Why Taylor Swift's Career Trajectory Mirrors the Beatles, Explains Author of New Book on the Pop Star (Exclusive)

Few people have spent as much time immersed in Taylor Swift 's music than Rob Sheffield. As a longtime Rolling Stone journalist and author of books including Dreaming the Beatles, On Bowie, and Love Is a Mix Tape, Sheffield has long-threaded memoir, fandom and criticism into his work.

With his latest effort, Heartbreak Is the National Anthem (released on Nov. 12 via Dey Street Books), Sheffield chronicles Swift's cultural takeover through his own memories of her music — and interactions with Swift herself — uncovering how she's shifted the pop paradigm.

"Writing about her just in the long story of pop music and her place in it, she's transformed music so completely in her time that it's wild to go back and think about how different it was when she started," Sheffield tells PEOPLE. "So I wanted to show how things were pre-Taylor and how they're so completely different after Taylor."

Throughout 29 chapters, Sheffield, 58, dives into Swift's prolific discography and the art of her craft and career — the "Mazzy Swift" sound of "Sad Beautiful Tragic," Swift's affinity for secret codes and her show-stopping sister albums folklore and evermore.

"It's funny, my last couple of books were about The Beatles and David Bowie , and to me, she's right up there in that pantheon with them," Sheffield says of Swift.

In an interview with PEOPLE, Sheffield digs into Swift's preservation of lyrics, reveals what sound he hopes Swift tackles in the future.

There are several authors who have taken on the task of writing about Swift in recent years. How did you approach her story differently? Well, [it was about] writing about Taylor, her music and ultimately the big mystery of Taylor Swift — how she writes these songs that are so personal and yet hits so many people as our own story. Everybody has Taylor songs that we hear and we think, "This one, this is about me." And to share that with so many thousands of people in the same stadium at the same time is such a surreal pop experience that I wanted to write about Taylor in those terms as that kind of songwriter.

You blend memoir with Swift's work and cultural impact. Why was this the right approach for this book? It's that way for you and me, and it's also that way with her. She hears music as the story of her life that way. And to me, just listening to her songs, even at the beginning, even just at that first album, it's already clear that she's somebody who hears herself in her own prism of pop music.

There's a throughline in the book of comparing the success of The Beatles and Swift. Tell me more about that. Well, The Beatles are the closest thing to a Taylor Swift that we have in history. First, there's the Beatles showing up on The Ed Sullivan Show, and they show everybody, "Wow, okay, this is something you can do. This is something you can participate in as a fan or as a musician. We're just taking guitars and drums and writing songs about real human emotions." People saw The Beatles and they said, "Hey, I can do this." That's when people started forming bands, but also when people became devoted pop music fans. The Beatles proved it could be done, and then as they got more experimental and innovative in their later years, they proved how much you could do with this format. And Taylor's the same way.

With her first couple records, she's just proving it can be done, and showing the world, "I'm a girl with a guitar, I'm writing my own songs and I'm getting away with it. I can not only persuade a record company to release my songs by letting me write every song," which no country songwriter, no country singer could get away with in 2006. And then, she shows everybody how far you can go with it with folklore and evermore. It really comes down to that big blast of Taylor being like The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in terms of when Taylor arrived and having to fight so hard to prove it could be done. You look at what's huge right now, whether it's Sabrina Carpenter , Chappell Roan , Charli xcx , Gracie Abrams , Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo , that's what pop music is in 2024, and it all comes from Taylor proving it could be done. These artists don't sound like each other and none of them are copying Taylor, but they're all doing something because Taylor proved that it could be done.

In the book, you reveal that Swift once introduced you to Alan Aldridge, who is deep in the Beatles lore as an illustrator. Was that before or after your Beatles book? Did she add to your research? That was after my Beatles book. It was when she did that amazing Harper's BAZAAR interview with Pattie Boyd . That was so mind-blowing and so brilliant. And Pattie, she's more famous now, but she's a figure in Beatles lore that really the fans and the hysterics knew about. But Taylor [was] interested in the muse who inspires songs. It's so funny to me that she is that level of geek. Especially since for so many years, people assumed that she was just a disposable pop puppet just because she was a young girl. But we were talking about that Pattie interview and bits of Beatles history, and she starts telling me about Alan Aldridge, and she's surprised I haven't heard of him. And she's like, "Oh yeah, he's the visual artist. He did The Beatles Illustrated book of those created lyrics." And for a while, John Lennon called him The Beatles 'official visual artist. I was like, "Really? I don't know." She's the level of geek fan who knows about that, and is just capable of busting that out in casual conversation.

