Heartbreak Is the National Anthem
How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music
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4.1 • 16 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
***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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Music journalist Sheffield (Turn Around Bright Eyes) offers a spirited tribute to "the messiest and most fascinating figure in pop music." A fan of Taylor Swift since hearing "Our Song" in the summer of 2007, Sheffield documents her entry into the music industry at 11, her move to Nashville at 13, her high school "outcast days," and the release of her eponymous debut album in 2006. Sheffield also charts Swift's stylistic shifts from 2012's Red ("the gaudiest mega-pop manifesto") to the "stark goth-folk sound" and "brooding ballads" of 2020's Folklore. He pins the key to Swift's fame on her ability to verbalize the "melodramatic love and explosive flings and rude interruptions" of teenage girlhood, even as she manages to keep "her deepest mysteries to herself." 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.
