Taylor Swift

What was all that about record sales declining, music becoming a solitary pastime and no one having proper big hits anymore? Somebody must have forgotten to tell Taylor Swift.

America's most spectacular new star of the past two years has united millions of admirers and bridged the gaps between musical genres, becoming a multi-platinum teenage sensation in the process. Now, she's getting ready to build another bridge: across the Atlantic, as she unveils her first international album release FEARLESS on Universal Music.

The album will provide an irresistible introduction for Taylor's already expanding global audience, including her massive hits as 'Our Song,' 'Teardrops On My Guitar' and 'Should've Said No', as well as the latest smash 'Love Story.' That song powered into the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 in just two weeks, with downloads well on their way to US Platinum Single status (more than 1 million tracks sold).

Taylor's debut outside her own shores was previewed to brilliant effect ("brilliant" is one of her favourite English expressions, you see) with a show-stoppingly glamorous, high-octane show in London in early September 2008. To say that she got the crowd on her side would be a spectacular understatement. Now, with the release of FEARLESS, accompanied by her fizzing personality and charm, the whole world is about to be on her side.

"It's really cool to come over to Europe and have a fresh start and introduce myself for the first time," she says. "I'm really excited about it. And I hope that my music knows no boundaries, borderlines or genres."

Taylor Swift can speak for herself with such eloquence that when you meet her, you soon forget that when she was born, the 1990s were less than three weeks away. But her achievements speak for themselves too.

This is the talent that gate-crashed the American charts in 2006, before Taylor was yet 17, and delivered no fewer than five hits, every one of which hit #1 iTunes in the US and two going #1 on Billboard, from an album that turned the business upside down by going triple platinum. That was an almost unheard of feat for an artist so young, but for Swift to achieve it with a quintet of heavyweight hit singles that she wrote or co-wrote herself, then to sell over three million copies of an album she had creative control over, was truly unique.

Back when Taylor was looking for the right label partner, she played a showcase, just her and her guitar, at Nashville's famous Bluebird Café. Sure enough, suitors came calling, but she had the precocious determination to hold out for a deal that gave her the input she wanted. "As I started talking to the labels, I figured out they weren't going to be into me writing the whole record," she says. "That was a major setback for me."

Enter Scott Borchetta, who told Swift about his plans for the new, independent Nashville label that became Big Machine. "He said 'I have this dream of starting a label and I would like you to be my first artist.' There was something about the way he said it that made me think he would let me do it my way. He ended up creating that label and I was one of the first artists signed to it, and it's worked out really well." You see, she can do understatement too.

When you talk to Taylor about her early history, it soon becomes apparent that being an entertainer was more than a dream, it was a calling. "For me music has always been it," she says. "If there's a conversation going on and music playing in the same room, I'm listening to the music, 100% of the time.

"My grandmother was an opera singer, she'd been famous in Puerto Rico and Singapore and places like that. She used to sing in church every Sunday, and I think seeing her get up there every single week made me realise, subliminally, that performing's nothing, it's kinda normal, so that helped me."

Then came records. "I became obsessed with music when I was about six, bought my first LeAnn Rimes album and I was hooked. I started wanting to do music when I was about ten. I begged my parents to let me try out for children's theatre, where if you're tall, you get to play an adult, so I got all these leads and got to memorise two-hour plays, and really got into the performing aspect of things.

"But I started to realise that my favourite part was the cast parties where you could sing karaoke, so then I started doing that at festivals and fairs and contests. When I was about 11, I begged my parents to take me on a trip to Nashville. We rented a car and drove up and down Music Row and I would walk up to the record labels with a little CD of me singing karaoke. I'd walk in and say 'Hey, I'm Taylor, I'm 11, I want a record deal, call me.'"

They didn't call her, funnily enough. But that trip opened Taylor's eyes to the business of music, the value of writing your own songs and, crucially, the importance of publishing. "I moved with my family to Nashville when I was 13 and I knocked on doors of publishing companies, until I found one that would sign me. I was the youngest person that Sony Publishing ever signed to a writer's deal.

"I took it very seriously. Every single day during school, I would be studying, but thinking about 10 or 15 ideas to bring into my writing sessions that day. I made a lot of good relationships with songwriters and gained some early respect, because I was so intense about it."

Fast forwarding to the amazing reception to Taylor's songs in the US over the past two years, it has a whole lot to do with how real and believable her lyrics are. Compositions like 'Our Song' and 'Should've Said No' were songs everyone could believe in - and they did believe in them, all the way to No.1.

"My early songs were based solely on what I was going through," recalls Taylor. "I wrote them so fast, I didn't think about being inspired by other people or sounds. For me it was just how quickly can I write this down right now."

She's toured those songs to massive impact all across the States playing to well over a million and over 200 shows and now, as she turns 19, Taylor's new songs boast even greater maturity. It's evident whether it's on the upbeat, instant smash 'Love Story' ("a song I kind of based around Romeo & Juliet, but it's more of a modern-day twist on it"), the reflective 'Fifteen' or the wise-beyond-her-years 'White Horse', recently featured in the series premiere of her favourite TV show, 'Grey's Anatomy.'

As if all that wasn't enough, Taylor is also making swift inroads onto the big screen, having made cameo appearances in the 'Hannah Montana' movie scheduled for 2009, and in a planned 3D film project by the Jonas Brothers.

Taylor Swift's life is all about enjoying the incredible things happening to her, but keeping them all in perspective. She may soon be flying around the world too much to keep her feet physically on the ground, but metaphorically she'll be doing just that, all the while savouring the fact that her day job includes the thing she loves the most.

"Music has to be in my day. There's nothing without music. It gives people a way to say how they feel. Sometimes we have no idea what we're feeling unless somebody says it perfectly for us, and when that moment happens, it becomes your favourite song. That's a really special thing, and it's an honour to make music that could possibly be somebody's favourite song."