If this is Taylor's game face, it must be tattooed on, because it never drops during hours of press on a recent weekday in New York. It's a day that includes mind-numbing chatter on Sirius XM and Clear Channel, a voiceover for a new style show on MTV, and a sickeningly sweet luncheon for her L.e.i. sundress line sold at Walmart.
It's an impressive performance: Taylor engages easily with the teen-fashion journalists following her around, bantering about blow-dryers and bachelorette parties; then, she's gracious to the misshapen radio hosts, calling everyone by their names and administering warm hugs by the dozen. But there's a moment, at the Walmart luncheon, when she gets a little testy with a young fan. Taylor asks the fan where she's from, and when the girl answers, "New Jersey," she makes fun of her accent. But this is literally the only sin against a human she commits during a 10-hour day in which she's barely fed, never stops smiling and signs hundreds of autographs with a pink Sharpie pen.
This politesse is part of her character, a way of treating others taught by her loving family. Her parents intentionally raised their kids in the country, on a Christmas tree farm with a grape arbor and seven horses, in eastern Pennsylvania, while her father commuted to work.
"I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head," she tells me as we get in a chauffeured car and head to the next destination.
But her parents also prized success in the real world: They even gave her an androgynous name, on the assumption that she would later climb the corporate ladder.
"My mom thought it was cool that if you got a business card that said 'Taylor' you wouldn't know if it was a guy or a girl," she says. "She wanted me to be a business person in a business world."
Taylor rode horses competitively as a child, but her main hobby was making up fairytales and singing the songs from Disney movies by heart. At six, she discovered a LeAnn Rimes record, which she began to listen to compulsively.
"All I wanted to hear from then on was country," she says. "I loved the amazing female country artists of the 90s - Faith, Shania, the Dixie Chicks - each with an incredible sound and standing for incredible things."
She began to act in a children's musical theater company but found that she preferred the cast parties, which featured a karaoke machine, to the stage.
"Singing country music on that karaoke machine was my favorite thing in the world," she reminisces.
As is the Swift-ian way, even at eleven she was determined to "pursue other venues" where she could perform, and soon found the Pat Garrett Roadhouse, which had a weekly karaoke contest.
"I sang every single week for a year and a half until I won," she gushes. Her prize: opening for Charlie Daniels at 10:30 a.m.; he played at 8:30 at night.
Newly emboldened, Taylor began to perform the national anthem at local sports games, and even landed a gig with her favorite team, the Philadelphia 76ers. But tragedy soon befell our young songstress. It seems that her classmates did not agree that country music was cool.
"Anything that makes you different in middle school makes you weird," she says. "My friends turned into the girls who would stand in the corner and make fun of me."
She was abandoned at the lunch table. She was accused of possessing frizzy hair. She tried to fit in by joining teams but proved to be horrible at every sport. Then redemption came in the form of a 12-string guitar.
"When I picked up the guitar, I could not stop," she says. "I would literally play until my fingers bled. My mom had to tape them up, and you can imagine how popular that made me: 'Look at her fingers, so weird.'" She takes a deep breath. "But for the first time, I could sit in class and those girls could say anything they wanted about me, because after school I was going to go home and write a song about it."
