I am in Nashville and I just left a meeting with a guy who does a lot of video editing for the promotional stuff that we do, like for my MySpace. I have to edit all the videos and sometimes I just go over and learn new tricks and go over footage. We’re also collecting a bunch of stuff for an E! Hollywood Story thing that they’re doing. Lots of video footage stuff going on right now.

Everywhere you turn there must be a video camera in your face?

It seems like it, and if it’s not somebody putting a video camera in my face, it’s me putting a video camera in other people’s faces. I’m working on a video blog right now. I was at CMT’s Alan Jackson Giants taping last night, and I got every single artist who was there to say that my album comes out November 11^th. I’m going to put them all together and put it on my MySpace and it’s going to be fun.  I have Hank Williams Jr., Brad Paisley, George Jones, George Strait, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Dierks Bently. All the artists I love were there, and I got them all to say, “Taylor’s album comes out November 11^th—go get it.”  I was so paparazzi, it’s not even funny.

Cool. Do you have any superstitions about 11/11?

No, it’s just the same number twice, so I figure it’ll be easier to remember than other numbers. It’s just kind of repetitive.

Let’s talk about music. Let’s start from the beginning. I know your mother was listening to a lot of Def Leppard when you were in the womb.

My mom was obsessed with Def Leppard. I ended up liking country music, and I think we’re just a random family when it comes to musical tastes.

And your grandmother was an opera singer?

She was actually a recording star in Puerto Rico when my mom was growing up. My mom was always stuck sitting backstage somewhere or sitting in a front row, watching a performance her entire childhood.  She thought that when her mom stopped performing she was relieved of those duties, but all I wanted to do was sing, ever since I was born, so she’s always been backstage.

How did your grandma become a star in Puerto Rico?

My grandparents were American, but my grandfather took a job building oil rigs over in Vietnam, so they were overseas all the time. Wherever my grandfather would go for his engineering job, my grandmother would go and perform and sing opera. She was in all these musicals in Singapore and all these gorgeous places where my mom grew up. My mom has these amazing stories of growing up overseas, and then she moved to America when she was about 10.

She moved to Pennsylvania?

She moved to Texas.  My mom grew up in Texas and my dad was a Pennsylvania boy. 

So what kind of opera was your grandmother performing?

She was in the Bartered Bride, The Barber of Seville and musicals like West Side Story.  I have these gorgeous, glamorous pictures of her all in black and white. She was just so beautiful.

Let’s talk about Def Leppard a little bit. Obviously it was the thrill of a lifetime for you to perform with those guys, but I’m wondering if you could tell me what it was like for your mom to meet them?

She was so star-struck, and so was my entire band and I, because before we go onstage we all listen to Def Leppard music and jump around and get ready. There was this moment where Rick Allen was testing his drum kit and they set up their instruments and everything first, and we were all sitting around watching, my band, my mom and I. You know the signature drum hit for "Pour Some Sugar On Me" the first time you hear it.

It’s absolutely unmistakable. The first time he hit it, my band and I just erupted and were just looking at each other like, "This is not happening, you’ve got to be kidding me." 

Let’s embarrass your mom—what was your mom doing?

My mom was turning red, and had my camera the whole time and filmed everything.  I was like, "Mom, please don’t miss any of this." So she had the digital camera in Joe Elliot’s face the entire time, and I had the camera in their faces, and I was like walking around interviewing them. A lot of the time, if I’m at an event with other celebrities, I want to get it on film. I’m like the biggest super-fan there, so I’ll be interviewing people and I’m doing videos with them and then I put them up on my MySpace.

You should get a job with Rolling Stone interviewing people, come on.

I would love to. I’m all about more video editing than anything else. I love how if you put music behind a moving image it pops and it comes to life. That’s my favorite thing about that.

Being around Joe Elliot and realizing that these people sold over 60 million records in their careers, I thought that they would be divas. I thought that they would be snobby. I thought that they would only want to sing certain things and would only let me sing certain things.  When I walked in, I very timidly and politely asked Joe Elliot if I could sing one of the lines in "Hysteria." He goes, "Honey I’ve been singing that for 25 years—you sing whatever you want." I was able to sing all my favorite songs, and I could not believe it when Joe Elliot was singing "Picture To Burn."

