The Very Pink, Very Perfect Life of Taylor Swift

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.

Swift has sold 6 million of her first and second albums, making her the bestselling artist of 2008. Now she is preparing to launch her first headlining arena tour of 52 cities in April (a date at the Staples Center in L.A. sold out in two minutes). She's benefited from a broad demographic appeal: The "Taylor Nation" ranges from country to indie-music fans to the Disney generation, particularly the good girls. Her impeccably crafted songs easily translate to pop radio, and Swift is clearly taken with the notion of crossing over, though she's nervous about alienating her core audience. "You can't forget who brought you to the party, and that's country radio," she insists. She's very savvy: It was her decision to sing "Fifteen," her song about the innocence of that age, with Miley Cyrus at the Grammys. "I think it's cool, because when she was 15 she had a lot of things going on," says Swift. "Lessons learned." (This is how savvy she is: When she was starting out in music, she used her spare time to paint canvases — "I'm interested in Jackson Pollock's kind of art, where art is beautiful but it's nothing and yet it's incredible" — which she then sent to country-radio managers as gifts.)

For all her high-minded business acumen, as an artist Swift is primarily interested in the emotional life of 15-year-olds: the time of dances and dates with guys you don't like, humiliating crying jags about guys who don't like you, and those few transcendent experiences when a girl's and a boy's feelings finally line up. You can't go anywhere without your best friend. You still tell your mom everything. Real sexuality hasn't kicked in yet. Swift won't reveal anything on that topic herself. "I feel like whatever you say about whether you do or don't, it makes people picture you naked," she says, self-assuredly. "And as much as possible, I'm going to avoid that. It's self-preservation, really."