Author and longtime Rolling Stone music journalist, Rob Sheffield, joined host Kenneth Womack for our special seventh season finale of “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.
Sheffield was a guest at the recent “Everything Fab Four” Fest in early November in Asbury Park, NJ, where he shared an onstage conversation with Womack and our previous podcast guest, Jamie Bernstein. The event celebrated The Beatles’ “Rubber Soul,” an album which not only turns 60 this week but that Sheffield says is his favorite and “goes with us everywhere.”
“I don’t care if they made ‘better’ albums,” he said. “To me, ‘Rubber Soul’ is the one. The Beatles shocked themselves with how great it was, and it’s still shocking me. It’s an album that continues to inspire and influence musicians to this day.” From the Fab Four’s 1960s contemporaries Brian Wilson and The Rolling Stones to more current artists such as Ariana Grande and Phoebe Bridgers, Sheffield believes people appreciate that the band was “willing to experiment and not repeat the formula.”
For Womack’s part, he expressed admiration for Sheffield’s work and the “vulnerability” he shows when writing about music – something Sheffield attributes to the former Beatles. “Enthusiasm. Music has always brought it out of me, and you can blame Paul McCartney for that. He and Ringo both, in 2025, still have this pure, undimmed, unjaded enthusiasm.” He went on to explain that Taylor Swift (whose work he examines in his latest book, “Heartbreak is the National Anthem”) also seems to share that as a songwriter. “I’ve always loved her ability to jump into every emotion – to summon that enthusiasm. She and Paul are both so similar in their fanaticism about writing pop music. They can take an everyday scene and make it something memorable.”
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The conversation then turned to The Beatles’ “Anthology,” which just saw an album and docuseries update and rerelease for its 30th anniversary. “Just when you think they can’t dig into the vaults any deeper, they do,” said Sheffield. “Every time it seems it’s leveled out and reached its plateau, the kids take it and run with it. There’s never been any need to turn people on to The Beatles, because they just do a better job of doing that themselves than anyone ever has.”
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Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin and the bestselling books “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” and “John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.” His latest book is the authorized biography of Beatles road manager Mal Evans, “Living the Beatles Legend,” out now.
