On a bright Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, Taylor Swift is on good behavior, as usual. In high school, she had a 4.0 average. When she was home-schooled during her junior and senior years, she finished both sessions of course work in 12 months. She has never changed her hair color, won't engage in any remotely dangerous type of physical activity and bites her nails to the quick. At nineteen years old, she says she has never had a cigarette. She says she has never even had a drop of alcohol.
"I have no interest in drinking," she tells me, her blue eyes focused and intent beneath kohl liner and liberally applied eye shadow. "I always want to be responsible for the things I say and do." Then she adds, "Also, I would have a problem lying to my parents about that."
Taylor has gotten far playing Little Miss Perfect - not only was her second album, Fearless, at Number One for eight weeks this winter, but she's enjoyed numerous perks, like a 10-day stay at the West Coast home of her childhood idols, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, which is where we are today. The couple, who befriended Taylor in Nashville, offered the use of their house while she is in L.A. appearing on an episode of her favorite show, CSI. The fact that Taylor's first hit single is called "Tim McGraw" (a wistful, gimmicky ballad about a separated couple who recall each other by their favorite McGraw song) is a clue to her feelings about them.
"I love Tim and Faith," she tells me as we dash about the house, which is utterly enormous, filled with gilt crosses and life-size Grecian statues, and worth about 14 million. "I think I like the bright colors in here better than the lighter ones," she says, critiquing the rooms, which seem to go on endlessly, like galleries in a museum. "I don't know. I go back and forth. You know when you walk into a furniture store, and you're like, 'Oh, that's how I'm going to decorate my house,' and then the next one you're like, 'No, that's going to be the way I decorate my house'?" She giggles. "I think when I do it, I'm going to be so indecisive."
Taylor lives at home with her parents in a suburb outside of Nashville, in a big house overlooking a lake. The family was wealthy before she became a star - both of her parents have had careers in finance, which makes them particularly good advisers, and they aren't interested in their daughter's cash. One of them usually travels with her, and her father, a kind and friendly stockbroker, has just arrived, a stack of business documents in tow.
Taylor seems to have three gears (giggly and dorky; worrying about boys and pouring that emotion into song; or insanely driven, hyper self-controlled perfectionism) and, as she embarks on a wholesome afternoon activity, the third aspect of her personality comes into play. In Tim and Faith's white-marble kitchen, she attacks the task of baking mocha chocolate-chip cookies with a single-mindedness rarely seen outside a graduate-level chemistry class. She measures and sifts and whips with sharp, expert movements while her father keeps up a patter about her career.
It takes superhuman strength for a teenager to listen to her father talk at length about her personal life, and even Taylor - the goodiest goody-goody in the nation - struggles to remain polite. She's constantly worried about saying something that could be construed as offensive to her fans, and even swats away my question about her political preferences before conceding that she supports the president: "I've never seen this country so happy about a political decision in my entire time of being alive," she says. "I'm so glad this was my first election."
Her eyes dart around like a cornered cat as her dad runs on about the tour bus on which she travels with her mom. "We call it the Estrogen Express," he tells me as I jot notes in my weathered journal and tuck strands of dark hair behind my ears.
"That's not what we call it," counters Taylor.
Then her dad talks about the treadmill he got for her, because she didn't want to deal with signing autographs at the gym.
"That's not why!" she yelps. "I just don't want to look nasty and sweaty when people are taking pictures of me."
But these are momentary distractions in an otherwise pleasant afternoon. Within 45 minutes, Taylor produces two dozen perfect, chewy cookies, which she offers around with a glass bottle of milk. Suddenly, she squints at the jar, and shrieks a little: eggnog. She scours the fridge but comes up empty-handed, irritated by the foolishness of her mother, whom she surmises was shopping absent-mindedly. This cannot be. Snack time is ruined. Then she blinks rapidly and composes herself.
"I didn't do that," she says, shaking her head firmly. "Mom did that."
Taylor likes to do everything the right way, and most of the time that means she likes to do everything herself. She writes or co-writes all of her songs; she's been a working songwriter since the age of thirteen when she landed a development deal with RCA Records. At fourteen, Taylor walked away from RCA's offer of another one-year contract ("I didn't want to be somewhere where they were sure that they kind of wanted me maybe," she deadpans) and put herself on the open market. She received interest from major labels but held out for Scott Borchetta, a well-regarded executive at Universal who left the company to start his own label, Big Machine Records.
"I base a lot of decisions on my gut, and going with an independent label was a good one," she says as I chew politely on a chocolate-chip cookie.
Since then, Taylor has sold 6 million of her first and second albums, making her the bestselling artist of 2008. Now she is preparing to launch her first headlining arena tour of 52 cities in April (a date at the Staples Center in L.A. sold out in just two minutes). She's benefited from a broad demographic appeal; the "Taylor Nation" ranges from country to indie-music fans to the Disney generation. Her impeccably crafted songs easily translate to pop radio, and she's clearly taken with the notion of crossing over, though she's nervous about alienating her core audience.
"You can't forget who brought you to the party, and that's country radio," she insists.
For all her high-minded business acumen, as an artist she is primarily interested in the emotional life of fifteen-year-olds: the time of dances and dates with guys you don't like, humiliating crying jags about guys who don't like you, and those few transcendent experiences when a girl's and a boy's feelings finally line up. You can't go anywhere without your best friend. You still tell your mom everything. Real sexuality hasn't kicked in yet.
Taylor won't reveal anything to me on that topic herself. "I feel like whatever you say about whether you do or don't, it makes people picture you naked," she says, self-assuredly. "And as much as possible, I'm going to avoid that. It's self-preservation, really."
Self-preservation is one of her favorite phrases, and she uses it in reference to both her professional and personal lives. She may be a five-foot-11-inch blonde, but she does not have the carefree soul that usually goes along with that physiognomy. She wants to have a long career, not get tossed away like most teen stars.
Along with the Jonas Brothers and a gaggle of young Disney stars like her pals Miley, Selena, and Demi, she's part of a backlash against the pantyless TMZ culture of earlier this decade, which proved to be a career-killer for Lindsay Lohan and her clique. Taylor admits that she was fascinated by girls like Paris Hilton when she was younger, but claims that she never thought the gossip about these women were true.
"You should never judge a person until you know the full story," she explains, matter-of-factly.
She is also certain she would never let herself get caught up in such shenanigans.
"When you lose someone's trust, it's lost, and there are a lot of people out there who are counting on me right now." She cocks her head. "Rebellion is what
you make of it," she says. "When you've been on a tour bus for two months straight, and then you get in your car and drive wherever you want, that can feel rebellious..."