Yeah, that’s awesome. I wanted to talk to you about singing the National Anthem at the World Series. How many times have you done the National Anthem in your lifetime?

I would say I’ve sung the National Anthem hundreds of times. When I was 11 years old, it occurred to me that the National Anthem was the best way to get in front of a large group of people if you don’t have a record deal.  So, I started singing the National Anthem anywhere I possibly could—76ers' games, the US Open, and I would just send my tapes out everywhere. I would sing the National Anthem at garden club meetings. I didn’t care. I figured out that if you could sing that one song, you could get in front of 20,000 people without even having a record deal.  So I’ve sung that song many, many, many, many times and it still gives me chills, you know, when I get to sing it at an event like the World Series. Whoever thought that that was going to happen?

And the Phillies ended up winning.

And the Phillies won!  Oh my God. I was watching and my dad and I were sitting there crying, especially during the last throw of the game and the catcher caught the ball and .2 seconds later he’s running to the pitcher and just tackles him. It was just the sweetest thing and just watching all the instant replays of all the people’s reactions. I love it when people are so excited about success. I love it when people freak out when they win something, and it’s crazy because I actually used to sing the National Anthem for the Reading Phillies, which is their minor league team, and a lot of the members of the Philadelphia Phillies now were on that minor league team when I sang that anthem years and years and years ago.

Like who, for instance?

Pat Burrell. There were two or three others, I was told, that were on the same team.  So that was kind of an interesting coincidence.

Is the National Anthem hard to sing?

For me, the National Anthem is not as challenging range-wise, because I’ve been doing it for so long. The challenge for me is the utter silence that comes over 40,000 people in a baseball stadium and you’re the only one singing it. Even though I’ve sung it hundreds of times, it still gets you a little bit that you’re the only one singing and all those people are just focused on the song that you’re singing. It’s a really surreal moment for me. I love to play guitar with it, because I think sometimes the National Anthem can become a singing competition. I think that the National Anthem, in my opinion, is better just as a song. I think playing guitar with it just sort of puts the music back into it. 

Is there a certain line in the song that’s harder to hit than the other ones, where you buckle up?

No. It’s the utter silence, the silent beginning in the "Oh, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light,"--that’s when everybody’s watching, and when I get to the high notes at the end, "In the rockets’ red glare," I know I’m fine. From that point out it’s free sailing, but it’s all about not letting my nerves kick in.

You were on a karaoke circuit growing up—what does that mean?

I wanted to sing in front of people, and I didn’t have a band, and I was 11 or 10, so the first thing that I started doing was musicals. I was in a children’s company and I got all the leads because I was tall and I could play adults. That was my first taste of performing in front of people.

You did Grease…what other stuff did you do?

Yeah, I played Sandy in Grease; I played Kim in Bye, Bye Birdie; I played Maria in The Sound of Music, and I was 12.  What I started realizing was that, even more than the musicals, I looked forward to the cast parties afterward because there was a karaoke machine set up at every party. That’s when I got to sing country music. I got to sing Dixie Chicks songs and Shania Twain songs and Faith Hill songs and one day, somebody turned to my mom and said, "You know, she really ought to be singing country music." It kind of occurred to all of us at the same time that that’s what I needed to be doing.

I would go though the phone book and look for places where I could sing karaoke. There was this broken-down roadhouse where you could go and sing karaoke competitions, and the owner of the roadhouse also owned the amphitheater across the street. He had all these traditional country acts come to the amphitheater, like George Jones and Loretta Lynn and Charlie Daniels. If you won the karaoke contest, you got to open up for them. You got to play at like 10am when George Jones would go on at like 8pm. I would go there every single week until I won, and I got the chance to open up for Charlie Daniels. That was something that was just really exciting to me when I was like 11.

What was the roadhouse called?

Pat Garrett.

Pat Garrett.

Oh yeah. Strausstown, Pennsylvania. 

