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Taylor Swift: Poised for stardom
The country singer, whose second album is out now, has translated well to mainstream MTV.
UNACASVILLE, Conn. — Taylor Swift remembers the day she walked into one of her writing sessions — filled with anger.
The boy she liked was acting up, and the singer could barely get out a greeting before unloading her frustration on co-writer Liz Rose.
“I walked into Liz’s house, and I said, ‘I can’t believe what’s going on right now. I’ve gotta tell you about this.’ I told her all about it,” says Swift. “She goes, ‘If you could say everything you were thinking to him right now, what would you start with?”’
So Swift began venting: “I would say to him, ‘I’m sick and tired of your attitude; I feel like I don’t even know you’ ... and I just started rambling, and she was writing down everything that I was saying, and so, we turned it into a song.”
That song, “Tell Me Why,” on her hotly anticipated sophomore CD, “Fearless,” is an example of why Swift is not only one of country music’s brightest and most popular young stars, but is also poised to become pop’s next superstar act — just weeks away from her 19th birthday.
“I think the reason why all of that has started happening is because I was writing about what was happening in my life and I don’t hold back on details and I mention people’s names and I like my songs really personal,” Swift said in an interview on her swank tour bus, a few hours before a recent concert at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut.
“I guess when you write your songs like you’re writing in a diary, more people can relate to it than you think. I thought because my songs were so personal that nobody would be able to relate to them ... because I said all these names that were only significant to me,” she says. “But apparently they were significant to more people than just me.”
Since Swift made her debut in 2006 with her self-titled CD, she’s sold 3 million albums and scored country hits such as “Our Song” and “Picture to Burn.” She has also become one of the few recent country singers whose celebrity has translated to a mainstream audience.
MTV — not known for supporting country music — tapped her to host a week on “TRL,” and she was also their red-carpet reporter at the recent MTV Video Music Awards.
She’s graced the cover of celebrity magazines like Us Weekly, and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” dedicated an entire show to her new album release. (During the show, Swift dished about her recent breakup with Jonas Brothers heartthrob Joe).
Swift has a line of dolls in her likeness, recently performed with Def Leppard on a CMT special, sang the national anthem during the World Series and is planning a line of sundresses for Wal-Mart.
But the teen, who was raised in Pennsylvania and now lives in the Nashville, Tenn., area with her parents and younger brother, doesn’t play up her crossover success.
“I try to look at what has happened to my career less as crossover and more as spillover,” says Swift.