Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: A Celebration of Taylor Swift's Musical Journey, Cultural Impact, and Reinvention of Pop Music for Swifties by a Swiftie

“So many young fans hearing Taylor tell them that girls have stories, and these stories deserve telling. They’ll learn to play guitar. They’ll write their novels, paint their paintings, live their lives. I can’t shut up to my friends about it. Ten years from now, my favorite music will be coming from these girls.”

From the start, Sheffield has an effusively positive understanding of Swift’s cultural impact. His excitement after attending his first Swift concert helps characterize him for readers as a genuine lover of music, and a vocal feminist who is eager to hear more from female musicians like Swift.

“She has taken the pop girl and made her the center of music—not a genre, not a style, not a fad. She reinvented pop in the fangirl’s image. In the 2000s, when she began, a young girl writing her own hit songs about her own feelings was rare. Now that’s just what pop is.”

This is one of Sheffield’s central theses about “how Taylor Swift reinvented pop music.” The centering of femininity, especially youthful femininity in Swift’s lyrics and artistry as a whole, though seemingly mundane, represent a fundamental shift in the sensibility of an entire industry with misogyny built into its very foundation.

“It’s like The Divine Comedy, where we have Dante Poet (the author) and Dante Pilgrim (the narrator). Taylor Songwriter may or may not be Taylor Pilgrim, Taylor Lover, Taylor Pathological People Pleaser, Taylor Mirrorball, or Taylor Hi I’m the Problem It’s Me. She likes to keep cryptic about that.”

Sheffield uses an analogy to liken Swift’s presence in her lyrics to Dante’s presence in The Divine Comedy, where distinctions between author and narrator can become very murky. This comparison is a good example of how Sheffield seeks to locate Swift not only within the landscape of music history, but of literary history as well, exalting her lyricism as on par with some of the most revered writers of all time.