Cool, so talk about finding country music.

LeAnn Rimes was my first impression of country music. I got her first album when I was six. I just really loved how she could be making music and having a career at such a young age.

I think the thing that cemented it in my mind and made me fall in love with country music was seeing three great examples of what females could bring to country music—I saw that Shania Twain brought this independence and this crossover appeal; I saw that Faith Hill brought this classic old-school glamour and beauty and grace; and I saw that the Dixie Chicks brought this complete "we don’t care what you think" quirkiness, and I loved what all of those women were able to do and what they were able to bring to country music.

I thought, "You know, if Nashville is the town that lets you be yourself and do things like that, and be different, then that's where I need to be." And country music absolutely became everything to me. I started obsessing over George Strait records and Kenny Chesney, and going back and looking through Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. It was such a big deal to me that those three women stood for things in country music.

Throughout most of your career you've been an opening act. It seems like now is the turning point where you're about to take over.

Oh wow, thank you. I'm very fascinated with the music industry, the touring industry and the business end of things, so I've paid attention to other careers, the timing and decisions that were made in other careers. I've seen it happen where you have a successful first record, and they throw you out as a headliner way too early and it doesn’t work. You never want to have to go backwards. I don't have an ego issue. I'm cool being an opening act. I'd rather be an opening act longer than I should, than headline too early. So, now we're headlining. I'm starting to headline this summer and I'm really excited about that because I feel like I waited so long, that I want it so bad, and I can't wait. I'm going to throw everything I have into this headlining tour. I feel like we're in a place where I can really put together a great tour.

What are you most excited about offering your fans in this capacity, where you're the headliner, and it's your stage?

I've been on tour with every single one of my heroes and I've seen what they do live. Some things have blown me away, and I've taken away some things that I really want to incorporate. But there are some things that I haven’t seen done, and I want to do them. For my concerts, I really don’t want people to be seeing the same thing for more than two songs in a row. For my headlining shows, when I actually am allowed to have my own stage and my own production, I've already drawn up the stage plan and what I want it to look like. It's going to look nothing like the headlining tours that I've supported in the past two years. I feel like there's drama that I've always been attracted to--sort of a theatrical type, dramatic performance that I feel is sometimes missing when you see shows these days. I never want people to think that they're just seeing a show where I'm playing song, after song, after song. When I play a song, I want people to feel like they're experiencing exactly what I went through when I wrote the song as I'm singing it for them. There are set ups that I really want to create. There are visuals that I'm really excited about, and I can't wait for you to come out and see a show.

Is it going to be like the "Romeo and Juliet" bit and stuff like that?

I really want some costume changes. I'm going to create a bunch of video content specifically for the concert. I would love, when I'm singing "Love Story," to be dressed up in the video outfit, make people feel like they're experiencing something really unique. If they want to hear the record, they'll listen to it. You know? They'll put in the CD or they'll listen to their iPod. But if they want to come out to a concert, I feel like it should be something completely different.

Do you ever write songs that aren’t about boys?

Yes. I do. I have a few on this record that are about other things. I have a song called "15" that reminisces about my freshman year and a song called "Change" that was actually featured on the Olympics. And there's a song called "The Best Day" that I wrote about my mom and my childhood. It was really cool to go back to that place and reflect. I wrote some of the lyrics in the song, sort of in a child-like kind of language, which was really fun for me as a writer to stretch that way. But I really like writing songs about boys. I like writing songs about relationships. And when someone breaks up with me, I like to write about it, because I feel like I have the last word.

You don't have any problem naming names in your songs, do you?

I have no issue with naming names. I think that it's sort of fun for me to know that when the album comes out, there are going to be people who are going hear about it. My personal goal for my songs is to be so detailed that the guy the song is written about knows. It's so detailed, it's so personal, that he knows it's written about him. I think it's just a fun thing for me. I don't know why I like it so much. It's kind of exciting to put a song on the album that you know is going to personally affect you when it comes out.

Or affect somebody else? 

Mostly that it will affect somebody else. That's the fun part.

