what Swift means to him. After his mother’s funeral, he found himself singing Swift’s “The Archer” to give voice to his sadness. “Just another heartbroken son yelling Taylor Swift lyrics at four lanes of late-night truckers and bikers and speed freaks and streetlights, none of them impressed.”

An affectionate homage from an ardent fan.

Kirkus Reviews

Tracking Taylor Swift from precocious teen to pop-music juggernaut…[A] zippy and engaging work…an affectionate homage from an ardent fan.”

Kirkus Reviews

The book is a rollercoaster to be devoured in one sitting, and at the end, he somehow leaves you wanting more.”

USA Today

A bona fide Swiftie, Sheffield charts how Taylor Swift, who rose to fame writing songs for teenage girls (when she was still one herself), became ubiquitous—and argues that even as her cultural dominance can obscure her skill, everything always leads back to her virtuosic writing.”

New York Times Book Review

Fans will love the fact that he takes Swift seriously: this is about popular music and how she’s shaped it as an artist and yes as a pop culture force to be reckoned with. And non-fans will enjoy learning just what all the fuss is about.”

Parade

An unprecedented look into the life of Taylor Swift, told by the only journalist close enough to tell it. This is a must-have for any Swifties looking for the next great insight into her stardom.”

Barnes&Noble.com