Secret of Swift’s success

Andy Pemberton

• Last Updated: November 28. 2009 3:34PM UAE / November 28. 2009 11:34AM GMT

Taylor Swift, centre, accepts the award for Entertainer of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards on November 11. Rick Diamond / Getty Images / AFP

The superstar Taylor Swift last week announced plans to launch a range of greeting cards. The line will include cards, stationery, gift packaging and e-cards, and Swift will write the messages herself.

“Getting to write and design these cards is a wonderful experience,” she said.

She should know. The last two years have been, for the most part, one wonderful experience after another for the 19-year-old country pop star. During her first, 52-date headlining tour of the US this year (which sold out in three minutes), she said that she once wrote in her journal a list of ambitions she hoped to achieve and she had already ticked most of them off.

“The only thing I have left is win a Grammy and have a house with hardwood floors,” she told me in April. “The hardwood floors is the hardest part. I haven’t had time to move out of my parents’ house yet.”

In 2008, Swift sold more records than anyone else in America, shifting more than four million CDs. (The squeaky clean singer lost the 2008 Best Female Artist Grammy to her photo negative, Amy Winehouse.) Earlier this year, her second album, Fearless, strung together 11 non-consecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200, and she became the youngest artist to win the Album of the Year trophy at the Academy of Country Music Awards.

In June, she won two CMT awards. And this month, she won Entertainer of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards, and scooped more gongs than any other artist, including Michael Jackson, at the American Music Awards. She has streamed more than 200 million songs from her MySpace page and was the first country artist to sell two million downloads for three of her songs. Alongside the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus (“I am not competing with her,” Swift told me), she represents a new wave of teenage stars who dwarf the success of their grown-up counterparts. She’s about the most successful pop star on the planet.

“She ticks all the boxes for American mass appeal,” says Paul Rees, editor of Q magazine. “She has a little bit of a country feel without rough edges, simple pop hooks, she’s pretty without being sexy. She looks as though she would rather be at home knitting.”

Certainly, her Shirley Temple-like images wins over teenagers and their parents. Most of Swift’s songs are harmless, empowerment anthems hand-tooled for a largely female audience enduring the tribulations of high school.

But while her climb to superstardom has been impressive, it has not been without the occasional hiccup. Artistically, Swift has a vindictive streak she makes no attempt to conceal. She puts the real names of crushes in her songs, including that of her ex-boyfriend Joe Jonas. The heartthrob, who last month dumped Swift in a phone conversation that lasted 27 seconds (she timed it), crops up in the hit single Forever and Always: “Did I say something way too honest that made you run and hide like a scared little boy?”

In September, when Swift accepted the award for Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West took the microphone from her and told the TV audience that Beyoncé should have won it instead. Swift handled the resulting media scrum with admirable sangfroid.

But alongside her beauty, talent and a certain cool poise, the real secret of Swift’s stratospheric success is her willingness to share her life with her audience. Like many of her generation, she has no problem broadcasting her innermost thoughts on her My Space page or in her tweets.

“I feel that my whole life is a diary that everyone is allowed to read,” she said.

Now that she is no longer dating Jonas, her current crush is Taylor Lautner from that other teen phenomenon, Twilight. Are these relationships for real, or just fodder for her online diary?

“It’s a Disney romance,” says Rees. “It’s hard to imagine the two of them kissing, impossible to believe that anything would happen between them.”

But will things stay that way, or will Swift one day explode in a supernova of bad choices like Britney Spears? It’s hard to say, but backstage at her LA show, Swift’s tall, charismatic father, Scott, was at pains to point out that he wasn’t a pushy showbiz parent (he’s a stockbroker, and Taylor’s mum, Andrea, is a housewife). “I always say to her: ‘You can stop any time you want to’,” he said.

But, according to Swift, that’s not likely.

“Every day is a complete blast for me,” she said. “Every day is a celebration.”

Sounds like the perfect sentiment for her first greetings card.