What are your favorite country songs that – not necessarily where you're dissing somebody, but just those great country lines like, "Take your tongue out of my mouth cause I'm kissing your ass goodbye."

Loretta Lynn, "Fist City" – have you heard that?

Sure…

She says, "I'll grab you by the hair on your head, and I'll lift you off the ground. I'm not saying my baby's a saint, cause he ain't." Isn't that a cool line?

Yup.

"But he won't cat around with a kitty." That's so amazing.

Obviously you have a song called "Change," and we've been hearing a lot about that, a lot about change in the Presidential election, and I'm wondering if you're a Pennsylvania Democrat or a Pennsylvania Republican.

You know, I just try and stick to my specialty and my specialty is music, and writing songs. I voted yesterday, but I don’t think it's my job to try and influence people which way they should vote, because it's a very personal thing. All the way through the line--I waited an hour and a half to vote--I was wavering back and forth who's ideas I liked better, and who really represented what I believed in. I kept going back over articles I'd read, and trying to figure out who to vote for. When I got in the voting booth, I just said to myself, "All of my best decisions have been based on my gut instinct. Who's the President of the United States?" And, I pushed a name and I voted.

Really?

Honestly, I think it's good to be well versed on the election and who believes in what. Sometimes I think you can over saturate yourself with facts, and in a lot of cases, it sounds cliché, but you should really just do what you feel.

Your record is called Fearless. And you've definitely shown, in your musical career, a fearless attitude. But what are you scared of?

Well thank you for saying that. I think what I'm scared of, honestly, is anything happening to my family, or anything happening to my fans. The hardest that I've cried in my life is when I've been told that I've had fans that have had something tragic happen to them, and lost fans. That's a really, really big fear of mine. I've sat there in the bus with the family of an eighteen year old who got in a car wreck and died his senior year, who had my CD cover taped to the dash of his car. That kind of loss – that's what scares me. I've had an amazing run at this. If it were to go away, I would hate it, but I cant say that that's my biggest fear.

What artists do you know nothing about - that you might be embarrassed to know nothing about? I mean, you must have older guys in your band who say, "Oh, you don't know this song, you don't know that song?" Like The Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan or something?

I'm pretty well versed on that, but, the stuff that my band is obsessed with, like the hair metal, I've just always been so focused on Def Leppard that I never explored too much more of the hair metal bands. I wish I knew a little more about them. Just so that I could keep up, you know, in the conversation about the hair metal bands. That seems to be the topic of choice for my band.

I'm just wondering if you've found something recently that you've really fallen in love with, maybe outside of the country realm.

There's a song that I really love, and I haven't heard the whole record. But, there's a song called "After Tonight" by Justin Nozuka and the song is completely acoustic until the chorus. It's got a really cool rootsy sound to it. You should listen to it. It's really great.- like Jack Johnson with a different twist. I really like that.

Are you a Jack Johnson fan?

I'm a huge Jack Johnson fan. My ringtone is "Taylor" by Jack Johnson. I just ignore the fact that the song is about a – it's about a prostitute or is it a stripper? But I will take ownership because it has my name in it. And you know what, also – I think, and this is a really poppy choice, but I think it's really cool that Jesse McCartney is R&B now. I think it's a really cool direction for him.  I just recently listened to the whole record, and I was like, "You know what? I didn’t really understand it at first, but now I get it." I love the new single, and I think that's a really good place for him to be. I think it's really good for his voice. He did a T-Pain cover recently and killed it live, so I have a newfound respect for him and his vocal abilities, and the way his career has gone. Also, I'm really into Katy Perry. The whole record is great. There's a song called "Thinking of You" that I'm really, really obsessed with. I'm also obsessed with Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U." I have that song on repeat right now. And I love it.

That's something that you just discovered or…

It's something that stuck with me. I discovered it last year, and I feel like there's a timeless thing that that song has. It's just really awesome. It's just one of those songs where you know that when it was written, like 5,000 songwriters just put their pen down and went, "Alright. I tried." The way that it is and the way that it's sung, I think it's a brilliant song.

Does your guitar have a name? Did you name your guitar?

