How Taylor Swift created her brand

It's possible that I know too much about Taylor Swift. I know the words to all her singles and every name on her long list of ex-lovers.

- AMANDA HESS

Thanks to her current relationship with Travis Kelce, I know details about the various social entanglements of his Kansas City Chiefs teammates that I would prefer not to. I listen to her music about as much as the median American, which is to say: All of the time. Swift has become America's Muzak, her songs the soundtrack to our Starbucks lines and her life the fodder for our tabloid stories.

In Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music, Rob Sheffield charts how Swift, who rose to fame writing songs for teenage girls (when she was still one herself), became ubiquitous—and he makes the case that even as her cultural dominance can work to obscure her skill, everything always leads back to her virtuosic writing.

Sheffield is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where he publishes consistently glowing reviews of Swift's seemingly limitless offerings. Here he steps back to consider the roots of her appeal. Swift has "always had a unique flair for writing songs in which people hear themselves—her music keeps crossing generational and cultural boundaries, in ways that are often mystifying," he writes. She makes her "experiences public property, to the point where she makes the world think of her as a character."