Taylor Swift Puts The Kid in Country

"I'm not going to try to act like some adult who has it all together and isn't fazed at all by that," she says. "I am. I'm completely affected by it. I don't like it when people who are young act like they're 40. That's taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you're so mature or whatever -- I don't try to act mature. Some people might say I'm mature for my age, but it's not something I'm trying to do, you know? I'm just me."

Go to Swift's MySpace page, and you'll find a ton of real-life, real-time data -- maybe enough to write a quickie bio: "Everything I Know About Taylor Swift I Learned Online."

She posts regular updates -- it's what the kids do these days, you know -- and her personal life is not off-limits. In fact, it's one of her favorite topics. Especially dating. Or not dating, as it were.

"I've never been the kind of girl who needs a boyfriend," she writes. "I believe that love will find you when you're not looking for it. So I've been actively NOT looking for it for about 3 years now. I'll let you know how that works out for me. It probably doesn't help that I write songs about every guy I talk to."

Kinda true. Her breakthrough hit, "Tim McGraw" -- written during a math class! -- was about a relationship with a boy who was about to leave for college. Her current single? The sneering kiss-off "Picture to Burn." "It's about a guy I liked who didn't like me back, and I got really mad, you know?" she says. In her liner notes, Swift offers a dedication: "To all the boys who thought they would be cool and break my heart, guess what? Here are 11 songs written about you. HA!"

So: Step carefully, boys.

"I have to pick a guy who's really nice," Swift says. "I've got 2 million fans who are going to tell me if they don't approve of him, you know? That's sort of why I'm single. I don't want to have to find the right guy right now. I'm fascinated by my career and I'm not too fascinated by guys right now. I know that'll change and someday I'll have a great relationship, or a whatever relationship. But right now isn't the time for that.

"My friends are like: 'Oooh, look at him, he's cute.' But I have these blinders on. . . . It's not like I'm running out of time or whatever. But music is my boyfriend."

She's a willowy thing, 5-foot-11 in her bare feet but probably 6-1 in her stylish brown cowgirl boots. She's wearing a loosefitting dress with three-quarter sleeves and spangly trim. Piercing blue eyes, spring-loaded blond tresses, pouty little lips, an upturned nose. An affinity for mascara, too.

She grew up in Wyomissing, Pa., on a Christmas tree farm, where she became enamored of words, writing poetry and, during one summer vacation, a 250-page novel. "She wrote all the time," says her mother, Andrea. "If music hadn't worked out, I think she'd be going off to college to take journalism classes or trying to become a novelist. But her writing took an interesting twist when she picked up the guitar and applied her writing to music."

She showed enough aptitude as a songwriter and performer that her mother took her to Nashville with a demo CD. They went up and down Music Row, knocking on doors. "I'm, like, 11," Swift recalls, "and I'm saying, 'Hi, I'm Taylor, and I'd like a record deal.' " She giggles at the memory.

When she was 13, she landed a development deal with RCA. So precocious. That same year, her family moved to the Nashville area. Her deal with RCA soon fell apart. (The label wanted her to record songs by other writers; she wanted to do her own material. Are you smarter than a 14-year-old? No, apparently not.) But Swift quickly found a new backer: Scott Borchetta, an industry veteran who was planning to start a new label, Big Machine Records, and wanted Swift to be one of the centerpieces of his roster.