I know that the techs have named them different things and there's one that's completely covered in crystals, so they call that "Sparks" or "Sparkles." I have a Koa guitar. It's either the Koa or the sparkly guitar that I use or the black electric, so usually we'll just say, Koa, Sparkles or Black Electric. 

How many songs have you written?

It's got to be about 500. I absolutely can't stop writing songs. It's funny because sometimes you'll hear artists talking about how they have to hurry up and write this next record and it's like, I can't stop writing. I can't turn it off. I go through situations and I go through experiences and I go through life and I need to write it. I need to write it down. It's like breathing. It's kind of interesting because whenever I've gone in to record albums, I mean, we're going through like a hundred songs and trying to pick the best one.

That's a good problem to have.

I'm really grateful that I haven't had any major writing blocks or anything like that. I just like to write my life. I just did an Alan Jackson painting last night and I realized something about him that I've always loved--you know who he is and you know who he stands for and you know what he believes in because his main goal is that he's always written about his life, and he hasn't really strived for the vocal acrobatics. He hasn't tried to be anything but a guy who sings about his life. I realized last night, that's my goal. That's all I want to do.

I know that you have covered Eminem and I'm wondering if you notice a connection between country and hip-hop, lyrically.

I feel like country and hip-hop are two of the most honest genres because we just like to sing about our lifestyle. We like to sing about the things that go on in our daily activities and we're proud of the way we live and we're proud of the things that we stand for. I feel like that pride is something that both country and hip-hop share. I've always been fascinated by hip-hop. I've always just really taken a keen interest in the rhyming of it all. Poetry was the first thing that ever fascinated me about words and about writing. Poetry is what turned me into a songwriter. I found out that if you get the right amount of words and the right syncopation and you get the right rhymes at the end, you can make words bounce off of a page. So hip-hop has always been something that I looked at and thought, "Wow, that really is an incredible art form." I think Eminem does it unbelievably well.

You read a lot of poetry growing up?

I would read the Shel Silverstein poems, Dr. Seuss, and I noticed early on that poetry was something that just stuck in my head and I was replaying those rhymes and try to think of my own. In English, the only thing I wanted to do was poetry and all the other kids were like, "Oh, man. We have to write poems again?" and I would have a three-page long poem. I won a national poetry contest when I was in fourth grade for a poem called "Monster In My Closet."

Wow.

Yeah, that's big time.

You've been winning awards your whole life! That’s crazy. What award do you want to win the most?

I want an American Music Award really bad. Really bad! They're so shiny!

More than a Grammy or a Moonman?

I mean, a Grammy would be wonderful. That would certainly make me cry upon my name being announced, but the American Music Awards are very shiny and they are fan-voted and that's where I base most of my pride in awards. My award shelf has got a lot of CMT Music Awards on it. Those are the ones that I'm most fond of because the fans went online and voted. I love industry awards. I love my ACM. I give my TMA award a hug every now and then. That's all well and good, but I think the fan-voted awards have always been my favorite.

Tell me about the first song you wrote. I believe it was called "Lucky You."

Oh yeah, and there are some great versions of that online. You can hear my chipmunk 12-year-old voice singing that song. I'm pretty sure it got leaked on the internet because some fans were telling me that they heard it and I was like, "Oh no!" But that's a song that I wrote…it was one of the first finished songs. It was made of three chords because those are the only chords I knew at the time.

It's a G an A and a D, or something like that?

It's a G and a D and a C, then back to D. The song was about a girl who didn't fit in and she didn't care and she was different than everyone else. I think there's a long chorus of me singing "Do do do do do do do do do do". It's very young and I look back and it's kind of interesting to hear those kind of storylines and the lyrics that I used to write compared to the lyrics that I write now.

So you've come a long way?

I would hope.

Do you think in songwriting and just about anything else in life that practice makes perfect?