I also love how you dig into how her affinity for secret codes also stems from The Beatles. That's the kind of geek she is. There's an interview I mention in the book from when she's 16 and the guy is saying, "So I looked at your CD book and you have the lyrics, you've got random letters capitalized." And she says, "No, well, no, those aren't random letters. If you take the capital letters and you put them together, they spell out a secret message for each song like 'Date Nice Boys' for one of the songs." And she's explaining, "The Beatles did that in the '60s when they made records like The White album, and if you played it backward you might hear a secret message." It's just mind-blowing. She's a 16-year-old country singer and she's already thinking these terms. She's already thinking of building a body of work like The Beatles.

You connect the dots between Swift's lyrical references over the years, like the mention of being pirates in "The Best Day" and "Seven." How does exploring how Swift, preserves and reuses those moments explain her as a pop star more? It just fascinates me. "Seven" and "The Best Day" [are] two very different types of childhood portraits, and you don't have to notice that connection to love both of those songs. But she puts stuff like that in there to reward you if you're paying an added level of attention. And sometimes there are fan theories that I don't know if there's any basis for them at all. I love the 112-Day [numerology] theory, but it's a thing where she had fun with that stuff because she was on the Eras Tour, and said, "Okay, and that was 113...." It's really funny how she just enjoys that aspect of the game.

No one has really had a run in music like Swift. Do you think anyone could reach her level of impact, or is she an anomaly? Well, she's definitely an anomaly in terms of anyone who's gone before. However, we can see just by looking around, just by listening to the radio for an hour, how she's so completely transformed pop music and really elevated the fangirl to the center of pop music in a way that has always been subtext at best. She has really said the quiet part out loud with regard to that. By transforming music that way, it's possible that one of these artists that she is inspiring will go on to break all her records and have this kind of career. Maybe not as great, but just because she has spent her entire career proving that things can be done that nobody thought were possible. So, I think there will be comparable careers, just like with The Beatles. There was nothing before the Beatles that suggested that a career like the Beatles was possible.

I know you've spoken with Swift multiple times, but you've never interviewed her. If you had the chance, what's one question you would ask her? I would ask her about books. I would love to hear her talk about her reading her relationship with Emily Dickinson, for one. I always wonder if she's read Oscar Wilde. I always wonder if she's read Clarice Lispector. I always wonder if she's a fan of Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy or Gertrude Stein. I can't rule any of these things out because we know she's a wide reader and has a huge curiosity about literature. A question I'm always curious about is how she knew at 16 that this was all possible. Because it seemed like any adult who knew anything about the music industry would've told her that it wasn't possible.

She must have been surrounded by these adults saying, "I know you want to write songs, but you have to build up to that. You have to pay your dues. Here's this song that your producer's college roommate wrote, you should do that song. Then, once you're settled, you can write you own songs." She didn't do any of the compromises that people must have been constantly urging on her in those days. And by people, I mean men.

What do you want to see from Swift as an artist in the future and on her albums? That's a good question. What would you say?

I want a Bleachella rock album. That's always my wish. Yeah, I want that, too. Specifically, I want the punk-rock album. "We Are Never Getting Back Together," that screamo version , I watch it all the time, and I think, "Okay, if she could do that one performance and throw herself into it so completely, there's no way she's going to stop it once. She's definitely going to do an album of that stuff." That would be No. 1 on my wishlist.

If she made an album with, say, Mannequin Pussy, can you imagine how great that would be? It might sound strange, but it would've sounded strange five years ago if somebody told you, "Hey, Taylor's going to make an entire album with the guys from The National and Bon Iver. Oh, and also, she's going to go on tour with Phoebe Bridgers." She listens to everything. She will pick up tricks from everything. But whatever she does next, we know it's going to be weird and different.