March 5, 2009 12:00 AM ET
Below is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared in RS 1073 from March 5, 2009. This issue and the rest of the Rolling Stone archives are available via Rolling Stone Plus, Rolling Stone's premium subscription plan. If you are already a subscriber, you can click here to see the full story. Not a member? Click here to learn more about Rolling Stone Plus.
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 jun-ior and senior years, she finished both years 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 19 years old, she says she has never had a cigarette. She says she has never had a drop of alcohol. "I have no interest in drinking," she says, 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."
Swift 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 she is today. The couple, who befriended Swift 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 Swift'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 says, dashing about the house, which is utterly enormous, filled with gilt crosses and life-size Grecian statues, and worth about $14 million (Eddie Murphy is a neighbor, in a house "the size of a country," says Swift). "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."
Swift 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 Swift's 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. Swift seems to have three gears — giggly and dorky; worrying about boys and pouring that emotion into song; and 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 Hill and McGraw'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, measuring and sifting and whipping 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 Swift — 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 a 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 says. "That's not what we call it," counters Swift. 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!" yelps Swift. "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, Swift 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."
Swift likes to do everything the right way, and most of the time that means she likes to do everything herself. She may be a five-foot-11-inch blonde, but she does not have the carefree soul that usually goes along with that physiognomy, and her back is starting to hunch a little from stress. Swift writes or co-writes all of her songs: She's been a working songwriter since the age of 13, when she landed a development deal with RCA Records. "Taylor earned the respect of the big writers in Nashville," says Big and Rich's John Rich, a hot Nashville producer. "You can hear great pop sensibilities in her writing as well as great storytelling, which is the trademark of old-school country song-crafting." At 14, Swift 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. "I thought, 'What's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? What's been done a million times?' " Says Borchetta, "Taylor and I made an aggressive deal on the back end." He chuckles. "I've written her some very big checks," he says.
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