Taylor Swift Puts The Kid in Country

"She played some songs in our first meeting and I was just killed on sight," Borchetta says. "She's the full package, somebody who writes her own songs, and is so good at it, so smart; who sings, plays the guitar, looks as good as she looks, works that hard, is that engaging and so savvy. It's an extraordinary combination."

So, then, no negatives? Maybe one, Borchetta says: Swift has actually gone off-plan, becoming so successful so quickly.

"My fear is that she'll conquer the world by the time she's 19. She'll get to the mountaintop and say: 'This is it?' Because she's just knocking down all of these goals that we didn't even have for the first album. . . . My job at this point is really to protect her and not burn her out."

No signs of wear just yet. Swift is tireless, focused, determined and weirdly enthusiastic about every part of the process of being Taylor Swift. Even the yucky promotional stuff. It's like she was programmed in a secret laboratory or something. She knows it, too.

"Maybe this makes me sound like a robot, but there is nothing more interesting to me than my career," she says. "I feel sooooo lucky to have found something I love sooooo much. I don't have an identity without music. It probably sounds crazy, but I want to do everything I can to keep this precious thing intact."

Up next: album No. 2 -- the sophomore effort from the high school senior. She's finished about half of the album, which should be released before the end of the year. Probably around the time she turns 19, in December.

But this obsession with her age: Maybe it's wrong? Brad Paisley, with whom Swift toured last summer, says Swift isn't great for 16 or 17 or 18; she's great period. But Swift writes from a particularly youthful perspective and connects with a particular demographic. "Every kid relates to Taylor and those songs because they're pointed right at them," Gill says.

Swift's teenagerly take? Whatever. "I'm not concerned with people seeing me in a certain way," she says. "Some people see me as a kid, some people see me as an adult. But I'm seriously not going to complain how anybody sees me, as long as they see me."