Taylor Swift’s Rise to Power in a New Book
You’re reading a past edition of our weekly Things to Do column, about the concerts, art shows, comedy sets, movies, readings, and plays we’re attending each week. Read the current installment. Sign up to receive it in your inbox.
Taylor Swift has become “America’s Muzak,” as one New York Times writer put it. That’s no dig, but an attempt to articulate how deeply Swift’s songs and lore and merch and Easter eggs and, and, and…have saturated the culture. She is everywhere, and everyone has opinions, dare they voice them. Rob Sheffield has been doing exactly that for years in the pages of Rolling Stone (fear not, he’s a certified, self-identifying Swiftie). And in a new book, Heartbreak Is the National Anthem, he collects his thoughts on one of the biggest pop stars the world has ever known into a cultural critique tracing her rise to power, and noting how she’s reinvented pop music along the way. Thursday, November 21, Sheffield will chat about the book, and all things Swiftian, at Powell’s (7pm, free) with another of her celebrated chroniclers, Chuck Klosterman (see Klosterman’s 2015 GQ profile of Swift).
Image: Courtesy Dey Street Books
But doesn’t everyone already know everything there is to know about Taylor Swift? Well, sort of. Nearly every early review has quoted Sheffield’s line that Swift “reinvented pop in the fangirl’s image.” It’s for-us-by-us on a global scale. Yet somehow there’s room in that “us” for Sheffield himself, a six-foot-five, 50-something man. As a high-profile journalist, Sheffield has had more access to Swift than most, and his book is dotted with his own firsthand experiences with her. “Few have written about her with such inside-out understanding,” a Washington Post review noted. Still, we know whom she’s dated, the names of her songs before they’re released, and the significance of their order. Instead of simply adding layers to Taylor lore, here Sheffield is interested in a zoomed-out look at how the greater Taylor Swift Industrial Complex assembled itself.
And yes, of course two middle-aged dudes talking about Taylor Swift is a tough sell. But it’s hard to think of two cultural critics more up to the task than Sheffield and Klosterman.
More Things to Do This Week
Comedy Larry David
7:30pm Thu, Nov 21 | Theater of the Clouds, $115–345+
As if it needed to be said, this live “in conversation with” the Seinfeld and Curb cocreator will be “informal.” With a yet-to-be-named moderator, David will discuss his career highs and lows. Turns out, according to his totally factual bio, stress on the Seinfeld set led him into a dark bout with anabolic steroids, which accounts for his famous ill-temper and “shrunken testicles.” Eventually, it goes on, he recovered and launched another series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, about “an incredibly gifted, loveable writer who spreads bonhomie.” There’s more: In spare time during that show’s long run, he of course created both Girls and Orange Is the New Black. Which is all to say, there’s plenty of material to cover.
Dance Alonzo King Lines Ballet
7:30pm Thu, Nov 21–Sat, Nov 23 | Newmark Theatre, $6–89
The San Francisco choreographer Alonzo King is famous for his ability to bend ballet conventions into intensely felt works. “His ballets have a way of sailing through sensations,” The New York Times wrote recently, “of calming the nervous system, of realigning the body and mind.” The latest piece by his Lines Ballet, Deep River, in town thanks to White Bird, is named for the spiritual and evokes similar themes of transforming hardship into recovery and growth. The Grammy-winning singer Lisa Fischer, a longtime performer with the Rolling Stones, is central to both the show’s music and the dance. Onstage, Fischer interacts with the dancers as she works through composer Jason Moran’s score.
Theater Twelfth Night, or What You Will
Various Times Nov 24–Dec 22 | Portland Center stage, $24–93
Portland Center Stage is mounting Shakespeare’s classic shipwrecked, queer-tinged rom-com. The theater’s artistic director, Marissa Wolf, is leading the company through this local production of the twisty, Christmastime love triangle. In the play, a woman lands in a Balkan coastal town after her ship is destroyed at sea. She dresses as a man to find work, and eventually falls into a confused romance or two. When her twin brother resurfaces, who she thought had drowned, everyone grows yet more confused.
What We’re Reading About Elsewhere
- The Keiko podcast. (The New York Times)
- An interview with “Rocket Mean,” executive director of Portland’s world champion Roller Derby team. (OPB)
