TAYLOR SWIFT starlight (HER STORY HER LIFE )

Music sensation Taylor Swift has been making waves in the country world since she released her first single, "Tim McGraw," in 2006. Three years later, the 19-year-old is a favorite of country and pop fans alike, and she's the only country artist to ever win a MTV Video Music Award.

Before Taylor was a singer, she was a poet. She won a national poetry contest when she was only 9 years old, and by the age of 12 she was putting her poems to music. "If you can put words together the right way, and if you put the right rhymes at the end of the right sentences, you can make words bounce of a page. That's always been my favorite thing," she says. "I've made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I'm allowed to write my own music."