ROB SHEFFIELD IS A HAYLOR?????? The whiplash I had when he said Daylight was about Harry Styles, oh my god. 

This book is basically just an opportunity for a long-time Swiftie fanboy to write about how much he likes Taylor Swift. I appreciate Sheffield’s respect and admiration for Taylor and her music, which seems necessary for a project like this where you’re discussing the good and the bad. I’m a big believer that you either get Taylor Swift or you don’t (which is not to say that ppl who don’t “get it” aren’t smart enough to, it's just whether or not her music resonates, which is subjective) - and Rob gets it.  

One thing this book does really well is portray how much of a nerd Taylor is. There are countless examples of her geeking out over music history and incorporating her favorite lyrics, films, and books into her own music. I also liked that early on in the book, the focus was on Taylor and he makes the excellent point that her music is not really about the men in her life but are actually about her own feelings and experiences. Focusing on Taylor as the main character in her music, rather than attributing that role to whatever man she happened to be dating at the time is something both the media and her fans should take note of.

Okay now for things that didn’t work for me. 

I’m not sure I understand who the target audience for this book was. If it was meant for outsiders, or “normal people”, as Sheffield calls non-fans, it doesn’t do a great job of painting a cohesive narrative since the book is broken into short snapshots of her career. It’s only chronological when brief album overviews are interspersed between these snapshots. It’s full of small lyrical references that might go over the heads of folks who are not familiar with her “lore”. There’s a point around a third of the way in where Sheffield references Olivia Rodrigo sending a copy of her album to Kim Kardashian, and then suddenly there’s a weird split between Taylor and Olivia. But up until this point, aside from the brief timeline at the beginning, the whole Kanye/Kim fiasco of 2016 has not been explained. Reputation, and the media controversy surrounding it, won’t be spoken about until much later. I’m sure many people who were online in 2016 heard about Snakegate, and of course diehard fans know what the mention of Kim is alluding to, but what about a normal person who isn’t familiar with Taylor at all who wants to pick this book up to learn about her legacy? Also, there’s a moment he refers to an older female singer as a “Marjorie figure”, but this happens several chapters before his discussion of evermore. The average person has no clue who Marjorie is and why she’s important to Taylor’s lore. He also makes a lil jab about Swifties explaining the “daisy symbolism” in You’re on Your Own, Kid to football players, but then DOESN’T explain that symbolism! Why are you referring to lyrical hints that you’re not even going to expand on? This makes me think that this book was meant FOR Swifties. But if that’s the case, I don’t think that Sheffield offers very much that is new in terms of lyrical analysis or insight into her career that the average Swiftie doesn’t already know. Much of the information comes from very public interviews that many fans have probably already seen or read. When the majority of your analysis of folklore pulls directly from what Taylor says explicitly about the album in the long pond studio session, which I can watch whenever, I feel like you’re not necessarily offering an unique insight into Taylor’s lyricism. 

This is also not a biography of Taylor Swift. There is lots of Sheffield’s life interjected into it. His personal connection to his favorite songs (All Too Well, New Romantics, and Enchanted get special shout outs), his brief interactions with Tay herself, and the emotional impact of Lover when his mom passed away. This didn’t necessarily bother me, because I feel like if I tried to write a similar book I would also have a hard time separating out the impact that certain albums and songs have had on my life and the memories I associate with them. I think that’s just built into the experience of loving Taylor’s work. What DID bother me was that, because this book was so short, it felt like a misuse of time to get these anecdotes in place of lyrical analysis or discussion about the topic of this book: Taylor’s career. Chapters at the end covering folklore, evermore, Midnights, and the Eras tour were especially rushed and underdeveloped. Having Sheffield’s personal insights was fine, but having those insights in place of content about Taylor made things feel unfocused, and that’s a problem that an editor should have caught. 

Overall, I thought this was fine, even though it didn’t have much new information for me and some elements fell pretty flat. I’m the kind of person that loves think pieces about Taylor and her music, so the premise of this book feels tailor made (no pun intended) for me. If you’re a fan, you’ll probably enjoy parts of this and I think it’s worth checking out.