Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music

by Rob Sheffield

When she first showed up, she was a teenage girl out to conquer Nashville with a guitar, which she could play, and a Southern accent, which she couldn’t play at all.

But as even Joe must have realized, these songs aren’t really about boys at all. They’re about girls, the topic Taylor has pursued more relentlessly than any other pop artist in history. She’s written more songs about girls than anyone, even Paul McCartney, and like Paul, she has nearly no interest in male characters. The boy in a Swift song is usually just a mirror for a girl’s experience of self-discovery and self-figuration. He’s the blank space where she writes her name. Fearless is full of these vibrant girls she’s spent her life creating.

She’s the archetypal cool Eighties friend who comes out to friends who had no idea she was in the closet but try to guess how supportively surprised they should act.

🙃🙃🙃

If Taylor were the emperor of Rome, she’d be standing over the smoking ruins of Carthage saying “oh, and another thing” in Latin.