My writing here is about early American history, and mostly about the histories of families and the history of family history–and genealogy. So when I tell you that this is Part 1 of three posts about Taylor Swift, the songwriter-singer who has been everywhere and everything the last two years, you’ll just have to believe me that they’re related to those very themes of writing, history, family. And that they have been in the works for a long time–or at least the next two of them have.
I wanted to write first though about just one of the books that have been published this year in a semi-flurry of Swiftiana; I’ve read many of them, bought more than several, lurked on author’s pages for more. If you’re not a Swift enthusiast, you probably already know quite a lot about her just from the ambient information that’s pervaded the media in the wake of her extraordinary Eras Tour. Or because she won yet another Album of the Year at the Grammys, and was Time’s Person of the Year, or because she is dating a football player with his own claims to fame. But to my mind the most interesting thing about Taylor Swift has always been her writing. What she writes, how she writes, what she writes about. Like any intensely creative and prolific writer, her process is as fascinating as the product. Rob Sheffield’s Heartbreak is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music is a rich consideration of both.
My own Journey To Taylor might look like that of a lot of older Swifties. I knew her music since her debut album in 2006, partly because I listened to Faith Hill and so was attentive to Tim McGraw, one of Taylor’s breakout songs. I’ve always listened mostly to women artists, and mostly to women who are also writers. Tracy Chapman, Bonnie Raitt, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Anita Baker, the Indigo Girls. Also Annie Lenox, Pink, the Dixie Chicks. But in 2014 my best pal sent me Taylor’s video for “Shake it Off” as a kind of rx for some work angst. I listened (and watched, but mostly listened) to that song a lot. And then the rest of “1989.” And then I was really hooked. The last few years, though, have been remarkably different in pace as anyone can see. The release of five albums (six if you count “The Tortured Poets Department” and “The Anthology” separately), four “Taylor’s Version” re-records, the tour, the movie, the book, and more. Always more. Even if you listened to a lot of Taylor Swift, you were–certainly I was–listening to a lot more Taylor Swift since 2019.
For me the writing and writing process as she describes it is a big part of the allure. No surprise, since I’ve been reading, researching, and writing about women’s writing for decades. I write about the 18th century, and about how women wrote into journals and letters but also into account books and commonplace books and little homemade notebooks and into text margins of all kinds. And I’m a notebook scribbler myself. Did that all make me peculiarly attentive to the whole aesthetic and material practice and representation of her writing (the Quill, Glitter, Fountain Pen taxonomy)? Surely yes. For example, did I want all four versions of the “Lover” journals? Yes again.
But also the loving depiction of reading and writing in her songs is so on point, and these are always the themes that draw my attention. (In my next TS post I’ll write about Taylor thinking and writing historically. That’s another obvious theme for me.) For the last night of the Eras Tour, despite my overwhelming love for “The Last Great American Dynasty,” the songs I wanted to hear most were “The Lakes,” “Dear Reader,” and “The Manuscript.” The first is such a love letter to the romantic poets, and the latter was obvious for many because of the context; she’d placed in last on that double album and reflected on how:
“The only thing that’s left is the manuscript
One last souvenir from my trip to your shores
Now and then I reread the manuscript
But the story isn’t mine anymore.”
But “Dear Reader” also grabs me if just for that title. “Dear Reader,” not ‘Dear Listener.” She thinks and expresses herself in text, in reading and writing. Remember when she once talked about how writing songs was like the next step to writing poetry? (I need to find that reference. And yes, the many, many courses and essays and now books devoted to Taylor as a poet, many by folks more expert, are testament to this theme.)
And this, dear reader, is where we come to my modest quibbles with Rob Sheffield. Heartbreak is the National Anthem is terrific. There is so much to appreciate about this book. It’s smart, sassy even (for a guy), humane. Sheffield shared his keen eye and ear for music and the pop music industry, but also his deep connection to Taylor’s music as the score of his and our lives. You won’t get through the chapter on karaoke without a few tissues, believe me. I thought I read and listened to her carefully, but he parses her invisible lyrical strings in ways I’d never caught–or thought. And he’s just a very good writer with a flair for Swiftly phrasing that feels genuine and fun, not belabored (“Scooterific” expertly placed, for example). And the killer anecdotes. He doesn’t bathe her in virtue; the chapter on Petty Taylor is possibly my favorite among many. But he also shows how her worst is her best. How about this one: “I can say I have witnessed the sight of Taylor Swift being insincere, and it was downright heartwarming how bad she was at it.” (p. 42).
As always though I wished for more thorough editing. A repeated phrase about “ME!” as “most quintessential” (p. 147 and 148) will surely poke him and his team in the eye as it did me. Quintessential can stand on its own, for one thing, and it was clearly just an oversight to let that run on two consecutive pages. As I’m all too aware here where I’m working without a net eg without expert editing, editing is where good writing gets great and not just in saving us from bloopers like those. There’s a mistake in the “Marjorie” chapter which misidentifies her high school (p. 164, ask me how I know in Part 2 of this post, coming soon). And the “Finale” chapter about the last two years feels rushed– more, it feels unprocessed, and that’s understandable. Have any of us had time to really think this through? Last, boy I wish he’d included some kind of references. It’s maddening to read that Taylor said x or y and know that you have to get back onto Google’s Internet to source the quote or the anecdote. It would be more Taylor to have these references offered thoughtfully, as a key part of interacting with the text. She is nothing if not the queen of the multi-layered reference.
Yet maybe this is because he also doesn’t attend enough for my taste to her writing as writing. He is in his comfort zone on songwriting, and he says clearly that she is “always a songwriter before she’s anything else.” But as a writer qua writer? He doesn’t delve into her poetry or how much of her songwriting takes place as text first. I’d have loved for him to say more about how she moves from journals to her Notes app, for example! The scraps of lines, the words she revels in, though he does show some of her characteristic revelry apparent in word repetition across albums.
My second quibble is about his lack of sustained attention to her attention to women and women’s histories. He’s terrific on Taylor’s focus on girls and fans, and on centering the center of that Venn. But he only gestures at why “Marjorie” and “Last Great American Dynasty” more recently and Love Story and so much more early on might be related to the central themes of “Clara Bow.” Okay maybe I wish he’d written more about this because I’m writing about it (hey, see Posts 2 & 3, in fact) and I’d like to have his perspective. She doesn’t only write women and girls as protagonists in her songs, but she explores so many themes that are folkloric or actually historic. What are the boundaries of women’s agency and ambitions, now and then? How do those boundaries get policed and stretched, and what makes that a story about some women and not others? “Getaway Car” is the other side of the “No Body, No Crime” coin, right? Just as you can flip Rebekah Harkness over to find Marjorie Moelenkamp Finlay. Or Clara Bow, Stevie Nicks, and Taylor Swift.
On to Part 2…