There are no accidents in Taylor Swift's world. On the bright June night my family and I saw the Eras tour, her surprise songs were "I Forgot That You Existed" and "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things." Did I mention it was Scooter Braun's birthday? It was classic Taylor, sliding in an Easter egg for the fans to interpret. It was also, as critic and author Rob Sheffield puts it in his new book, "Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music," classic "Petty Taylor." That's the thing, she contains multitudes. She's Taylor, the wistful girl. Taylor, the tortured poet. Taylor, the epic grudge holder.
Sheffield, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and author of prior books about The Beatles, Duran Duran and David Bowie, has been writing about Swift since the earliest days of her career, so he's uniquely qualified to declare, as he does in "Heartbreak," that "nothing like Taylor Swift has ever happened before." In our recent "Salon Talks" conversation, Sheffield made the compelling case for why, at age 34, Taylor Swift has already built a body of work and a community of fans staggeringly unparalleled in the annals of popular music.