I think sometimes practice makes perfect. But I think sometimes you look back on the things that you wrote when you were 12 and you were like, "Wow, I couldn't have thought of that now." I think that it's all case-by-case. I'm more proud of the music on this record than I am with the music on the first record, but you never know if that’s just me being a songwriter who likes the last thing that I wrote the best. In retrospect, I've been going over all these videos for some of the BIO specials that have been asking for video content and I've been looking over the videos of stuff that I wrote when I was 12 and there are songs that I've found myself relating to. It's kind of interesting to hear the lyrics I was writing back then. I think that I'm definitely really proud of the stuff that I've been writing lately.

What's the most bizarre, craziest thing you've seen looking out into a crowd?

There's always the frat boy who has got my name painted on his chest, which is always awesome. One of my favorite moments of the night is when I'm in the middle of my acoustic set and I'm in a really poignant moment and I'm trying to be serious and you hear the group of guys with southern accents going, "Marry me!" It's really good to have that in my life because it just makes me happy. I find that there are people out in the crowd of all ages. I've got a group of seven-year-olds that their moms all took them to the show, there's a group of six 40-year-olds all wearing tiaras and holding receptors and singing "Love Story." I really don't have just one age group.

So the guys don't knock you off your game when they're screaming at you from the crowd?

No. Dolly Parton had the best response to that kind of thing. Some guy screamed from the crowd "I love you, Dolly!" and she goes, "I thought I told you to stay in the truck!" I'm going to start saying that.

Have you ever met a guy while on stage? Like a boyfriend?

One time, like a year and a half ago, I was doing a show at a college and I was signing autographs afterwards and there was a guy that I saw from across this field and I noticed that he looked just like Denny from Grey's Anatomy. I was so obsessed with Denny from Grey's Anatomy and he died and he was my favorite and I have this weird obsession with that character. So this guy and I made eye-contact from across this field and I had a line of people that were waiting to get autographs and he waited at the end of the line and came through the line. We made small talk and I was talking to him and he held out a picture for me to sign and I just grabbed his hand and wrote my number down.

Are you serious?

I'm not kidding. That's the one time that I've done anything bold like that in my entire life. But he looked so much like Denny, come one!

I don't even know who Denny is. I'm sorry.

Ok, well he was the best character that ever existed on Grey's Anatomy. He was the one for Izzy. She would've been happy forever if he hadn't died, but he died tragically of a heart condition.

Oh, I shouldn't be laughing but it's so funny.

He was so sweet, and he was played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who is my favorite actor). He's tragic. He always plays people who die because he's a wonderful actor and you don't want to see him die so he always does.

So what happened with that relationship? The guy called you, then what?

Oh, I didn't follow through. I think I was like, "Get a hold of yourself! You just wrote your number on a stranger's hand. Get yourself together."

Let me ask you, finally we have this whole Taylor Nation thing going on, about your run-ins with your fans, I'm sure you've encountered fans that have been like, gasping for breath, passing out, crying hysterically. Give me a good story about that.

I get a lot of criers, and I love criers because I like emotional people. Some artists are very uncomfortable when people cry but I happen to think it's the cutest thing on the planet when someone meets me and starts crying. Sometimes I get gropers though. Like, I hug everyone that comes through my meet and greet line, sometimes they don't let go.

I saw some photos on your website of you meeting fans, and you really get into it.

Yeah, well I love to hug them and I love to thank them for coming. I was a fan, I went to concerts and I went through meet and greet lines and I know what it's like to walk away and think that you didn't really make an impression on your favorite artist and that you were kind of just in a line. I never want anyone leaving my concert feeling like I didn't appreciate them coming with everything that I have. I like to hug them and I like to talk to them and I like to have conversations with them and I like to look at them in the eye. Sometimes there's one that doesn't let go, really tight grip…

Is there like a three-second rule or something?

No, there's no three-second rule. I think when it gets above ten to fifteen seconds, then it's a little excessive. I, in general, love hugs and I love huggers. I think I've been really lucky because I haven't had that many crazy people at all. The craziest fan gift I got was one time this guy gave me this giant turtle shell with my face painted on it.

So, to make an impression, you should look like Jeffrey Dean Morgan, cry a lot, and you're all good, right?

Sometimes they show me their freshly-tattooed arms or midriffs that have my signature there for life. That's always an interesting moment for me.