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Is Taylor Swift’s Superpower a Gift for Writing?

泰勒·斯威夫特
流行音乐
书评
This ‎ is written by Amanda Hess.
It’s possible that I know too much about Taylor Swift. I know the words to all her ‎ and every name on her ‎ ‎ of ‎. Thanks to her ‎ ‎ with Travis Kelce, I know ‎ about the ‎ ‎ of his Kansas City Chiefs teammates that I would prefer not to. I listen to her music about as much as the ‎ American, which is to say: all of the time. Swift has ‎ America’s ‎, her songs the ‎ to our Starbucks lines and her life the ‎ for our ‎ stories.
In Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music, Rob Sheffield charts how Swift, who ‎ to fame writing songs for teenage girls (when she was still one herself), ‎ ‎ — and he makes the ‎ that ‎ as her cultural dominance can ‎ to obscure her ‎, everything always ‎ back to her ‎ writing.
Sheffield is a ‎ ‎ at Rolling Stone, where he publishes consistently ‎ reviews of Swift’s ‎ limitless offerings. Here he steps back to ‎ the ‎ of her appeal. Swift has “always had a ‎ ‎ for writing songs in which people hear themselves — her music keeps crossing generational and cultural boundaries, in ways that are often ‎,” he writes. She makes her “‎ public ‎, to the point where she makes the world think of her as a ‎.”
Swift’s ‎ ‎ ‎ her music to ‎ a collaborative storytelling prompt, one that manages to ‎ ‎ her critics. As her ‎ brand themselves as “Swifties” and build an ‎ ‎ of analysis and intrigue on ‎ media, they recruit her haters into their ‎, ‎ them to cast their billionaire idol as a ‎ and ‎ protagonist.
A ‎ ‎ more ‎ when she has ‎ and flaws. “Taylor’s ‎, her ‎, her ‎ disguised as ‎ more narcissism, her inability to Not Be Taylor for a microsecond — it’s a lot,” Sheffield writes. “You can’t fully ‎ her without ‎ the ‎ ‎ of ‎ ‎ she brings out in people.”
Sheffield’s book, which unfolds over 30 ‎ ‎, zooms in on Swift’s albums, ‎ and ‎ ‎. Each dispatch is a perceptive close read of Swift’s music and persona, from the symbolic ‎ of her ‎ to her conspicuous ‎ of the word “nice.” Along the way, Sheffield drops enough of his own backstage encounters with Swift to ‎ ‎ hungry for new ‎ to incorporate into their own ‎.
Taylor Swift is a pop ‎ so big, ‎, prolific and ‎-reigning, she hardly needs ‎ at this point. The idea ‎ the book’s subtitle, that Swift reinvented pop music, is almost a truism. Sheffield argues that her relentless business ‎ has opened new creative doors, too; when Swift responded to an ownership dispute by meticulously rerecording six of her albums, she ‎ what he calls a “dumb idea” into a “mastermind’s triumph.”
Sheffield is less ‎ in the ways in which Swift’s ‎ impulses might negatively ‎ the ‎ itself. In April, Swift released her new album “The Tortured Poets Department,” with 16 songs and a bonus ‎. Two hours later, she dropped 14 more songs in an ‎ album, “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.” That ‎ up to 31, a number of great Swiftian brand ‎, ‎ as the ‎ of ‎ weighed down the album as a whole. Given the ‎ of her ‎ base, what’s the incentive to curate anything anymore? Swift ‎ broke Spotify’s ‎ for the most album ‎ in a ‎ day.
Sheffield writes that Swift “reinvented pop in the fangirl’s ‎,” and while he’s not a fangirl himself, he has ‎ cultivated an ‎ in the cultural ‎ and contributions of girls. In his tender and original 2010 book “Talking to Girls About Duran Duran,” he negotiated his own identity ‎ his ‎ with the music best loved by his sisters, crushes and girlfriends in their 1980s ‎. (He thanked Swift in that book’s acknowledgments, on behalf of his nieces and nephews who had claimed her as their own generational obsession.)
Sheffield came to Swift at middle age, and I wanted to know more about what ‎ this 6-foot-5 dude who is so unrivaled in his decades-‎ ‎ that when he went to the bathroom at a 2011 show, he ‎ the men’s room “so sparklingly clean, you could eat breakfast out of the ‎.” In “Heartbreak,” we get just ‎ of Swift’s specific ‎ to his life, and to his ‎ as a ‎.
As Swift changed pop music, she changed pop criticism, too. With her ‎ songwriting and her ‎ hooks, she built a cultural consensus that ‎ rockists and poptimists. And with her celebrity ‎, she ‎ representative of the kind of artist whose ‎ often makes the critic into the villain of their narrative, one where Swift must perpetually be ‎ as the ‎.
Now the music critic writes, if not to ‎ the fangirl, then with the ‎ that she is alert at her phone, ready to ‎ on any perceived ‎. (Even as I write this review of a book about Taylor Swift, her fans are on my mind.) In April, a ‎ review of “Tortured Poets Department” was published in Paste with no byline, with an ‎’s note ‎ the “threats of ‎” ‎ by the ‎’s “Lover” review in 2019.
It’s appropriate that the critic’s job description has ‎ to ‎ an ‎ of the ‎, as that ‎ ‎ is now a defining ‎ of the ‎ itself. Sheffield is ‎ a ‎ himself — ‎ when he ‎ that Swift’s ‎ ‎ are sometimes “‎,” he builds their terribleness into another ‎ of her ‎.
Inevitably, his book of Swift criticism has been integrated into the Swiftie world-building ‎. One TikToker has already ‎ Taylor ‎ to the book’s page count and its ISBN number.
I’m ‎ about how that all feels from Sheffield’s perspective, this tall man who writes that he must ‎ at Swift’s concerts so the kids behind him can see. I ‎ that’s confirmation that I’m not a real Swiftie — that there’s another ‎ I’m ‎ in ‎ the woman we know all too ‎.
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Is Taylor Swift’s Superpower a Gift for Writing? | Leximory