A short life of the author
Rob Sheffield (b. 1966) was born in 1966 in Boston, Massachusetts. He studied English at Yale University and has a master’s degree from the University of Virginia. He has been a contributing editor at Rolling Stone since 1997.
Life and Career
Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time (2007) — about his marriage to Renée Crist, a fellow music journalist and fellow Virginian, who died suddenly in 1997 from a pulmonary embolism at age thirty-one, and the mix tapes they made for each other — is one of the great grief memoirs. Each chapter is organised around a mix tape, and the music becomes the medium through which Sheffield processes love and loss.
Talking to Girls About Duran Duran (2010) — a memoir structured around songs from each year of his life — continued his approach. Turn Around Bright Eyes (2013) was about karaoke and his second marriage. Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World (2017) was a critical study of the Beatles as a cultural phenomenon, and was widely praised as one of the best books about the band.
Key Works
- Love Is a Mix Tape (2007)
- Dreaming the Beatles (2017)
- Talking to Girls About Duran Duran (2010)
Collecting Sheffield
Love Is a Mix Tape (2007, Three Rivers Press) brings $10–$25.